THE FLYING SAUCER (1950)
Tagline: Streaking out of the unknown comes a strange new terror!
(Sci-Fi, Mystery, Espionage) [G]
Note – This movie did not originally have an MPAA rating, but I think it would be rated G.
You're prettier than my top sergeant, but, baby, you talk just like him.
In this one, we basically have the CIA and the KGB both looking for a UFO in Alaska. No one seems quite sure who is building it or where it came from, but Hank Thorn is convinced it’s built for one thing and one thing only…to deploy an atomic bomb… No, not a buh, a bomb! Don’t worry about that right now though because Hank is hardly in this movie. Instead, it focuses on Mike Trent who can’t stop smoking and treating his fake nurse like garbage. Will they find the secrets of “the flying saucer”?
First off, I never saw this when I was younger and knew very little about it aside from what was on the poster. The poster kind of makes you feel like you are going to find yourself in an EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS situation, with everyone running around and freaking out and getting vaporized right before your eyes. Not to give too much away, but none of that happens in this movie.
What we do end up with is almost 70 minutes of Alaskan scenery and some pretty interesting dialog between Mike Trent and his fake nurse Vee Langley. One thing I will say is that even though this isn’t your typical sci-fi movie, I actually found it fairly interesting and I really did want to know what the heck was going on for most of this movie regarding the flying saucer.
Acting-wise I am pretty sure this was the first movie Pat Garrison was in and she only showed up in 2. She actually does a really good job as the fake nurse and I really can’t find much on her, in general, to find out why she didn’t end up taking more roles. The bulk of the story revolves around Mikel Conrad’s character Mike Trent. Conrad ended up in 26 different movies a lot of which he was uncredited for. His biggest movie was 1957’s GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. He actually directed this movie as well and like I mentioned earlier, the dude almost never stops smoking, it’s pretty damn ridiculous. This movie did have some other actors in it that got far less screen time like Earle Lyon. Lyon didn’t act in many other movies I am familiar with, but he produced a bunch of crazy stuff from 1978’s sci-fi thriller THE ASTRAL FACTOR to 1966’s DIMENSION 5 and CYBORG 2987 (the latter of which very likely could have been the movie that inspired THE TERMINATOR).
The pacing is pretty slow even for a 1950’s film. I say that, because a lot of them had long setup times, but this thing just keeps going and going till finally we do see something. If you want to check this thing out because technically it’s the first “flying saucer” movie, I suggest going into it expecting a rocky could-be romance, a bit of roughhousing between thugs and spies, and a lot of snowy landscape.
Overall I have to give this thing a 3 out of 7. I didn’t hate it as much as a lot of other people did, but for me, it’s a one-time watch.
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