The Bamboo Saucer (1968)

Written by CinemaSerf on April 4, 2022

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.