Movie Review:The Bamboo Saucer (1968, Olive Films)

Directed by Frank Telford

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Air Force pilot Hank Peters (Dan Duryea, in his final film role) is buzzed by a very poorly processed flying saucer during a mission. He’s informed that the saucer in question is being kept in a decommissioned church in a remote mountainous section of Red China. Assembling a crack team of scientists and researchers – mostly American, although they do bring along British metallurgist Dave Ephram (Bernard Fox) for some chip! Chip! Cheerio! To offset the yanks. Peters and his colleagues parachute into China, where they are led by the “nice, non-communist” Sam Archibald (James Hong) to the hidden UFO. They’re not there for 15 minutes when they run across a shoot-first-and-ask-questions later Russian team led by Dobovsky (Rico Cattani) on a similar mission to track down the saucer. Seeing as they are in hostile territory, the Russians and Americans force an uneasy truce.

Hiding out in the abandoned church, they discover that the alien spacecraft opens up whenever a crew member operates his electric shaver due to the low-level vibrations. The interior of the saucer is highly earthbound and simplistic, two steps above the one found in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Said spaceship, seen inside the building in long shots, is an especially atrocious process shot – it looks like a blue-tinted child’s cutout! There are the usual capitalism-versus-communism arguments and Peters falls in love with pretty Russian scientist Anna (Lois Nettleton). When Anna prays over the body of a fallen comrade, Peters quips, “You’re not a very good Marxist, are you?” You get the idea. There are various complications, all of them stale and dated even by 1968 standards, and in an especially telling bit of agit-prop, Dobovsky convinces everyone to turn in their weapons but then pulls out a hidden, trusty revolver when things get heated. So much for disarmament, eh, comrades? The compound comes under fire by the Red Chinese and both the Americans and Russians join forces, briefly (a Cold War fantasy that some people actually hoped for way back then). Eventually Peters, Anna and Jack Garson (played by the late Bob Hastings from TV’s “McHale’s Navy”) jump aboard the spacecraft, it roars off into space – and the day is saved by pushing a couple of buttons. It all ends with a quote from U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Movie Review: One Touch of Venus (1948, Olive Films)

...Mr. Peabody, if you would, set the 'way-back' machine to a window of time...a span of years, from the mid-30's, to the late 40's...an uneasy and tumultuous era of progressively nation-involving conflict, culminating & peaking with World War II, and then, the post-war years...nations mourning their brave and battled dead. This was a time when whimsical escapism, fantastic flights of fantasy, and accompanying musical merriment held reign, in the cool and spectacled shrines...those movie palaces of yesteryear. 1941's "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" offered battling boxers, taken away too soon, and coming back to life, haven been given another chance...1937's "Topper" afforded us fun-loving earthbound ghosts, in search of a good deed...1947's "Down to Earth" brought down the very gods from above, solely for the purpose of inspiration...1943's "A Guy Named Joe" also had it's inspiring heavenly protagonist, though in the unlikely guise of a beloved, albeit deceased pilot...1947's "The Bishop's Wife" and 1934's "Death Takes a Holiday" had watchful heavenly angels, as well as brooding angels of death, assuming human form...1944's "Outward Bound" caught snapshot glimpses of a select few in a post-death, afterlife state of limbo, bound for otherworldly destinations...and even the goddess Venus herself, could not help but come down from the heavens, in search of true love, by way of a bumbling, albeit hopelessly lovelorn department store window dresser, in the light-hearted, musically laden, romantic fantasy/comedy fluff from 1948, "One Touch of Venus"...