The Bamboo Saucer (1968)

Dan Duryea is "Peters", and American leading a team racing to beat their Soviet counterparts to a remote "Red" Chinese village where they think there might be a flying saucer that was involved in an incident with one of their fighters. Needless to say, the Chinese are after it too and a combination of circumstances mean that when they find the thing, the rivals must team up in order to avoid capture and to get it airborne. I suppose that by being about a flying saucer in the first place, there is little point is saying how implausibly daft the rest of it is. We start our search with a wonderful child's drawing of a flying saucer that somehow manages to get into the hands of the Americans several thousands of miles away - and that pretty much sets the tone. It's further cluttered up by a bit of an awkward romance between "Norwood" (John Dickson) and the Soviet team member who manages to interpret for everyone "Anna" (Lois Nettleton) and the rest of it is just standard "Outer Limits" fayre with pretty ropey airborne saucer effects and a plot that seems to enable them to activate the auto-pilot as if it were a dishwasher. It is also far too long; we could easily live without much of the first half hour. Pretty poor, sorry.

**_Americans, Soviets and Chinese discover a flying saucer_**

The opening scenes are reminiscent of Major Nelson and Roger Healey at Cape Canaveral on I Dream of Jeannie, just without the goofiness. The rest of the movie is a meshing of two films that were released before this: “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” and “Five Million Years to Earth,” aka “Quatermass and the Pit.” It includes the teaming up of Americans and Russians of the former, minus the amusement, and the incredible discovery of an extraterrestrial craft of the latter.

While this is arguably better than “The Russians Are Coming,” it’s nowhere near as rewarding as the excellent “Five Million Years to Earth.” Yet the ending takes its own course with Cold War battle scenes and Star Trek-like sci-fi sequences. Another positive is the inherent fascination of beholding a craft from another planet and the superior technology thereof. Unfortunately, the production is hampered by a pedestrian approach.

As far as the cast goes, John Ericson is effective as the American protagonist, who starts to fall for the Russian agent played by blonde Lois Nettleton. Dan Duryea and Nan Leslie are also on hand in their final films.

It runs 1h 43m and was shot in the beginning of autumn in 1966 at Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, which is a 3h 20m drive north of Los Angeles; the early scenes were done in the studio back in the city.

GRADE: B-/C+