The Bamboo Saucer

It's always a treat to watch Dan Duryea. He just made everything look like fun. The former Western bad guy plays an authority figure here, but does so with the same lust and zip that gives a charge to an otherwise dull script.

The situation is "cold war" intrigue, with Russians and Americans teaming together to find a downed flying saucer guarded by the Red Chinese.

The characters are actually fairly credible for the times. If the film was made today, I doubt a writer would be able to sell "time credible" characters to the ignorant masses, particularly the masses too ignorant to realize they are ignorant.

However, it is sort of routine. It looks like a sort of "make believe story" you and your friends would play with as adolescents.

Still, the actors, particularly Duryea, help make this enjoyable enough to sit through. I could sit through it, and with my attention deficit disorder, that says a lot. Fairly well paced. Nothing to brag about, nothing to be ashamed about.

An original Sci-Fi! Frank Telford, the director, who signs the script together with others, did a good job, the movie is well done, the subject is interesting, the acting is convincing. True, the special effects are not great, the saucer looks like a caricature, it is clear that the production did not benefit from a budget comparable to that of Kubrick for "2001: A Space Odyssey", made in the same year 1968.

The 1960s Cold War.... A flying saucer..... American and Soviet Russian teams in Communist China!

What on earth (if not from Earth) connects these seemingly disparate elements?

A test pilot is about to have his perspective on life irrevocably altered as he becomes one of the "more than 5,000,000 persons who claim to have actually seen unidentified flying objects" and for whom "no explanation is necessary" while "to all others no explanation is possible."

Some viewers might raise the point that the film feels more like a throw-back to sci-fi films of the 1950s and compare it unfavourably to such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Perhaps, but at least the film has an engaging plot with a good mixture of entertainment, action, pacing, drama and some humour. It doesn't seem to be laying claim to being a 'work of art' that's in search of a good story to tell and which could result in audiences nodding off or losing the will to live! And yes, the film is peppered with stereotypical elements in terms of gender and Cold War national and ethnic cliches, but so what? It is easy enough to treat it as a snap shot of a particular time in history and consider whether or not we really have made that much progress in almost 60 years. After all, we've yet to "meet 'them' face-to-face!"

First, let me reassure you that the saucer in this film is not a cheap, Chinese imitation of a flying saucer. That being said, the special effects are pretty bargain-basement, but the science behind it is really not too bad.

Electro-Magnetism is probably how these objects work; at least in part. The acting is not half-bad, even Boris Bendenoff and Natasha are OK. There are no A actors in this film, but who needs them if you have a good story? And this one is a bit far-fetched, but watchable. Have fun for an hour or so, and watch it on a Saturday morning or late Saturday night.

Here's a fairly obscure genre effort that deserves some credit for doing things a little differently. It's at least good enough to deserve to be better known. All in all, despite their limited budget, the makers of this B flick obviously strove to make this as good as it could be.

An honest-to-God UFO ends up landing in a remote area of Red China. An American mission is launched to find this craft, and attempt to exploit its technology. Then the Americans discover a concurrent Russian mission is under way, and the two sides try to set aside their differences and work together, under the noses of the Red Chinese troops nearby.

For a while, this has less to do with sci-fi and more to do with political / international intrigue, and has rather a slow pace. Dramatic tension is derived from the tensions between the two groups. But screenwriter / director Frank Telford, a TV veteran, directs well, and gets solid performances out of a cast that is better than usual for this sort of thing: Dan Duryea ("Scarlet Street"), in his final feature film, the lovely Lois Nettleton ("The Good Guys and the Bad Guys"), Bob Hastings ('McHale's Navy'), Bernard Fox ('Bewitched'), James Hong ("Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Nan Leslie ("Sunset Pass"), Andy Romano ("Over the Edge"), etc. Nettleton steals the film with her tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a Russian agent. Rico Cattani ("Point Blank") is also amusing as the Russian team leader designed to come off as untrustworthy as possible. Even John Ericson ("Bad Day at Black Rock") isn't as stiff as he's been in other movies.

Overall, this works as an interesting curio, very much of its time. While I wouldn't recommend that people go out of their way to find it, I'd also say that there are much worse movies out there with which to spend ones' time.

Seven out of 10.