MovieChat Forums > Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) Discussion > Still a good 50's 'B' Movie

Still a good 50's 'B' Movie

posted 12 years ago by kallsop-2
3 replies | jump to latest

I still enjoy watching this movie, the first time that I saw it was in the early 70's, it was on a rotation of movies the cable provider had on a movie channel, similar to TCM. I like the fact with the low budget they created good special effects by 1950's standards, and yes some are cheesy, but the budget was only $4300.00 dollars, which today would be $37,000.00 dollars. That might buy you an hour of CGI creation time today.

But I think the movie holds it's own when compared to other "sci-fi" movies of the 50's including WOTW, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet and some others that I can't think of right now.

I think that there are a lot of elements in this movie that have been used in most movies of it's type since. The electronic shield that protected the ships early on is like the "shields" in the Star Trek genre, Star Wars, and others. The "translator" they used to decode messages that was then the size of a semi-trailer, that is now offered on voicemail systems to translate voice to text, and text to voice, the small white saucers are similar to drones that we have now.

It's a decent watch, and one I am adding to my collection of 50's Sci-Fi.

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[–] sage2112 10 years ago

I think you mean:
'50s

And why do you call this a 'B' movie?

[–] leader-7 10 years ago

This island Earth and Invaders from Mars also good strong "B" films. I really love them all.

[–] DracTarashV 10 years ago

For a 'B' movie, this is one stunning Sci-Fi pic, especially when compared to lesser known and less acclaimed 1950s Sci-Fi flicks. With that said, it didn't look or feel like a B movie to me (if it can hold its own with the aforementioned big budget Sci-Fi classics, then that's impressive).

Hey there, Johnny Boy, I hope you fry!