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The gloved Red Scare material is spread spaciously from New Mexico to Washington, D.C., from one UFO swooping down on newlyweds in the desert to another denting the Capitol Dome. A satellite-gazing scientist (Hugh Marlowe) and a general’s daughter (Joan Taylor) comprise the couple, the irritation of a delayed honeymoon informs their brush with "survivors of a disintegrated solar system." The interplanetary visitors demand a conference, the security cabinet replies with artillery: "When an armed and threatening power lands uninvited in our capitol, we don’t meet him with tea and cookies!" The aliens may be sluggish golem-armors with a rancid meat filling, but they have the best toys -- vaporizing rays, sensation-enhancing helmets, a skull-scanning, rose-shaped, disco-ball translator, and Paul Frees’ voice quivering through the walls of spaceships. Best of all are the saucers themselves, rotating Frisbees made into marvelously deadpan creatures courtesy of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion miniature detailing. Machine gun-happy paranoia to The Day the Earth Stood Still’s messianic disarmament, the movie still finds time to quote Portia's lament in The Merchant of Venice before unleashing the zany demolition of landmarks on the White House lawn. (A choice bit of mayhem: A spaceship nudges the Washington Monument so that the toppling obelisk quashes a group of fleeing earthlings.) The menace looming in the horizon during the concluding beachfront composition isn’t another invasion but Burton’s Mars Attacks!, a devastating analysis. Directed by Fred F. Sears. With Donald Curtis, Morris Ankrum, John Zaremba, and Thomas Browne Henry. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |