"Director: Fred F. Sears"

• Earth vs The Flying Saucers | Blu Ray | (13/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Aliens travel to Earth to seek help for their dying planet. However when they arrive at a U.S Army base the Army mistakenly greet them with gunfire...

• Earth vs The Flying Saucers | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £13.94   |  Saving you £-0.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Notable neither for its director nor its stars, Earth vs the Flying Saucers has been given the widescreen DVD treatment rather because of its special-effects man, the legendary Ray Harryhausen. A Twilight Zone styled voiceover introduces Dr Marvin Russell and his wife of two hours as they're buzzed by an overhead flying saucer--the first of many. When a translation device reveals the saucer-occupants' fiendish plan to take over the world, it's time for a good old army-alien punch-up. Cue screenfuls of avuncular patriarchs, loads of techno-flannel space-speak and plenty of gratuitous American-monument destruction. A by-numbers B-movie, this is only really notable for Harryhausen's stop-motion FX work--and though this, his fifth feature, isn't a patch on his later Technicolor masterpieces, his trick of demolishing facsimiles of recognisable landmarks is cited by many premier filmmakers as being hugely influential on their work. This is very much of its time, the saucer-people arousing few of the thrills engendered by his later creations (Sinbad's Cyclops, for example). And with Cold War fears now just a memory, the Ruskies, or rather aliens, can no longer prevail upon a zeitgeist of xenophobic paranoia for their power. On the DVD: Earth vs the Flying Saucers's black-and-white picture is clean and crisp in this anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen transfer and the Dolby digital mono soundtrack is clear enough. The theatrical trailer will please fans of kitsch, as will the featurette "This Is Dynamation" produced at the same time as the first Sinbad movie. The real corker here though is the generously proportioned documentary "The Harryhausen Chronicles": narrated by Leonard Nimoy, it features a stellar cast of devotees (George Lucas among them) waxing lyrical about the influence of Harryhausen's films, and allows the man himself to ramble fascinatingly over clips of his filmic canon. If you're a fan, it's Harryhausen heaven. --Paul Eisinger

• 3 Classic Sci-Fi Films Of The Silver Screen - Missile To The Moon / Earth Vs The Flying Saucers / Planet Outlaws | DVD | (04/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Missile to the Moon: An expedition to the moon arrives to find a sinister female presiding over a race of moon-women. A remake of 'Cat Women of the Moon'. Earth Vs The Flying Saucers: Aliens travel to Earth to seek help for their dying planet. However when they arrive at a U.S Army base the Army mistakenly greet them with gunfire... Planet Outlaws (aka Destination Saturn): The re-edited version of the 1939 Universal serial 'Buck Rogers'. Buck and his comrade Buddy are released from suspended animation after 500 years on ice. The world which they once knew is now under the control of Killer Kane a terrifying mobster. Needless to say the duo quickly get onboard a plan to take down the criminal mastermind and his band of futuristic assasins.

• Ray Harryhausen Collection - 20 Million Miles To Earth/Earth Vs The Flying Saucers/It Came From Beneath The Sea | DVD | (03/03/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Titles Comprise: 20 Million Miles To Earth (1957): A US army rocket ship returning from an exploratory flight to Venus crashes into the sea of Sicily freeing a small native Venusian creature called the Ymir. Eventually growing to enormous size it threatens the city of Rome. Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956): Aliens travel to Earth to seek help for their dying planet. However when they arrive at a U.S Army base the Army mistakenly greet them with gunfire... It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955): Submarine commander Pete Mathews (Kenneth Tobey) and scientists Lesley Joyce (Faith Domergue) and John Carter (Donald Curtis) battle an angry sea monster driven from the depths of the ocean by an H-bomb explosion. In search of non-contaminated food this tentacled tyrant counts among its victims a fishing trawler and its passengers a family sunning at the beach several San Francisco skyscrapers and even the Golden Gate Bridge!