Posted on 05/02/2010 1:35:46 PM PDT by EveningStar
The 27th Day is a 1957 Cold War science fiction B-movie. However, dont let the B-movie label turn you off. I think its quite good. It features an intelligent script and good acting.
It's difficult to find it on Region 1 DVD. However, it has recently been uploaded to YouTube. I dont know how long it will be there before it gets yanked, so you may wish to download it.
The screenplay is by John Mantley, who adapted it from his novel.
It stars Gene Barry.
The actor with the great voice who plays the alien is Arnold Moss. He played Kodos the Executioner in the Star Trek: TOS episode, The Conscience of the King. Another good voice actor, Paul Frees, makes a brief appearance as the American TV newscaster. This is a rare onscreen role for him. He voiced the unseen John Beresford Tipton, in the 1955-1960 TV series, The Millionaire.
The movie been uploaded to YouTube in eight parts. It runs about 75 minutes:
IMDb entry (contains spoilers)
Wikipedia entry (contains spoilers)
The synopsis, adapted from IMDb:
Five individuals from the USA, the USSR, Red China, England, and West Germany, suddenly find themselves on an alien spacecraft. An alien gives each a container holding capsules. No power on earth can open a given container except a mental command from the person to whom it is given. Each person has been provided with the power of life and death. Any of these individuals has the capability to instantaneously launch the capsules to whatever coordinates he/she chooses, and each capsule will then eradicate all human life within a 1,500-mile radius of its designated location.
ping
Looks very interesting. And those aliens are like Liberals....getting others to do their dirty work.
It has a good ending.
The movie is anti-communist, and like Red Planet Mars, another favorite of mine, it's mocked by some on the Left.
I do like Panic in Year Zero, an early survivalist flick that showed a nuclear war as survivable and stressed the need to shave, pray and use violence against evil to remain civilized.
Panic in The Year Zero, was good. Ray Milland and Frankie Avalon etc. When i saw it as a kid in the 60s-we all talked
the next day about it at school and what would we do if.
Did it have Robert Graves and about these astronomers claiming to detect communications from Mars ? Had religious overtones as well.
Peter Graves. And yes, definite religious overtones.
Have you seen the movie? It didn’t seem liberal to me.
Will check it out.
Science Fiction is often anti Man-As-God. Mad Scientist films for instance.
It was directed by William Asher who also directed every single episode of Bewitched. He was married to Elizabeth Montgomery.
ping
bump
True. And this film doesn't even have a Man-As-God theme in it.
Wow. He has quite a resume. I should have included him it the initial post.
Five individuals from the USA, the USSR, Red China, England, and West Germany, suddenly find themselves on an alien spacecraft... Any of these individuals has the capability to instantaneously launch the capsules to whatever coordinates he/she chooses, and each capsule will then eradicate all human life within a 1,500-mile radius of its designated location.In the remake, all five will pick a location in Pakistan, and most of the Moslem population of the Middle East ceases to exist, while Israel falls just outside the kill zone.
According to the film it would only kill those of evil intent.
That would mean even it it include all the middle east, all those of radical islam would be history.
Most of Israel would survive, anyway at least given the story line of the video. I say do it!
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