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Synopsis:
Across the United States, people are stunned and terrified by
sightings of what seems to be a flying saucer. Mike Trent (Mikel
Conrad) is summoned to the Washington D.C. office of his father’s
old friend, Hank Thorn (Russell Hicks), where he reacts with
incredulity when told that the saucer is in fact real. Thorn further
insists that the saucer’s propulsion system is beyond anything
currently known to the government, and stresses the danger to the
country should the technology fall into the wrong hands. When Mike
suggests that the saucer may be Russian in origin, Thorn reveals
that the Russians, too, are searching for it. He explains that one
of the government’s operatives has discovered a Communist cell
working out of Juneau – and that he has not been heard from since
making his last report.... He then staggers Mike by suggesting that
he take on the task of searching for the saucer. When Mike
rejects the idea as absurd, Thorn argues that since he grew up in
the area, his presence there would not attract attention, as would
the presence of a stranger; and that Mike’s notorious reputation as
a hard-drinking playboy would further shield him from suspicion. To
Mike’s annoyance, Thorn then adds that the wheels are already
turning: that a cover story of Mike suffering a nervous breakdown
and coming home to recover has been concocted and spread; and that
Mike’s industrialist father has promised to make his yacht and his
hunting lodge near Juneau available for the mission. Left with
little choice, Mike reluctantly agrees....becoming more reconciled
to his situation when he meets his partner, government operative Vee
Langley (Pat Garrison), who will pose as his nurse. Mike and Vee fly
to Seattle – where Mike breaks free and goes on a bender – then
travel to the hunting lodge by boat. Beginning to regret his
acquiescence in Hank Thorn’s plans, Mike becomes still more
irritated when Vee refuses to stop in Juneau to let him look up some
old friends. Arriving at the hunting lodge, Mike and Vee are met by
a new caretaker, Hans (Hantz Von Teuffen), who tells Mike that he
does not know what became of his predecessor, Pierre. Days pass
pleasantly enough, filled with searches of the surrounds disguised
as walks and picnics, but Mike becomes increasingly frustrated by
what he considers a wild goose chase. His temper is not improved by
the fact that although he and Vee have begun to fall for each other,
she insists that such matters must be put aside until after they
have completed their mission. Mike scoffs at Vee’s declared believe
in the existence of the flying saucer – but barely are the words out
of his mouth than something tears across the night sky at an
incredible speed....
Comments:
The greatest decade in the history of the science fiction film got
off to a distinctly inauspicious start with 1950’s The Flying
Saucer, a tepid spy-drama that doubles as one of the oddest
vanity projects ever to grace the silver screen. For the most part a
minor bit player (although he did star in Untamed Women, if
you consider that anything to brag about), Mikel Conrad put on his
multi-tasker hat to co-write, produce, direct and star in this
stultifyingly unimaginative piece of Cold War nonsense, in which the
onscreen action is completely overshadowed by the events surrounding
the production of the film. Although it was not the first such
report, the eyewitness account by pilot Kenneth Arnold in June of
1947 of strange objects in the skies over the Cascade Mountains in
Washington State is generally credited as kicking off the era of the
UFO. (Only a month later would come the events at Roswell, New
Mexico, after which government cover-ups and conspiracy theories
would be forever added to the mix.) In this context, Mikel Conrad at
least deserves some sort of acknowledgement, if not credit, for
being amongst the first to exploit the prevailing mood of
nervousness and uncertainty for his own financial gain. Los Angeles
newspapers of the time carried stories about Conrad’s claim that he
had filmed eight flying saucers landing and taking off some forty
miles from Juneau, Alaska. The film, Conrad further insisted, had
been seized by the Air Force, which later returned only a third of
it to him. (The “good bits”, we infer, had been removed.) When
The Flying Saucer reached cinemas in January of 1950, it carried
a mysterious title card that thanked “those in authority” for
allowing the film to be released. That the film contained genuine
(if expurgated) footage of the Alaskan saucers was confirmed by the
testimony of an FBI agent named McKnight, who identified himself as
the government official responsible for clearing the vetted footage
to be returned to Conrad.
Modern viewers might not be quite
so grateful.
Of course, as I am
sure you will not be exactly astonished to hear, the “FBI agent” was
an actor friend of Mikel Conrad’s, and the whole hoo-ha a stunt
concocted in order to promote the film. Well, Conrad got some
exposure out of it, all right, but not precisely the kind he had
hoped. His publicists, who had not been let in on their client’s
little joke, quit on him; while various newspaper columnists gave
him a solid butt-kicking in print for duping the public (not to
mention the columnists themselves).
In Conrad’s
defence, if the American public actually was duped by The Flying
Saucer, or for one second believed that its briefly seen “disc”
was the real thing, then it deserved to be taken out on a collective
snipe hunt. As for the film itself--- Alas, would that anything half
so interesting happens in it as happened around it!
The Flying Saucer runs only sixty-nine minutes, and at least
half of that time is taken up with images of the Alaskan wilderness.
Now--- Here, I must confess, I find myself in disagreement with
various other reviewers of this film (particularly
this one),
who seem to have developed a kind of “snow madness” over the course
of watching it. I, on the other hand, was perfectly content
to sit and watch the glorious, unspoiled Alaskan landscapes drift by
the camera. It was only when the characters starting showing up that
the film began to annoy me (or, when the characters got in the way
of the landscapes, to provoke a few loud, indignant cries of, “Hey,
down in front!!”).
The real star of
The Flying Saucer.
Although little
that could rightly be called “action” or “drama” happens in the
course of The Flying Saucer, what is interesting is
its attitude to its titular vessel. Reflecting how early in the era
of the UFO the film was produced, there is never the faintest hint
that the flying saucer does or could originate anywhere but on
earth. Far from being indicative of life in outer space, the saucer
proves only that someone, somewhere, has developed a piece of
technology that is valuable and dangerous in equal measure. “It
appears it was designed for one purpose – to carry the atomic bomb!”
announces Hank Thorn. (To which we can only respond---oh, well,
obviously. Although given that the saucer, when we finally see
it, looks like something Aurora might have produced on a really
bad day, the likelihood of it being able to carry anything as
substantial as a retro nuke seems rather minimal.) The Ruskies –
playing hare to the US tortoise again – have already gotten wind of
the saucer’s hiding place somewhere in the Alaskan
wilderness....although having delivered this piece of information to
his superiors, the undercover agent who managed to infiltrate the [*cough*]
Communist cell operating out of Juneau seems to have met with an
untimely fate.
While a surprising
number of films do feature thoroughly unlikeable heroes, you’d be
struggling to find one who more richly deserves the title of
Individual You Would Least Like To Be Trapped In A Small Cabin In
The Middle Of Nowhere With than Mike Trent. The mystery of The
Flying Saucer is why, with such total control of the project,
Mikel Conrad chose to depict himself onscreen as a thick-headed,
loud-mouthed, irresponsible, petulant, drunken boor. No, I take that
back. The real mystery is why, with all the resources of the US
government at its disposal, the CIA would light upon a thick-headed,
loud-mouthed, irresponsible, petulant, drunken boor as its agent of
choice when trying to prevent cutting-edge technology from falling
into the hands of the Russians. Well, looked at a certain way, I
guess the answer isn’t too far to seek. In so many American movies
there comes the inference – one that reaches both its apotheosis and
its nadir in Armageddon – that in times of crisis, only an
Average Joe can really be trusted to get the job done. Never mind
that this Average Joe has a father who, it seems, owns most
of territorial Alaska; or that he spends most of his life getting
plastered in exclusive New York night clubs; or that he tries to
excuse himself from heeding his government’s call on the grounds
that “My polo team starts practice at Meadowbank tomorrow”. Never
mind that he’s a chain-smoker and a raging alcoholic (seriously, you
could make a drinking game out of the number of times Mike lights a
cigarette....or at least, you could if Mike’s indulgence of his
booze habit isn’t enough to put you off drinking for life); or that
he talks loudly about his secret mission to whoever happens to be
within earshot; or that given a critical job by his government, he
responds by throwing temper tantrums and running away to get drunk
at every opportunity. He is Mike Trent, and he is here to represent
you and me, people. Deal with it.
"The Surgeon General warns that
excessive smoking can cause
thick-headed-loud-mouthed-irresponsible-petulant-drunken-boor-ism."
In fact, the only
point I can come up with that counts in Mike’s favour is that he
knows how thoroughly unfit he is for a sensitive government
mission. Summoned to the Washington DC office of his father’s old
pal, Hank Thorn (even as all Parisian hotel rooms have a view of the
Eiffel Tower, all Washington offices look out on one monument or
another; and Hank’s is right next to the Capitol), Mike reacts with
complete and understandable incredulity to Hank’s proposal.
Undiscouraged, Hank starts laying on the guilt: “How would you feel
if, tomorrow, a flying saucer dropped an atomic bomb on every key
city in the United States?” (Actually, given that at this point Mike
has every intention of heading straight back to New York, I don’t
imagine he’d be feeling very much of anything.) Mike reacts with
hostility to this tactic, even demanding that Hank “stop waving the
flag” (Call me a cynic, but I somehow doubt we can credit The
Flying Saucer for influencing Sam Fuller to include a similar
reaction to government coercion in Pick-Up On South Street).
However, a reference to giving his country “five years of my life”
has already clued the viewer in to the fact that despite his
thick-headed-loud-mouthed-irresponsible-petulant-drunken-boor-ism,
Mike really is made of The Right Stuff; and we are not surprised
when he finally gives in to Thorn’s pressuring.
Mind you, Hank
Thorn’s decision to send Mike Trent into Alaska to look for flying
saucers and/or Communists does become a tad more explicable when
we’ve seen the actual government agent who goes along as his cover.
Vee Langley is described as “one of our best operatives”, which
rather leaves us wondering why the Russians aren’t Cossack dancing
in circles around the Washington monument even as he speaks. (We get
an answer to this later in the film: mind-boggling as it is to
consider, the Ruskies are even less competent than Mike and Vee.)
Vee is a classic fifties cinema woman, a walking Informed Attribute©.
For all Hank’s praise of her, for all we hear that she has “an
automatic in my suitcase” (“I assure you, I know how to use it!”),
Vee is a waste of space, the token blonde love interest. She makes
no headway at all on the job she’s been sent to carry out, and is,
moreover, wholly incapable of controlling Mike’s numerous outbreaks.
In fact, her only significant contribution comes when (following
Hank’s orders, not through he own actions) she rounds up the
designer and builder of the flying saucer – and delivers him
straight into a Russian trap.
With such company
the alternative, do you wonder that I took so much pleasure in the
Alaskan vistas?
Anyway....off we go
with Mike (who “breaks free” in Seattle and manages to get stinking
in less than an hour) and Vee to the hunting lodge at the foot of
the Taku glacier owned by Mike’s Old Man, there to meet our third
Idiot Provocateur, a chap I like to refer to as Not The Least Bit
Suspicious Hans. Imagine that you’re Mike and Vee (yeah, I know, I
know....just go with it). You arrive on a mission knowing that dirty
Commie spies are in the vicinity. You also find that the caretaker
at your lodge has mysteriously disappeared, and that his place has
been taken by an accented stranger whose preferred attire consists
of hip-waders, a cinch-belt (with a knife tucked in the back), a
beret and a cravat. Do you: (a) instantly jump him and hand
him over to The Authorities; or (b) see nothing wrong, and proceed
to discuss your secret mission in front of him?
Sigh.
(Not The Least Bit
Suspicious Hans is played by one “Hantz Von Teuffen”, which is too
wonderful to be anything but real.)
By the way, that
“discuss your secret mission” crack is no exaggeration. Mike has
barely set foot in the cabin before he has wandered up to Hans and
inquired, “Hey, Hans – seen any Russian spies around here lately?”
His follow-up
question: “Seen any flying saucers?”
Our Hero, ladies
and gentlemen!
By 1950, the American atomic
missile program was well under way....
Anyway, Mike and
Vee settle into their mission, which consists primarily of spoiling
some very beautiful location photography, having picnics, and
indulging in outdoor sports such as rucksack football and tongue
hockey. But this – even the last – wears thin for Mike, who finds
what they’re doing pointless (and for once, it’s hard to argue), and
suggests going off to Juneau to look up some old friends and ask a
few pertinent questions. Vee disagrees, insisting that they wait for
further orders from Hank Thorn. And as you’d expect, these two
professionals take all due precautions while discussing the pros and
cons of their situation.
“SEEN ANY FLYING
SAUCERS YET??” Mike bellows at Vee.
“LOOK, MR TRENT,
WE’VE GOT TO BE VERY CAREFUL WHAT WE SAY AND DO FROM NOW ON!!”
shrieks back Vee.
“OH, SURE, THERE’S
A RUSSIAN SPY BEHIND EVERY BUSH AND ROCK!!” bawls Mike.
Well, no; but there
is one listening at the door. Not that he needs to
listen at the door. The way that these two carry on, he could have
heard them back in Moscow.
Anyway, this
discreet debate is rudely interrupted when something roars through
the night sky. (Hilariously, we cut from the saucer back to Vee
asking Mike if he heard anything. He’s deaf as well as dumb.) This
saucer is indeed a remarkable piece of engineering. Not only (as we
later learn) can it do 2,000 mph (!!!!), but it is also capable of
executing ninety-degree changes of direction without losing speed –
or killing the pilot. Convinced at last, Mike again proposes
a pub-crawl--- I mean, a fact-finding mission in Juneau,
which Vee again vetoes. So to speak. Despite Mike’s evident
frustration, One Of Our Best Operatives sees no reason to keep an
eye on him. On the contrary, she takes the first opportunity for a
solitary stroll in the woods – during which she is briefly menaced
by a stock footage bear – and then has the gall to look
flabbergasted when she finds that Mike has taken a powder.
What follows is the
unquestioned highlight of The Flying Saucer, as under the
guise of seeking out some old friends (all of whom prove
understandably hard to find), Mike goes from bar to bar to bar to
bar to bar to bar to bar to bar to bar to....
(Mike is described
early on as “a two-fisted drinker”. Watching this sequence, we can
only be thankful he has no more than two fists.)
This film was brought to you by
the Juneau Tourist Board.
Vee finally tracks
Mike down in one of his watering-holes, but soon stalks off in
disgust and leaves him there. (Also understandable, if not exactly
professional.) Shortly afterwards, Mike is tracked down by the
oldest of his old friends, Old Matt Mitchell, who turns out to be –
oh, surprise, surprise! – the town drunk. (Actually, given what
we’re shown of Juneau, that’s probably a pretty prestigious – and
strongly contested – position.) Conveniently enough, Matt’s boat has
been hired by our friendly neighbourhood Commie spies.
Inconveniently enough, two of them are at the next table and hear
him shooting his mouth off. (At last! Someone’s going to be
punished for that!)
Sure enough, after
Mike staggers off – to “find Vee” – Old Matt is hijacked to Commie
HQ and knocked on the head, but recovers in time to overhear the
head of the spies, one Colonel Marikoff (two f-s: he must be
Russian!), negotiating for possession of the saucer with a dirty
rotten stinking American turncoat played by – gasp! choke! –
Denver Pyle!!
(Actually, while we
have little to no interest in Mikel Conrad or Pat Garrison, The
Flying Saucer does boast some interesting people in supporting
roles: not just Uncle Jesse, but Russell Hicks as Hank Thorn,
Frankie Darien as Matt Mitchell, and Roy Engel as the creator of the
saucer. The most interesting person to show up, however, is listed
in the opening credits as “....and introducing ERL LYON”, and here
plays the spy who overhears Old Matt. Also known as Earle and Earle
R., Mr Lyon would later go into film production, and be involved in
such genre fare as Cyborg 2087, Castle Of Evil and
Destination Inner Space. But I digress.)
Old Matt escapes,
but not without giving away that he’s heard too much. Meanwhile,
Mike is wending a winding course back to the lodge, but wrecks his
boat, and ends up spending the night passed out on an ice floe
(lucky he’s full of anti-freeze). There he is found – conveniently
or inconveniently, depending on your point of view – by Old Matt,
who takes him back to his cabin just in time for the Ruskies to
track them down, shoot Old Matt, and beat up Mike. (Why don’t they
shoot him too? Believe me, I’ve been asking myself that for the past
forty-eight hours [*sob*].) Mike instantly sobers up, and
pumps Old Matt for what information he can give about the location
of the saucer before he croaks. Learning that it is “near Twin
Lakes” on “the other side of the ice-cap”, Mike rents a plane, and
we spend a full six minutes watching him fly it....a sequence
highlighted by a couple of pathetic attempts to build suspense by
suggesting that Mike is having engine trouble. (Engine splutters.
Cut to Mike, looking bored. Engine recovers.) Rather miraculously,
Mike manages “to spot a solitary cabin”, which proves to have a
trapdoor in the floor. And below---- Behold! The wonder that is....the
flying saucer!!!!
My advice? Let the
Ruskies have it.
(At any rate, what
we see on the ground bears no resemblance whatsoever to what we see
in the air.)
Mike flies back to
the lodge, announcing to Not The Least Bit Suspicious Hans that,
“I’VE GOT TO SEND A MESSAGE TO WASHINGTON RIGHT AWAY.” Not The Least
Bit Suspicious Hans responds by sabotaging Mike’s plane, but so
unsubtly that even a thicko like Mike can spot it. A fight ensues,
during which Not The Least Bit Suspicious Hans makes a welcome if
unavailing attempt to shove Mike’s head into his own propeller.
Unfortunately for Mike, no sooner has he overcome the threat of Not
The Least Bit Suspicious Hans than Not The Least Bit Suspicious
Hans’ Commie buddies show up, and Mike is taken prisoner.
"So! Make fun of my hip-waders,
will you!!"
Also meanwhile,
while unable to find the then-ice-bound Mike, Vee accepts her own
limitations and wires Hank about her predicament. Also also
meanwhile, Hank has had a phone-call from an aviator friend in
Seattle (standing in for the real Mr Boeing, we assume), who has
rung him up to have a laugh about the crackpot who just contacted
him wanting funding for the development of his flying saucer. Hank
breaks it to his friend that he may, so to speak, have committed a
slight error in judgement, and wires back to Vee to head off the
saucer’s designer, Dr Carl Lawton, at Juneau, where he has returned
in a huff. Vee indeed finds Dr Lawton at the airport, and convinces
him of his danger and that his best course of action would be to
entrust himself to her care.
And then she walks
him straight into a nest of Commies.
"The Russians will never
find you in h--- Oh."
The whole gang then
heads back to Twin Lakes, this time taking a convenient “passage
near the ice”. This allows Mike, sent on ahead with Vee and Lawton,
to jump one of the Ruskies, grab his knife, and hold him as a
shield. A stand-off ensues that makes the one in House of 1,000
Corpses look like the result of rapid-cut editing. It ends when
the Ruskie unwisely begs his Colonel not to shoot. This of course
prompts his Colonel to cut loose with his machine-gun, and we learn
that the propaganda was true! – Ruskies aren’t human – or so
we infer from the failure of a single bullet to penetrate the
unfortunate human shield’s body, or indeed the body of the person
behind him. (This was funny when Leslie Nielsen did it; it is
hilarious when Mikel Conrad does it.) The gunfire does, however,
start an avalanche. Proving that Alaska had every right to become a
state, the fiercely patriotic ice manages to take out every single
surviving Commie, without touching one of the Americans....not even
Turner. (Ah, that’s Uncle Jesse.) Turner breaks away, gets to the
saucer first, and takes off – only to have the saucer explode
shortly afterwards.
As Mike and Vee
look on in horror, Dr Lawton gives a satisfied chuckle. “It was only
a small bomb,” he comments nonchalantly, “but Turner didn’t know it
was there!”
"I think I'll call it....the
Corsair!"
And with that, and
with an obligatory clinch from Mike and Vee, the first flying saucer
film concludes.
The wonder is, it
wasn’t also the last flying saucer film. Fortunately, some
other film-makers seemed to take Mikel Conrad’s incompetent effort
as a personal challenge. The following year would see the release of
both The Thing (From Another World)
and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Both are – I think
I would be justified in saying – just....sssslightly
better....
The Flying
Saucer’s final Mike Trent
tally:
Number of
cigarettes: 12
Number of drinks: 7
Number of times the
bartender leaves the bottle: 3
Number of benders:
2
Number of times Our
Hero flicks a cigarette butt into the pristine Alaskan waters: 2
Number of times
during sixty-nine minutes I wanted to kill Mike Trent: 10,758 |
Director:
Mikel Conrad