I’ve been pondering genre for some time now. And since Stephen King assures me (not personally) that Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers is horror, I figured I’d give it a try. In fact, given the various themes of the movie, I’m surprised I hadn’t seen it before. The title pretty much gives it away—aliens try to take over Earth with a swarm of flying saucers. Two scientists figure out how to make their saucers stall, and even though the aliens have a disintegration ray that pretty much destroys anything, the earthlings prevail. Having summarized it all in less than a hundred words, is there really anything worth comment here? I think so.
Like many older movies this one makes use of stock footage to fill in action sequences and to keep the budget reasonable. So there are big guns going off and rockets being launched. (This was a pre-Sputnik movie and it depicts America having eleven satellites in orbit.) But the additional footage that stayed with me was a scene of two planes colliding and crashing. It was clear these weren’t models and the footage was authentic, apart from the flying saucer shooting the planes. It turns out that this scene was indeed real, and that the pilots of both planes died in the crash. During an air show outside Spokane, Washington in July 1944 this collision was caught on film by a Paramount news crew and it was reused in this film. This got me to thinking about war footage—something that really only became possible in the Second World War. And what we now see today in real time on the internet because the world is wired.
It’s as if those who wage war are fine with it as long as people with a conscience don’t know what happens. There’s even a phrase used to excuse unspeakable barbarism during combat: the haze of war. This we know about our species—there’s a tipping point beyond which rationality shuts off and we’re no longer responsible for our behavior. We also know that war puts people in that zone. It was fine as long as only surviving warriors were left to tell the stories of their bravery. Photographing, particularly in motion pictures, combat revealed a much darker truth. Well, at least in Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers the enemies under attack were fictional. Except. Except, some of the casualties were real people whose final moments were caught on camera. Be sure to get out and vote today, if you’re in the United States. There’s a party even less understanding than aliens out there, desiring to take over.