There's a strange object flying over the Skies of America, A group of scientists at labcentral have been monitoring it for some time. Turns out the object they're looking at is in fact; ''An alien vessel!''
But a monkey's wrench is flown into the mix, the alien spaceship deploys one of their ''beings'' down to the planet to take control of a single human host, in doing so they can learn everything they need to about where to land and how to acquire more energy for their ship.
It's cool to watch a movie where the spectacle isn't focused on the aliens. We never really get to see what they look like, for all we know they're just balls of light or strange electrical fluids. The real star of the show is the technology around everyone. From the radar equipment, fighter jets and the supercomputers that used to track all the alien activity. It's some pretty interesting stuff.
Most of the movies about the scientist trying to figure out what the heck this thing is. And when they finally do know what it is how to stop it. It's pacing is great the acting is solid in the story overall is entertaining.
For the aliens only have one interest in our planet. Energy both electric and more prominently atomic. For these creatures and the ability to turn matter into electricity. They had done this for so long on their own planet that it is now completely devoid of all resource*
There's even some very subtle romance between our main character Dr. Leslie (played by Jeff Morrow) and his lab assistant Vera. It's only really there to pass the time between the action scenes or the dialogue scenes, but still nice to have.
We now know the origins of the 2001 Monoliths. They're just incomplete versions of the spaceship from this. A big honking square that can move around with little radio antennas and ridiculous little dancing feet. When the bottom of obscure by something it looks quite cool, this big honking cube moving around in the environment. When they have to show its feet though, they have this little animated drawing of it walking about, it's hilarious and therefore still amazing.
We also get an interesting Exposition scene. A lot of movies full pray to just having someone explain what a certain situation is or how a certain culture works. And it comes off as a bit ham-fisted or silly. Usually because they're trying to acquire information out of a novel and trying to show that off on the big screen. It just isn't an easy task. What they do in this movie is have a third character relaying the information. In this case one of the humans is infected by the alien. And he sent to a hospital or the doctors just think he's going insane. They try to give him sedatives and eventually move on to shock therapy only to discover that the shock therapy has made his insane ramblings worse because the aliens feed off of electricity. Of course the doctor doesn't know this so he sits at his office turns on his electric recorder and talks about the patent's ramblings. And it's through this that we get to learn about the aliens technological advances, understanding of electricity and what their plans are for Earth.
So it's still technically an exposition dump but it's done in a more creative way.
*There's a wink and a nod to an environmental message that comes up so quickly that it has no effect on the story and no effect on the audience whatsoever.
It wouldn't be in 50s movie without some Mexican stereotypes. Including overly hot food that the Yankee can't eat . The showing of a crucifix or some of the Mexicans are praying at and their reactions to seeing a giant alien in the sky with their ''Hail Marys'' and their Crossings. Not that I can say anything. If I saw UFO flying for this guy I'd probably cross myself too.
Although in the film's credit it does show the Mexicans actually dealing with the alien problem. For the spaceship land somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico and comes on to Mexican territory, and it's the Mexican Air Force that initially tries to fight it.
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