|
The veiled Red Scare material is spread spaciously from New Mexico to Washington, D.C., from one UFO swooping down on newlyweds in the desert to another denting the Capitol Dome. A satellite-gazing scientist (Hugh Marlowe) and his secretary wife (Joan Taylor) comprise the couple, the irritation of a delayed honeymoon informs their brush with "survivors of a disintegrated solar system." The visitors demand a conference, un malentendu, the security cabinet promptly replies with heavy artillery: "When an armed and threatening power lands uninvited in our capitol, we don't meet him with tea and cookies!" The aliens may be sluggish golem-armors with rancid meat filling, but they have the best toys—vaporizing rays, sensation-enhancing helmets, a skull-scanning, rose-shaped, disco-ball translator, and the requisite Paul Frees vocals quivering through interplanetary walls. Best of all are the flying saucers themselves, soaring metallic frisbees made into marvelously deadpan creatures courtesy of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion miniature detailing. Gun-happy paranoia to The Day the Earth Stood Still's messianic disarmament, Fred F. Sears' comic-strip view still finds time to quote Portia's lament from The Merchant of Venice before unleashing the zany demolition of landmarks on the White House lawn. (A choice bit of mayhem: A wobbly spaceship nudges the Washington Monument so that the toppling obelisk quashes a group of fleeing earthlings.) Cosmic apocalypse? "Not on such a nice day." "And not to such a nice world." The menace on the horizon during the concluding beachside composition isn't another invasion but Burton's Mars Attacks!, a lacerating analysis. With Donald Curtis, Morris Ankrum, John Zaremba, and Thomas Browne Henry. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |