Crappy film

Awesome Movie

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

A party of Americans secretly enter Red China in search of a downed flying saucer. The group includes Fred Norwood who is a pilot previously buzzed by a similar saucer. On the way they meet a group of Soviet Russians who are doing the same. The two groups join together to locate the saucer. They find it in an abandoned church and study it. Meanwhile Chinese soldiers are mobilised to find them. Written and directed by Frank Telford this is slow moving until the last half hour when it livens up considerably. In between there is a dull love story between Fred Norwood and the attractive (of course) Russian scientist Anna Karachev. Of the actors Dan Duryea (in his last film) as the grizzled leader Hank Peters and Lois Nettleton as Anna come off best. Good support is given though by Bernard Fox, James Hong and Robert Hastings. A fair adventure story with science fiction trappings done on a low budget.

The budget for this movie was never going to allow it to get beyond the B level, barely at that. The cast and crew seems to have decided that despite the limitations, they were going to make an honest effort in a bad situation. They succeed in creating a movie that manages to be worth watching as a curiosity. Notable successes are some decent scientific references, the authentic Russian language, proper weapons for the Russians and Chinese and acting that is better than expected. There were some good people at work here. Inevitably, some contemporary clichés slip in (e.g. seemingly canned feminine screams, California scenery you have seen many times before) that date the film in a way that pulls it back into its B level pedigree. If you are a genuine movie buff, you'll probably like this but it is limited.

The fun in this movie is that they made an attempt to be somewhat realistic given the plot. The cold war tensions are not at all exaggerated, the ridicule the test pilot endures when he first reports the thing and the later loss of the P-51 is based on a real incident.In, I believe it was 1947, a flight of military P-51s were inbound for landing {and low on fuel} when one was sent to investigate a UFO. the pilot climbed high and crashed. The military deemed hypoxia due to a malfunctioning O2 system and fuel starvation. In that case, the UFO was believed to one of the early "satellite balloons" the USAF was playing with. They were made to be shiny and glowed very bright in the evening sky.It adds a little "credo" to the he movie when they use a real event to kick off the story even if a few characters and the Russian-American love story are a cliché

A team of American scientists, under the leadership of a military man, go to Red China to investigate the report of a downed flying saucer. They encounter a similar Russian team with the same object. The two are forced into an uncomfortable alliance to avoid the Chinese army. They find the saucer in the ruins of a church; the local villagers hate the government for killing the priest. They work together to figure out how the saucer works. In the end, as most of the expedition dies fighting off Chinese troops, three of them make their escape in the saucer. In keeping with the "lets end the cold war" spirit of the film, they agree to take the saucer to a neutral site, Switzerland. The script and the acting are rather wooden but the movie makes an honest attempt at believable science fiction.