Movies - Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

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	Movies - Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is a black and white 1956 science fiction film directed by Fred F. Sears. The film is also know an Invasion of the Flying Saucers.

Flying saucer effects by Ray Harryhausen. The scenes of destruction in this film were later used in a 1957 film called The Giant Claw.

Plot Overview

The film is set in the year 1956, before the first satellite went into orbit. In it, "Project Skyhook," a fictitious project to put one up was shown as the starting setting of this movie of an invasion from space by aliens in flying saucers. Attacking Washington, DC, Paris, London and Moscow. In the end, the alien saucers are defeated over the skies of Washington, DC.

Here is a list of cities that are featured in the movie that will be attacked by aliens:

Washington, DC, USA
Paris, France
London, England
Moscow, Russia

Several plot points directly were taken from George Pal's 1953 filmed version of The War of the Worlds
.

The aliens kill a relative of one of the main characters.
The aliens go out of their way to use their ray on a wooden water tank atop a building.
The defeat of the aliens is shown by having their vehicles crash into buildings.
The aliens required apparatus to see (and hear) adequately; this was acquired by the scientists, who tested it and noted that the aliens were sensorially degenerate.

Ray Harryhausen animated the saucers in this movie. That may be considered easier than animating dolls for the usual monsters, but he also animated all the stones of the buildings they crashed into in this picture so that the action would appear realistic. Some figure animation was used to show the aliens emerging from the saucers.

The voice of the aliens was produced from a recording of Paul Frees reading the lines by jiggling the speed control of a reel-to-reel tape recorder so that it continually wavered from a slow bass voice to one high and fast.

Trivia

Scenes of the flying saucers were later re-used in The 27th Day
.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Earth vs. the Flying Saucers ]

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