Little green men with huge heads interrupt teenage canoodling at 'Lovers Point' and, as the adults are skeptical and the army incompetent, it's up to the 'kids' to deal with the threat. The comedic nature of the film is signaled as soon as the opening credits roll, with cast and crew names superimposed on cartoons featuring improbable 'space creatures' and visual puns (e.g. aliens in cups as well as in saucers), and the score sounds like the soundtrack to a 50s sit-com. The film is more juvenile/silly than clever/funny although there are some sly jokes (when one hopeful lad is accosted by a bull while making out, he comments to his girlfriend that the encounter "stunted his growth") and the scenes with the army are clearly meant to satirise the 'military mindset'. The cast is fine for the material and seeing a young Frank 'The Riddler' Gorshin is a treat for boomer Bat-fans. For a B-budget film, the effects are quite well done. The bulbous-brained aliens (courtesy of monster-maker extraordinaire Paul Blaisdell) are great and the scenes of the disembodied hand, replete with an eyeball and retractable needles for fingernails, are clever. The titular 'saucer' (also a Blaisdell creation) is novel looking (if Chevrolet built a flying saucer in 1957, it would probably look like the aliens' conveyance). There is a surprisingly gory (excuse the pun) moment when a Saucer-man's bulging eye is messily impaled by a bull's horn. The theme of intrepid teenagers saving the town while disbelieving or distrustful adults look on is laid on pretty thick (especially in the 'epilogue') but the film did beat the similarly themed (and much better known) 'The Blob' to the screens by at least a year (in both films the lead 'teens' were at least in their mid-twenties). Like most of its ilk, the film's poster writes checks that the celluloid can't cash (so don't expect a fleet of saucers blasting cities with ray-guns), but 'Invasion of the Saucer-Men' remains an entertaining, if goofy, relic of the golden age of low-budget science fiction films.
Review of Invasion of the Saucer Men
