SUPERSONIC SAUCER (1956) – In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday Balladeer’s Blog presents a look at another harmless, all-ages sci-fi turkey, this one from England. Supersonic Saucer was produced by our old friends in Great Britain’s Children’s Film Foundation, the same group behind the previously reviewed serial Masters of Venus.
Believe it or not, Frank Wells, son of H.G. Wells himself, penned the story for this So Bad It’s Good flick. At an English boarding school, a few students whose families are too poor to be able to pay for their travel expenses wind up having to spend the holiday break at the school. They are looked after by the Headmaster and his tween son Rodney (Fella Edmonds), a science nerd who resents having to babysit.
Top-billed actress Marcia Manolescue, an English actress of Asian descent, plays Sumac, one of the students whose family could not pay travel fare home and back. Another such student is Greta (Gillian Harrison) and rounding things out is Adolphus (Andrew Mette-Harrison), the tubby youngest character.
While killing time over the holiday break our youngsters visit an observatory, where they are allowed to use the telescope for a time. They spot what seems to be a spaceship headed for Earth from Venus, but none of the adults on hand believe them.
We viewers know the kids are in the right, and the spaceship/ flying saucer is really a Venusian youngster. That alien entity used its race’s ability to morph from Muppet-like form to amoeboid form to flying saucer form fit for interplanetary travel.
The alien visits our lead characters upon arrival on Earth, drawn to them by the telepathic “fix” it got on them when they spotted it through the telescope. Because of the Venusian’s transitionary form that resembles an oversized amoeba the youngsters name the alien “Meba.”
The goofy looking Venusian resembles a thick, tall worm in a white hijab in its “normal” form but is hilariously rendered as a cartoon flying saucer with eyes for its airborne and spacefaring form. The “special” effect is as laughable as the cartoon spaceships in American movies like Invaders from Mars.
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