Invasion of the Saucer Men (

1957

)

With the end of WWII and the subsequent economic boom of the early 1950s, the big Hollywood studios found themselves facing an unwelcome competitor in the form of television. Sure, the TV wasn’t a new invention at this point, but its invention had been slowed by global economic depression and wartime austerity. As the fifties really began to boom TVs started turning up in even working-class households. Unlike the radio, which provided its own unique kind of entertainment, TV was a direct competitor to Hollywood films. Across America, people everywhere began to ask themselves why they should even bother going out when they could just stay home and watch the Twilight Zone instead?

The major studios countered this threat by providing the sort of lavish spectacle that couldn’t be seen on a TV screen. Studios began to turn out huge sweeping epics like The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), whose budgets oftentimes surpassed the GDPs of small nations and rivaled even the most decadent productions of the silent era. Since TVs would be mostly black and white only for the foreseeable future, studios put a heavier emphasis on color films until, by the early 1960s, black and white became the sole domain of low-budget, art house, and foreign films. The big studios also explored a range of wacky gimmicks to entice viewers into the theater, most famously with 3D. Indeed, Hollywood seems to try to make 3D films happen every three decades or so, with brief fads for 3D movies popping up in the early 1980s and early 2010s. I’m looking forward to Hollywood’s inevitable 3D revival in 2040, maybe that one will actually stick.

Smaller studios, who considered a production to be especially lavish if the budget exceeded $100,000 dollars, obviously didn’t have access to any of these options. You can’t make a 3-hour technicolor epic for pocket lint and string! However, many small-time producers were quick to realize that while small children and their parents may be happy to stay at home sitting around the TV, there was a segment of the population that was itching for an excuse to leave the family domicile: Teenagers. Better yet, teens often had a considerable amount of disposable income from family allowances and part-time jobs, meaning they could afford regular trips to the cinema. Moreover, the majors had no idea how to market films to them, with most teen-centric movies of the early 1950s being sanctimonious lectures cowering behind a rock n’ roll soundtrack (ahem, Blackboard Jungle (1955)).

American International Pictures was one of the first independent film producers to realize teens would flock to films that treated them with a degree of respect and consideration, and they struck pay dirt with their double feature of I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) and Invasion of the Saucer Men. The former film, as we covered on this site before, was a tragic story of a teenage boy with emotional issues who is misled and destroyed by an unscrupulous adult who everyone around him assumes is trustworthy. By contrast, Invasion of the Saucer Men is a much lighter affair, mostly revolving around a gang of handsy teens battling alien invaders in and around a secluded lovers’ lane. However, despite the difference in tone, the two films do share a common theme, namely that adults “just don’t understand… man.” Only in this case the concept that the adults “just don’t understand” is that the kids are telling the truth about the aliens roaming around in the forest.

It’s a night like any other in Hicksburg, a sleepy little all-American town somewhere in the sticks. As you could probably guess from the name, Hicksburg is not exactly a happening place, indeed it’s so quaint that it doesn’t even have a drive-in movie theater for teens to go to while they make out. Instead, they have to gather in a remote stretch of woods for their underage drinking and heavy petting. Sure, Mr. Larkin, the man who owns the land around lovers’ lane, doesn’t like having the kids there but his constant threats of violence and police action aren’t about to shift the young couples from their spot. They might make it easier on themselves by not littering or getting Larkin’s prized bull drunk off his ass on beer, but these antics are exactly the sort of nonsense you’d expect bored teenagers to get up to.

Of special note to us are Joan and Johnny, a pair of star-crossed lovers (Johnny works in a gas station and Joan is the daughter of the district attorney) who are stopping off at lovers’ lane one last time before eloping. This is an exceedingly strange decision on their part. Who in their right mind (even among the most hormonal of teenagers) thinks it’s a necessity to have a couple of beers and get to second base immediately before their wedding night? Indeed, there’s nothing in the plot that demands that Johnny and Joan be about to get married, and quite a bit that would make more sense if they were just your run-of-the-mill high school sweethearts. I can’t even explain it away with appeals to the morality of the era because there are plenty of other horny teens engaging in some heavy petting at lovers’ lane beside our central pair.

In any event, the pair leave early so as to get to their wedding, and since Farmer Larkin might be prowling about in the night Johnny opts to go down the winding country road with his headlights off. Johnny assures Joan that he “can drive this road blindfolded” but then plows right into a little green man from Mars, oops. The Martian boasts a set of retractable claws, as well as a hand that can operate independently from its body al la The Thing (1982) or Evil Dead II (1987), so even though the main body is killed the claw is still able to crawl around and puncture Johnny’s tires leaving the two teens stranded in the woods. They attempt to call for help from Larkin’s farmhouse but the 911 operates write it off as a prank in the first of the film’s many “man… those adults just don’t listen” moments.

Local authorities may be content to completely ignore the alien attack, but people higher up the food chain are watching the situation more closely. In rapid order after the alien’s flying saucer is spotted, a special military task force is mobilized as a response. These guys never even interact with the rest of the cast and are mostly just pop-up as comedic relief from time to time. In a rare turn of events for mid-1950s sci-f, the military is portrayed as a bunch of blundering idiots, in particular their commanding officer, Colonel Ambrose. In one memorable scene Ambrose tells his adjutant, Lt. Wilkins, that “When you’ve been in the service as long as I have you’ll learn you don’t have to think, you just follow standard operating procedure.” Lines like this are taking us perilously close to Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) territory. Better yet, Colonel Ambrose remains convinced throughout the entire film that he has the situation well in hand, somberly remarking: “Only this special unit and the President of the United States will know what happened here tonight,” blissfully unaware of the ongoing battle between Hicksburg’s graduating class and the alien invaders. Here I was thinking that the dim bulbs of The Giant Claw (1957) were an unusually negative depiction of the American military. These chuckleheads blow General Van Buskirk and General Considine out of the water!

