Brilliant and touching

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This could very well have been shorter and appeared as a television production, but instead probably put out as a B movie, as it was worth the elevated status with the extra minutes. It came as no surprise to me to learn that the writer Robert Holmes was a prolific writer for British Television, including Dr Who. This came out in 1966 and reminded me of the better television from that era, but do not let that put you off. Me? I can't get enough of it. What it doesn't have in budget, it makes up for, with style. I cite the doll's head in the doll's house with the rocking horse in the background as an example of style (pure 1960's). Think of The Avengers in the black and white era without John Steed and Emma Peel and you will have an idea of the feel of the film, and enjoyment, although it's not lighthearted, only well intentioned. It may not have Diana Rigg in, but it does have Tsai Chin, playing a small part as a nurse (maybe it's the uniform). She has had quite a career, which included You Only Live Twice and Casino Royale. In a film that curiously used Chinese looking aliens, Tsai Chin is a human nurse (she is Chinese by birth). The main lead man Edward Judd puts in a solid performance as does the main lead woman Valerie Gearon (appropriate name for the 60's?), who starts off being very sexy then in the next scene goes into just a little bit too much over (re)acting for me, but comes back down to earth, and settles into her part. She has great hair by the way. This is an intelligent Sci-Fi film with lofty intentions with a limited bank account available, and that is where I think it benefits. More money spent would not make this much more enjoyable for me, I'm thinking Close Encounters. They had to use their ideas and expertise to make this work instead of money. For example there are some good black and white scenes, such as when the woman gets out of the car at night in a white coat into the headlights. I feel I must mention that I liked the way they learnt the language by "downloading" from the source, a nice touch (pun intended). Sure, there are some questions to be asked about the space ship and the armies and policeman's attitude to an alien landing (not an invasion). They should have learnt from watching the films from the 1950's (The Day The Earth Stood Still etc) that it is quite a big deal. If you also can get over all of this and that the aliens look like Chinese people, then the film has a good heart and well intentioned which may certainly win you over, as it did me, and one I will remember (for the right reasons). A sign of a good movie.

Given that by 1966 most of the United Kingdom's hospitals were staffed by immigrants of various ethnicities and political doctrines, this so called Sci-Fi drama could only be slightly less heavy handed if the "invaders" had resembled West Indians instead of Asians.This romp takes its time to warm up, culminating in a rocket blasting off to an unknown planet knocking gorgeous Valerie Gearon off her feet to reveal her stockings, suspenders and knickers - five years later she would deal Frank Finlay a crucial blow (but not a BJ!) to his heteromasculinity In BBC's Casanova.Although it is employed here very impressively, a force field had been, uh "seen" in Star Trek's pilot show The Cage two years earlier.Grumpiness factor 8/10 for awkward as ever Edward Judd; crumpet factor 8/10 each For Miss Gearon and delicious Japanese babe Yoko Tani. Phwoar! 6/10 MJB

I always thought this was a particularly odd little film. It seems to be filled with the most ill- mannered cast of any movie I have ever seen. It opens with the Royal Artillery survey unit on Salisbury Plain ignoring a arrival of the UFO. The officer protests and the NCO ignores him and carries on reading his magazine. The officer stomps off in disgust. The action then moves to a cottage hospital where all the staff are permanently at daggers drawn: "I'm in charge here!!.... Mind your own business, etc etc." "How dare you!!!" I couldn't help thinking there was some emotional back-story that had ended up on the cutting room floor. That might account for the way everybody kept overreacting at the slightest provocation. Or have I got it all wrong and that's how British people behaved in the mid 1960s. The aliens must have thought they had landed in an insane asylum.

This British film is a good example of how intelligence and care can be very adequate substitutes for big budgets and endless CGI. It was made in the sixties but I can watch it again and again while bloated modern sci-fi films are seen and soon forgotten. It is a low key film and the people in, in the face of something alien, get on with their jobs as best they can. This makes them more like real people than a lot of films do. Each one is fallible and anxious, trying to cope with the unknown. Edward Judd is his usual morose self but is a plausible doctor. Valerie Gearon as another doctor is great. The scene where she is discovered sprawling on the carpet, reading a text book and listening to music makes you warm to her instantly. She was an under used actor in British films.The plot is simple; a strange man in a rubbery suit is knocked down in the road, taken to hospital and discovered to be an alien. Meanwhile two other aliens are searching for him. And that's it. The atmosphere of suspense is quietly conveyed by the lighting and the black and white photography. At one point a force field is established around the hospital. There is no CGI to show this but car stops dead and kills the driver, the temperature goes up, the hospital workers react. One believes in that force field without a penny being spent on a special effect. That is good film making. There are many such interesting British films of the fifties and sixties that need re-appraisal and will be worth looking at again when we have tired of over blown under nourishing block busters