The Flying Saucer (1950)

Disturbing yet enthralling

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Mikel (spelling looks Russian) Conrad 'stars' in this little sci/fi thing as a "two-fisted playboy" who is sent to Alaska with a cute chick (Pat Garrison) to investigate the recently reported 'sightings' of flying saucers circling intermittently overhead.The film ultimately amounts to nothing more than a visual brochure detailing the beauty of the Alaskan tundra, sprinkled with Conrad smoking every two minutes followed by the inevitable littering of his cigarette butts, the curious prospect that Garrison only brought one change of clothes for the trip, and an occasional glimpse of what appears to be a flying saucer.Non-stop mellifluous background music melds the proceedings together seamlessly, but as previously stated, at least the scenery is pretty. Frank Darien as 'Matt' delivers a realistic dying scene 48 minutes into the movie. Credit also goes to Conrad here for keeping the camera on Darien's face in close-up. No doubt Conrad wanted to attain a hopefully stellar film career as a leading man. Somehow, he was able to produce, direct, and write the movie. He even closed his tale with a kissing scene on a rocky slope, remembering to carefully position himself just a bit higher than Garrison so he would appear taller than she was (which he was not).Of interest to film historians and genre aficionados will be Conrad's innovative advertising stunt to coax potential movie-goers into theaters by falsely relating that the story is derived from "classified government files".

Cheaply made Z grade science fiction clap trap is part Alaskan travelog and like the title says, a bit of sci- fi. Throw in Russian spies whose house the heroine might have been able to see from her back yard, and it becomes pretty obvious almost immediately where this is going. Yes, the mountainous terrain is gorgeous to look at, but the acting is amateurish at best, with romantic scenes dubbed over with warbling music that sounds like a damaged 78 rpm. This looks like something made for prehistoric TV, obviously released in only the most secondary of neighborhood theaters. This seems to me like a film that started off with a conception but no script, with narration tossed over as a last minute thought, and resulting in a film that never seems to know what direction it is supposed to go in. Allegedly the first film to deal with the subject of U.F.O.'s, it fortunately has been overshadowed by many more. If Ed Wood's "Plan 9" failed badly, this "Plan 1" crashed on landing.

Folks, there are no words; hyperbole fails us. This movie is so incredibly bad, so stultifyingly boring, that it has to be seen to be believed. Granted, it was made in 1950, and, granted, there obviously wasn't much of a budget, but really. . .! Yes, we will allow that it was, after all, one of the first films to deal with the subject of UFOs (and CIA cover-ups, and Russian hoaxes, and a Canadian connection) but, after a mildly promising start, the film plays largely as if it were funded by the Alaska Board of Tourism - ENDLESS tableaux of glaciers, and wildlife, and rivers, and more glaciers, but precious little action, and even less in the way of FX. The saucer, when FINALLY seen, looks like something out of "Killers From Space." The fact that this cowflop of a film was made in 1950 doesn't really save it, either: both "The Thing" and "The Man from Planet X" were made right around the same time, and are far better efforts. In the case of "The Man from Planet X", that one was made for around $50,000.00 and was shot in six days on borrowed sets, and it was still better! In short, "The Flying Saucer" isn't just crummier than you think, it's crummier than you CAN think! If you really want to see early UFO films, see the above mentioned pair; don't - repeat, DON'T - waste your time with "The Flying Saucer".

THE FLYING SAUCER is the first feature film about UFO's. The first screen depiction of "flying saucers" was in the serial BRUCE GENTRY: DARE DEVIL OF THE SKIES. Other than being a first, this film about a FBI agent sent to Alaska to find a flying saucer is pretty minor. Not much flying saucer in this film, but a lot endless shots Alaska's natural wonders, and scenes of FBI agent Mike Trent wandering around from one bar to another. The saucer is shown airborne for about a total of 30 seconds. There is also an interesting full scale mock up of the saucer, but it looks very different from the airborne one. Also the writers of this film seemed to think that there was always only one flying saucer that everybody was spotting back then.One thing that disappoints a lot of people is that the saucer isn't even from outer space. This is not so odd considering when this movie was made. Back in 1949 about 80% of Americans thought flying saucers were real but did not automatically believe in E.T.s. Some thought they were from outer space, others thought they came from the U.S.S.R, while most thought they were American secret weapons (the Navy was often sighted as the ones who were testing them.) However in this film the subject of the flying saucer being from Russia is brought up, but no one mentions the idea of the saucer being from outer space. Also at the start of the film Mikes boss mentions that the saucer works on some totally new scientific principal. When the film wraps up, we are never told how the flying saucer works. I suspect the writers could not come up with one.