Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
   Webster's Dictionary translates the word “invasion” as anything that enters as an enemy. So technically, if you were expecting Invasion of the Saucermen to feature a whole fleet of spaceships, or even two, you'd be wrong. One single spacecraft ventures to earth apparently for the sole purpose of killing off our alcoholics and fighting our livestock.

     The movie begins with a narration by Artie. He and his buddy Joe (played by Frank Gorshin, a.k.a. the Riddler from the TV's Batman) are two Brooklyn-accented drifters who have come to the small town of Hicksburgh to “make a quick buck” (they never tell us what that means). Anyway, on his way to “pick up some chicks”, Joe sees a spaceship descend into the woods.

     Suddenly, the real villain of this movie, film editor Charles Gross, Jr., takes us to a diner where three teenage boys see the same UFO. (The editor of this movie is the reason I'm forced to use the word “Meanwhile” a lot in this review.) When army lieutenant Wilkens, also at the diner, gets wind of this, he tells his commander, Col. Armbrose.

     Meanwhile, (I warned you) one of the teenagers, Johnny, takes his fiancée Joan to Lover's Point, which is also the farm of old man Larkin and his bull named Walt. We know he's an old farmer because he's grumpy and uses strange profanities like “consarn it!”
     Johnny and Joan drive away from Lover's Point with their headlights turned off because the light was bothering others, forcing one couple to yell, “Hey…cut the lights! You're crampin' our style!” But their good intentions run awry when they accidentally run over an alien crossing the road. Recoiling in fear, the couple fails to notice the alien's hand detach from its grotesque body and crawl around on its own. Guided by an eyeball located on the back of the hand, it makes its way to the car tire. Needles then protrude from the alien hand's devilish digits and puncture Johnny's tire.

     Stranded, they decide to go to Larkin's farm for help. When they find no one home, they wisely decide to break in and use Larkin's phone. Soon, a shotgun-toting Larkin yelling, “You consarn hoodlums!” comes home and kicks the kids out of his house.
     Meanwhile, the Riddler…I mean drunk Joe…discovers the alien by Johnny's abandoned car. He too breaks into Larkin's home to use his phone (the old man is in the pasture talking to his bull) to convince his pal Artie that he's returning home with an alien corpse. But no sooner does Joe return to the accident site than he's attacked at the ankles by alien needle-tipped fingers!

Meanwhile, Col. Armbrose has discovered the alien spaceship and contemplates what to do when faced with the first visitor from outer space. After carefully weighing all the options, he commands a soldier to shoot at it and then orders him to cut it open with a blow torch which trips a self-destruct device, thereby obliterating the greatest discovery of all time. Ah…military intelligence.

     Back at Johnny's car, the police have discovered Joe's dead body and assume the teenagers are responsible for his death. The teens' only shot at innocence is Joan's father, the city attorney, but he's no help because he thinks Johnny is a “roughneck”. Johnny and Joan soon escape the police station by leaving through an open window in the interrogation room (this is some police force and army operation going on here). They not only break out, but also steal a police car because Johnny's theory is, “Compared to everything else, what's a little car theft?” Good advice for impressionable movie-watching teens!

     They end up back at the scene of the accident to look for evidence to clear their good names. Giving up after 10 seconds of searching, they return to the police car unaware that the severed alien hand has roamed its way to the back seat. Once on the road, the hand works its way behind Joan's head, ready to strike. But when Johnny turns the car abruptly, the lurch throws the hand to the back seat from whence it came. But persistence is this little paw's middle name and it eventually lumbers back into striking range. This time, Joan notices the frightful fingers just in time. The kids escape and lock the hand in the car, thereby obtaining the evidence they need.

     Now they have to get Artie to see the evidence. Johnny recalls that Joe's driver's license said he lived at 121 Maple St. (even though Artie and Joe were drifters and had never been to Hicksburgh before). After talking with Artie a few minutes about what they've seen, he is soon completely convinced (???).
     Now at this point of the movie, brace yourself perhaps the most bizarre alien battle of all time. The Saucerman vs Walt the bull! Actually, it's more like a bull running around with a stuffed alien costume tied to its back. But that's O.K. because its intermingled with scenes of an alien attacking a fake bull's head and, the cous de grace, a close-up of a bull horn stabbing the alien's eye!

     Meanwhile, back at the police car, the same aliens who have achieved intergalactic space travel are having trouble prying a locked door open to retrieve their severed hand. When Johnny, Joan and Artie arrive on the scene, they discover a camera flashbulb can kill the aliens when bullets to the brain do not. When his flashbulbs are used up, Artie panics, flees and is quickly killed by the bigheaded visitors. John and Joan escape however and, having learned a valuable lesson last time, again break into old man Larkin's home to use his phone to call the cops. The police inform him that Joe actually died from drinking too much alcohol.

     Acquitted of all charges, J&J are free to fend off the aliens! They return to Lover's Point to convince the other teenagers to help them wipe out the aliens. The other couples instantly believe their hastily-explained invasion story and are only too happy to blow the chance for sex in a jalopy in order to help out good ol' Johnny! He positions the cars in a circle around the aliens and tells the gang to turn on their headlights. Soon the area is a giant alien popcorn popper. Alien bodies exploding all over the place.

     To everyone's amazement, the loveable Artie turns out to be alive but drunk. The kids deduce the aliens inject their prey with alcohol and if you're already drunk, like Joe was, then you die. This is the defense mechanism of a superior race??? This is how they're going to take over the galaxy? Hope that their opponents on other worlds are already intoxicated so they can kill them??? I can only assume that earth was their very first attempt at invading anything and that the rest of the universe is safe and secure.
     All-in-all an O.K. monster b-movie but these aliens cannot be missed, especially when battling a bull named Walt!