Wed 9 Sep 2009
THE 27th DAY. Columbia, 1957. Gene Barry, Valerie French, George Voskovec, Prof. Klaus Bechner, Arnold Moss, Stefan Schnabel. Based on the novel by John Mantley, who also wrote the screenplay. Director: William Asher.
The novel this black-and-white sci-fi movie was based on was also one of the first selections I purchased when I joined up with the Science Fiction Book Club, and when I was 14, which I was at the time, I thought it was one of the best I’d ever read.
Nor have I ever forgotten it in all of the years since, though what I have just now discovered is that I never watched the movie, even though for all of those very same years, I thought I had!
I think what happened is that I created my own movie out of the images the book created in my head, and that’s what I remembered all this time. Two minutes into the movie and I knew I’d never seen it before.
And this is true even though I have a feeling that the movie follows the book very closely. It’s just that it’s different than the one I’ve been remembering all along. It’s very strange (and humbling) to realize that your memories can be invalid and unsubstantial — and yet seemingly so solid! — as this
The premise? Well, to begin with and right from the start, mankind is in trouble. An alien from another universe kidnaps five representative members of mankind and gives them the sole means of deciding whether humanity lives or dies: (1) A Russian solider. (2) A young English woman. (3) A European scientist. (4) A Chinese peasant girl. And (5) a Los Angeles newspaper reporter.
Each is given a weapon that can destroy all human life on the planet Earth. If they can keep the leaders of the world from using any one of them in the next 27 days, we’ll be given a reprieve and they’ll quietly go away.
The primary protagonists are (2) and (5), played by Valerie French and Gene Barry respectively, whose characters immediately go into hiding together.
But do the aliens play fair? No. They also immediately take over the TV sets around the world and name the five people who have been given the weapons. Instant paranoia and panic naturally run rampant.
This is a pretty good example of what science fiction looked like in the movies during the cold war 1950s, with the added bonus of there being no ugly mutated monsters, only ourselves as our own worst enemy.
Which is fitting, as the ending is this movie’s own worst enemy. It seems as though the aliens had the power all along, a rather miraculous one, one that can — well, that would be telling.
I suppose the movie-makers’ intentions were good, and it fits in perfectly with the cold-war fantasies of the 1950s, but all in all, it makes for a pretty lame movie. Awkward and ham-handed are other words that come to mind — all in the interest of making us feel good about ourselves, disregarding the truth of the matter that in this film (a) the aliens did it, and (b) in the real world, there are no aliens.
As for the book, I’m awfully curious and I’m very much tempted, but I don’t think I’ll read it again. The memories I have of it might be better off if left alone. Just maybe.
September 10th, 2009 at 4:32 am
This is an example of a book and film where a very good set up is defeated by not having an equally good ending for it and in the case of the film an indifferent production. Also it’s an example of the kind of sf that gets aliens confused with angels — and uses them for pseudo religious allegory, a problem that plagued much fifties film sf.
In better films like The Day the Earth Stood Still or 2001 it can be handled with enough subtlety that we don’t feel the heavy hand, but sf still has a tendency toward those benevolent impossibly advanced aliens such as the ones in Clarke’s Childhood’s End or Sagan’s Contact, who for all intent might as well be angels.
I can understand a C.S. Lewis doing this, but you have to wonder why an agnostic like Clarke or Sagan feels the need to create aliens who are basically just angels in spaceships.
I like this film better than you did in this review, but it suffers from many problems of fifties sf films, and the book, while a little better, probably doesn’t hold up to a second more mature reading, though I might try. But I’ll grant the payoff doesn’t come anywhere near the set up.
September 10th, 2009 at 11:20 am
To be fair and somewhat balanced, most of the comments on IMDB are favorable.
The ending is still Bad, though, there’s no getting around it, and the problem with Bad Endings, is that in a review you can’t tell anyone why it’s so Bad without telling them the ending.
Not all of the comments were positive; some of the viewers were of a like mind as I. Here’s what someone said that I thought was clever, and even though it’s only a hint, I’d better insert a
** SPOILER WARNING **
before I quote it:
“Somehow the device has some supernatural ability to determine, like Santa Claus, who’s been naughty or nice.”
September 10th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
The best thing about the ending is that it comes fairly late in the film. But I’ll watch anything with Arnold Moss.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I think my favorite Moss role is the ‘coyote’ in Mann’s Border Incident.
And let’s be fair, we have all seen a few films that would be greatly improved if the ending came a bit closer to the beginning — in some cases right after the credits would be a good choice.