This film was a disappointment simply because I expected that it would be all about aliens. After all, with a title like "The Flying Saucer" you'd THINK it would be sci-fi...but it isn't. I LOVE cheesy 50s sci-fi. What you have instead is a Cold War Commie film- --which is interesting just because so many people have talked about how the sci-fi films of the day were actually metaphors for the West's paranoia and struggle with communism.Mike is begged to become a special agent for the US government. However, he's very apprehensive to go and seems like a loser--and their picking him because he's a native Alaskan seemed silly. There MUST have been some other Alaskans who were more qualified than this drip! Eventually he goes and is assisted by an agent posing as his nurse. The reason they're going? Well, the Russians MIGHT have developed some top secret UFO and Mike and Vee (an odd name for a lady) are there to investigate covertly.I was surprised that the film actually WAS filmed, in part, in Alaska. I expected lots of crappy stock footage but they really went places in this 49th state and I recognized the glacier in Juneau which was the backdrop for many scenes. It actually is a really lovely film despite being in black & white. Unfortunately, the story itself is cheesy. Much of it consists of voice-over narration and the story is amazingly slow and dull considering it's about the Red menace! Other 50s anti-Commie films were certainly more exciting than this one. The leading man, Mike (Mikel Conrad) isn't exactly Mr. Charisma and having much of the story rest on his shoulders wasn't a good idea in hindsight. James Bond he wasn't! Perhaps he's all they could afford after blowing most of the budget getting everyone to Alaska! Overall it's a terribly dull thing that only gets a 2 because of the nice scenery. Probably not worth your time unless you are (like me) incredibly lame.

Hardly worth the time to write this. Flying saucer sightings have been going on, making the headlines of major newspapers. A playboy and his girlfriend are sent to investigate. Mostly, we look at stock footage of Alaska (quite beautiful) as he tries to figure out what's with these devices. When we finally see one, it's all lumpy and disfigured, like it was hand made by some prop man. The plot really involves the Russians, who are going to use this saucer to attack the West (I guess). On the one hand, they are ruthless spies; on the other, they let people live, giving them opportunities to foil (aluminum foil) their plans. Since they are capable of killing, why tromp around a glacier when bodies could have been so easily disposed of? But that would have involved some intelligence on their part. Don't even bother to watch this.

***SPOILERS*** One of if not the very first movie about the advent of "Flying Saucers" or "Flying Disks"" to come out of Hollywood has them to be of earth not out of space origin. With flying saucers seen flying all over the USA at speeds of 2,000 MPH or more the US government gets undercover playboy and recovering alcoholic Mike Trent, Mikel Conrad, an Alasken native to go up north to Alaska to check out the story. It's from Alaska where it's believed the mysterious flying disks originate from.Making believe that he's on sick leave from the bar scene in NYC Mike, on a secret mission for the government, is provided with a fellow government agent undercover nurse Vee Langley, Pat Garrison, straight out of CIA headquarters in Langely Virgina to look after his needs and provide him with medication for his so-called drinking problem. Spending his time at Vee's secretly rented by the CIA cabin in the woods it later turns out that her local houseboy the dark and sinister looking Hans, Hantz Von Teuffen, is really a Soviet spy trying to get all the information about this flying saucer mystery and deliver it back, by carrier pigeon, to the Soviet Union.***SPOILERS*** It soon comes out that this Dr. Lawton, Roy Engel, is the inventor of the flying saucer and is trying, feeling it's his patriotic duty, to reveal the secret behind it's propulsion system to the USA. That after Dr. Lawton was offered a cool one million dollars by the Soviet Union to hand it over to them or else! And worst of all it's Dr. Lawton assistant Turner, Denver Pyle, who's secretly working as a spy for the USSR. Explosive final in the wilds of Northern Alaska as the Commies, or Russians, try to grab the flying saucer in Dr. Lawton's secret cabin basement where they all end up getting killed in a massive snow and ice avalanche due to the Commies shooting off their guns. In a desperate attempt to escape justice Turner takes off with him behind the wheel of the flying saucer on his way to the Soviet Union. He doesn't go too far with a bomb planted in it by Mike going off and sending both the saucer and Turner to the bottom of a frozen nearby glacier lake.

I can't really add much more to what's already been said about this Alaska travelogue, but I will offer some praise to the unknown actress Pat Garrison, who plays the phony nurse Vee Langley. There is one sequence in which she goes swimming in a one-piece bathing suit, displaying an admittedly fine figure (she gets my choice for Anatomy Award Winner). There are some notable actors involved, all of them totally wasted (especially Denver Pyle and Earle Lyon), but veteran Frank Darien (Uncle John in "The Grapes of Wrath") has a better than usual role. Mikel Conrad is a total failure as a dramatic director, the action scenes are ineptly staged in what seems to come across as slow motion, and his own failings as an actor are maximized. He plays a two-fisted drinker who smokes constantly throughout the film (have to ward off boredom somehow), and the success of his secret mission (and the leading lady falling in love with him) boggles the mind; upon meeting the suspicious Russian caretaker for the first time, he blithely inquires as to whether or not he's noticed any Russian spies in the area! "The Flying Saucer" (1949) remains nothing more than a publicity stunt and vanity film for director-producer-star Mikel Conrad, notable chiefly as an historical footnote (being the first saucer movie), but effective only as a showcase for the Alaskan wilderness (I wonder if Sarah Palin ever saw this?)