How A Stop-Motion Animation Genius Pioneered The Flying Saucer Movie
The 1956 cult classic was the blueprint for UFO movies going forward.
Not content with destroying the Golden Gate Bridge via a super-sized octopus in It Came From Beneath The Sea, stop-motion maestro Ray Harryhausen got to work obliterating various Washington, D.C. landmarks, practically redefining the visual language of sci-fi cinema in the process. Indeed, think of a UFO and chances are you’ll visualize the rotating, propulsive discs that first hovered throughout Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, the 1956 cult classic celebrating its 70th birthday this month.
The animator, of course, wasn’t the first to depict an unidentified flying object on screen. Three years earlier, George Pal had created a sleek, manta ray-esque look for the definitive The War of the Worlds adaptation. But inspired by the eyewitness accounts in Flying Saucers from Outer Space, a book by naval aviator-turned-leading UFO authority Donald Keyhoe, Harryhausen’s design was considered as true to life as you could ascertain without any physical evidence.
It wasn’t just the spacecraft — famously lampooned in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! — where the special effects whiz got creative, either. He also meticulously animated the tumbling monuments, including the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, that come under attack from the alien force, sequences which undoubtedly influenced the money shot in Independence Day 30 years later. Harryhausen also created the extra-terrestrials' distinctive "solidified electricity” suits, combining oversized helmets with clunky armor which restricted their movement to unnerving effect.
Even the stock footage, composed of everything from the failed launch of a V-2 rocket to the sinking of World War II battleship HMS Barham, is utilized in new and exciting ways, with Harryhausen often superimposing his fictional machines of chaos over the very real disasters. But does Earth vs. The Flying Saucers hold the attention when the humans take center stage?
Well, perhaps surprisingly considering it’s rarely mentioned in the annals of alien invasion classics, yes. Sure, the script is often pure pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, there are plot holes galore, and leading man Hugh Marlowe is less expressive than the flying saucers. Nevertheless, prolific director Fred F. Sears — he'd remarkably make nine films in 1956 alone including its double feature companion The Werewolf — knows how to make a taut, pacy sci-fi that feels ahead of its time.
Take the opening scene, for example, in which Marlowe’s Dr. Russell Marvin and his newlywed Carol (Joan Taylor) travel to work, the former’s inability to keep his hands to himself prompting the latter to question, “I thought intellectual giants were supposed to be backwards and shy ... You're starting something you're not going to be able to finish.” In the era of the Hays Code, this was practically dirty talk.
The aliens’ bizarrely phallic suits.
Of course, the amorous ride to their workplace — an isolated control center for a new space program dubbed Project Skyhook — is soon held up by the first glimpse of Harryhausen’s mastery, a flying saucer which also emits an unintelligible drone. Despite managing to take an audio recording and the fact that 10 research satellites have mysteriously fallen from the sky, the rest of their colleagues — including Carol’s father General Hanley (Morris Ankrum) — are initially skeptical about the sighting. The record is set straight the following day, however, when a saucer lands at their HQ. Cue the typical gung-ho ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ response and a retaliation which results in Hanley’s abduction and the deaths of all employees, bar the two leads.
Sears has plenty of fun exploring the visitors’ capabilities, from the force fields that initially make Earth’s (well America’s) fightback futile to the wonderfully named Infinity Indexed Memory Bank which extracts every bit of information from Hanley’s brain, leaving him to aimlessly wander around the remainder of the movie like a zombie. The interior of their ship is almost as striking as its exterior, too, all sleek lines and vast hollow spaces shot by cinematographer Fred Jackman. Jr. In the style of a film noir.
The Earth vs. The Flying Saucers also subverts expectations in terms of the aliens’ intentions. A decoded message determines they initially came in peace and only shot down the satellites over fears they were weapons. (Their disdain on learning they were instead just “primitive observations” is amusingly palpable). Yet just as Skyhook’s gun-toting ambush starts to seem wildly unwarranted, another encounter reveals they still have nefarious intentions. As the “survivors of a disintegrated solar system,” they now want to seize Planet Earth. And the world’s leaders have just 56 days to surrender full control or else.
The shot that gave Roland Emmerich ideas.
Of course, Dr. Marvin saves the day, building a sonic contraption which destroys their protective force fields. But not before they’ve wrecked multiple landmarks, caused several devastating natural disasters, and, in what seems a personally motivated attack, thrown Hanley and a poor patrol officer from their ship to their deaths. It’s a suitably wild end to a B-movie far more audacious than given credit for.
Interestingly, Harryhausen has cited Earth vs. The Flying Saucers as the least favorite film of his glittering career, its limited budget stifling his idea of aliens as slithering snake-like beings rather than clunky phallic-looking robots. Still, his titular creations proved he could be as ground-breaking when he worked his animated magic on the inanimate.
