Year:  1968
Rating: 5.5

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This is rather a fun low budget sci-fi cold war film that extols our commonality between nations rather than our differences. A little unusual for a film made in 1968. Back in those days I guess it was thought needed to pass it by the Defense Department which they did and they had to make a number of changes. Kind of ridiculous considering the subject matter. The film in the prologue dedicates itself to the 5 million people who have seen flying saucers. And this was before the X-Files.


Pilot Fred Norwood (John Ericson, Honey West's partner) is up flying and is buzzed by a UFO. When he gets back no one will believe him of course except it seems a secret military department that has received information about a flying saucer that has landed in a remote Chinese village. Their agent in China (James Hong) reports that the two inhabitants died upon leaving the spaceship and he will lead them to the spaceship. This group is run by Peters played by the almost always villainous Dan Duryea in his final role right before he passed away. Nice that in his last role he gets to play a hero. A Commie hating hero but a hero nevertheless.


Peters puts together a group of four men including Norwood and himself to parachute into China to locate the UFO. The other two are Bernard Fox and Bob Hastings (Lt. Carpenter on McHale's Navy). Complications arise when they bump into a Russian group on the same mission and one of them is played by Lois Nettleton (having to do a Natasha accent all the way through) who we first see taking a shower in a waterfall and who like any good Soviet Agent screams when she sees a man (Norwood) watching her. Thhe two groups decide rather than killing one another to work together and there is immediate hot sweaty Glasnost between Norwood and the Russian. But they are Commies and can't be trusted and then the Red Army Chinese hordes show up. All silly nonsense but played deadly seriously with debates about using this technology for good or bad and who should get it.