WAR OF THE SATELLITES (1958)

Roger Corman's rock-bottom budget for this film would put one comfortably in a mid-range Audi today. He directed and produced this sixty-six-minute, double-billed, imaginative film released by Allied Artists. The frenetic, driving score with percussive xylophone by Walter Greene opens and closes the film like a mid-Sixties science fiction television series. Coupled with the trendy, opening animated graphics—a Corman trademark—and strategic placement of bold text, it suggests the viewer will hardly be able to contain themselves for an hour. You may have seen this one before. In traditional crime thriller fashion, this is the oft-told tale of the evil twin. Except there are no darkened alleys or shadowy skyscrapers. No low, dramatic camera angles. No snappy dialogue. No fedora hats. All the tension takes place aboard a manned satellite spacecraft with interior props made from the finest cardboard and plywood. 

As is so often the case in recent movies, it is left to a single hero to save the film, the world and the girl. This would be Dick Miller and Susan Cabot (above). The film opens with a gratuitous romantic couple—an apparent vaudeville comedy team—in a convertible parked on the lane of love. They are witness to a UFO landing, though what they pick up appears to be a large, professional firework. Whatever. A Latin phrase is inscribed. Roughly translated, “Earthlings are a bunch of belligerent boobs.” Just a guess. From a matching set of leather recliners, and with arms crossed before launching, anyone can survive space travel from the "liftoff lounge." 

The story picks up inside the United Nations, where world representatives discuss recent attacks of an unknown force on satellites. War with Earth has been declared after the UN disobeys the repeated subtle hints of satellite destruction. Richard Devon (above and below) is the genius behind the “Sigma Project” designed to eliminate the attacks. Miller and Cabot are key team members supporting Devon’s theory. The responsibility of launching satellites falls under the UN Satellite Control Center. The single control panel is so simple to operate, the entire project is monitored by one man.

As it is for many brilliant scientists, Devon has Lincoln-Mercury's latest navigation system during his drive to the UN. That is, an alien force takes control of the steering wheel—despite Devon’s humorous preventive efforts—and plummets the vehicle down an embankment resulting in a fiery crash. The sound effects of the alien force are lifted from the Martian crafts in The War of the Worlds, released two years earlier. For about a minute the UN council members mourn the death of Devon as many thought he was a bit screwy. He suddenly appears at the UN—not a scratch or a burn on him—with a sterile speech pattern yet few recognize the evil twin. He is now equipped with a popular accessory, the ability to “splinter off” any number of clones, all with the internal organs of a human. Murder and mayhem ensue. 

The makeup department provided an effective, final evil appearance for the last clone for a progressively more demonic look. There is a rather cool but weird solarization effect near this point—with music that sounds as if played backward—an effect that will get a good workout after the mid-sixties with added hallucinogenic colors. Ironically, this all takes place in the satellite’s Solar Energy Room, whatever function that was supposed to provide. The aliens cannot comprehend the inherent need for humans to defend themselves against aggressive attacks on freedom. Dick Miller is left to make the point that every country has the right to explore space.

Note: The point of this film has been used often after the US ended World War Two. To this day, according to many Hollywood scriptwriters, aliens are nearly always smarter than humans and arrive to warn us, in varying degrees of gullibility, about the use of nuclear weapons, their expected mutations from testing such, or the conquering of space, destroying its purity. The mere suggestion of such things masquerades as fact.