The kids and the army aren’t the only ones prowling around Farmer Larkin’s property that night though. There’s also Joe, a drunken hoodlum who blew into Hicksburg a few weeks back along with his buddy Artie, convinced that the town offered the possibility of a big score. Joe gets utterly sloshed and takes off for a drive looking for a dame, only to spot a flying saucer streaking through the sky. He goes to take a look, and runs afoul of one little green man that crawled out it. Joe isn’t very lucky, as the alien’s claws inject him with alcohol, and since he’s already quite drunk the additional booze is enough to induce a heart attack. Then for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, the alien sets up the scene to make it look like Joan and Johnny hit Joe. What sort of cosmic visitor, sails across the stars in order to frame people for murder on another world?

The local authorities may not have gotten too excited about little green space invaders, but with homicide, they know what they’re working with. In short order, they haul Johnny and Joan in for questioning, and Johnny’s insistence that he ran over a little green man from Mars only helps convince the cops that he’s drunk off his ass. The two young lovers are looking at a manslaughter rap. The kids then make things infinitely worse for themselves by escaping out of a window and stealing a police cruiser, in a desperate attempt to reveal the truth. This maneuver is made way stupider in hindsight when the coroner examines Joe and determines that he died from an alcohol overdose, not the car crash. So, if the pair of young lovers had just stayed in police custody sitting on their hands they would get off with, at most, a slap on the wrist for a DWI. Oh well, at least this gives us an excuse for some moderately amusing hijinks as a gaggle of teenage hotrodders and their heavily intoxicated bull match wits with the alien menace.

In the grand tradition of AIP sci-fi films, the title promises a lot more than the film’s meager resources can deliver. Just like the whole planet did not unite against the arachnid menace in Earth vs. the Spider (1958) and the titular monster from It Conquered the World (1956) only managed to subdue a small town, the Saucer Men here never mount much of an invasion. For starters, there are only about four of them, a number that proves insufficient to deal with a gang of horny teens. Worse yet, they are completely unarmed aside from their alcohol injecting claws, which are dubious weapons in the best of times as they can’t even kill a full-grown man (at least provided he hasn’t already gotten drunk beforehand). Indeed, the fact that they can be killed with a spotlight (dissolving into a puff of smoke that I assume is a deliberate reference to A Trip to the Moon (1902)), makes me think that even a proper invasion force wouldn’t last very long. I’m forced to assume that these aren’t so much invaders but the cosmic equivalent of drunken yahoos going cow-tipping. It certainly would explain some of their more bizarre decisions, like trying to frame Johnny and Joan for murder.

Originally, Invasion of the Saucer Men was intended to be a straight sci-fi horror film but at some point, during the filming, the movie transformed into an out-and-out comedy. This new approach is evident from the very opening when after showing us a dark and stormy night, our narrator chimes in with a sarcastic “Spooky, huh?” instantly deflating any tension the movie has managed to retain after the goofy opening credit sequence. Invasion of the Saucer Men seldom veers into out and out comedic territory, opting instead to play it mostly straight but fling the odd moments of levity into the proceedings. Of all the characters, only the army buffoons prowling around the flying saucer are complete clowns, and as mentioned above they are effectively separate from the rest of the film.

For me, very few of the film’s gags landed but this shouldn’t be that surprising, as I’m a humorless curmudgeon who only allows himself two laughs a year (one on my birthday and the other on Christmas). However, one gag did strike me as at least interesting even if it didn’t make me laugh out loud. When Lt. Wilkins, the cynical reporter turned army press officer, boasts that he was “the man who made the papers believe that 45-year-old V girls (Victory Girls, WWII era sluts who cheerfully screwed any man in uniform) were teenage maidens.” This is the thing which nearly every teen-focused movie of the era also does (looking at you Girls Town (1959) along with every other film that had the unmitigated gall to try to pass of Mamie Van Doren, who probably didn’t look 16 in 1947 when she really was 16, as a nymphet). To be fair, Invasion of the Saucer Men is far better about this than most films of the era, sure the teens are all in their mid-twenties but all the adults are actors in their forties and fifties, so they look youthful by comparison. There are no graying, 50-year old high school students calling their 30-something teacher “pops” like in Earth vs. the Spider (1958).

The practical effects in Invasion of the Saucer Men are probably the only reason why anybody would still bother with this film today. The little green men are some of the best monsters that Paul Blaisdell ever dreamt up. Sure, they might not be as imaginative as The She-Creature (1956), or as utterly bizarre as the alien from It Conquered the World (1956), but they have an iconic quality all their own. Plus, it is rare for a film of the era to actually use the little green men with big heads of popular imagination. Even more impressive than the aliens themselves is the way Blaisdell animates one of their severed hands and has it crawling across the ground.

Also, of note is the impeccable set design. Nearly all of the film, including the vast majority of the “outdoor” scenes. Normally, even the most exquisitely detailed soundstage looks slightly uncanny, but here they are utterly lifelike from the trees to the mud. Indeed, If I didn’t know how difficult it was for low-budget (or even mid-budget as was evidenced by The Blob (1958)) films from that era to manage night-time photography I would have sworn that Invasion of the Saucer Men was filmed in a real forest. To fabricate such a convincing soundstage and on such a small budget, is no small feat.