Plot
Scientist Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his new bride Carol (Joan Taylor) are driving to work when a flying saucer appears overhead then zooms away. Without proof of the encounter other than a tape recording of the ship's sound, Dr. Marvin is hesitant to notify his bosses. He is in charge of Project Skyhook, an American space program that has already launched 10 research satellites into orbit. General Hanley (Morris Ankrum), Carol's father, returns from an investigation and informs Marvin that many of the satellites have crashed. Marvin admits that he has lost contact with all of them and privately suspects alien involvement. The Marvins themselves witness the eleventh falling from the sky.
When a saucer lands at the lab the next day soldiers immediately begin firing upon it, killing one alien who has left the ship, but the others and the ship itself are protected by the saucer's force field. The aliens then destroy the base, killing everyone but the Marvins, who are trapped underground. The general is kidnapped and taken away in the saucer. Russell records a broadcast from the aliens and plays it on a tape recorder, which just happened to be running low on its batteries. The message is slowed down enough that ther aliens' message can be understood: they wanted to meet with Dr. Marvin. Once rescued from the sub-basement, Marvin plays the message for his superiors, but they have to wait for authorization.
Impatient, Marvin contacts the aliens and steals away to meet them, but Carol and Major Huglin (Donald Curtis) follow him. They and a motorcycle cop are taken aboard a spaceship resting on Malibu Beach. They discover that the aliens have extracted knowledge from Gen. Hanley's brain, and now have him under their control, although they reassure Carol that they can restore him. They also claim to be the last of their species and that they shot down the satellites because they thought they were weapons. As proof of their power, the aliens give Marvin the coordinates of where they sank a destroyer that had fired on them. The humans are released with the message that the aliens want to meet the world's leaders in 56 days in Washington, D.C., to negotiate an occupation.
The flying saucers are invulnerable to conventional weapons, but from his observations Marvin develops an ultra-sonic weapon, which is later upgraded to an effective anti-magnetic weapon. He feverishly starts building a prototype, and just as he finishes, a saucer arrives. Marvin tests his weapon and the saucer is disabled enough to send it wobbling away. As they leave, the aliens jettison Gen. Hanley and another captive, who fall to their deaths.
Groups of alien ships then show up in the skies over Washington, Paris, London, and Moscow, and begin destroying everything. But there are enough of Dr. Marvins' new truck-mounted weapons deployed in Washington, D.C. to slowly shoot them down. One saucer clips and topples the Washington Monument, while another crashes into the Capitol Building and a third into Union Station. The defenders also discover that the aliens are vulnerable to small arms fire once they leave the immediate force fields of their saucers.
Read more about this topic: Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
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—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)