The aliens are the main antagonists of the 1956 sci-fi film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers and Flying Saucers from Outer Space, being the pilots of the titular flying saucers. They are an extraterrestrial species from a destroyed solar system who sought to use Earth as their new home, displaying an emotionless attitude and no remorse for the mass devastation they caused in an attempt to conquer the planet. The aliens are humanoids clad in life support suits with incredible destructive power, but underneath, their true appearance is of a gaunt, aged, hairless, heavily wrinkled creature with large black eyes, a perpetually-frowning mouth, and no external ears, with their skin colors revealed to be greyish-brown in the colorized version of the film.
The suited actors for the aliens were uncredited, but their voice actor was the late Paul Frees, who was also uncredited.
History[]
At some point in the distant past, the aliens' home system was destroyed, forcing them to flee from their now-uninhabitable homeworld, which originally had Earth-like conditions. Their survivors flew through space in flying saucer-shaped crafts ever since, searching for another world they could inhabit, and to keep themselves alive, they developed suits of lightweight solid electricity, which greatly extended their lifespans, their helmets functioning as both glasses and hearing aids to compensate for their ageing and deteriorating senses. Eventually, in the mid-20th century, the aliens discovered Earth, but found that Earth was inhabited. As such, the aliens built an arsenal of disintegration weaponry to forcefully occupy the planet, and amassed their fleet over it, sending down ships to scout out various regions of Earth, which were sighted by humans.
The aliens managed to locate and fixate on a human man named Dr. Russel Marvin, a US military scientist who was the head of Project Skyhook, a satellite launching division. Finding that Russel studied space, the aliens sought to communicate with him to give their terms of occupation. When Russel and his wife, Carol, were driving to a US military base, one of the aliens' saucers flew over them and broadcasted a message to Russel, saying that they would meet with him the next day. However, Russel was unable to understand the message, as the saucers utilized an internal magnetic field stronger than Earth's in place of engines, making time within the ships speed up drastically relative to time outside, meaning that the message was accelerated beyond comprehensibility. Afterwards, the aliens detected satellite launches from Project Skyhook, and assuming them to be weapons, shot them down, soon discovering that the satellites were 'primitive' communication devices.
The next day, Project Skyhook attempted to launch another satellite to see what was shooting down their launches, but before they could, the alien craft that contacted Russel, presumably the flagship of the fleet, landed at the base's West Tower while cutting the human communications. Aliens began to deploy from the crafts, but soldiers promptly killed one of them, although the others were protected by a forcefield that was projected around the ship's immediate area. As the other aliens were safe behind the forcefield, they used their disintegrator rays to kill the soldiers, allowing them to leave the field and destroy the rocket while it was still on the pad. The aliens then began firing on other parts of the base, destroying many buildings and killing all personnel they found, their weaponry irradiating the air to kill off survivors, although Russel and Carol, present at the base, survived in a sealed area. However, the aliens captured the still-living General Hanley, the base's commander and Carol's father, taking him aboard their ship as they returned to space.
Aboard the flagship, the aliens used a ceiling-mounted translator device, the Infinitely Indexed Memory Device, to speak to Hanley, explaining that they did not expect to be met with hostility after contacting Dr. Marvin, as they thought that the transmission would've been deciphered by then. They then demanded information on Earth's militaries, but after General Hanley refused to comply, the aliens decided to extract information from his mind using the Infinitely Indexed Memory Device, rewriting the general's mind to be robotically subservient to them. Meanwhile, on the ground, as Russell's recording device's battery died, he replayed the sound of the saucer, which was slowed down due to the low power, allowing him to finally understand what the aliens were saying. Once they were rescued, they brought the recording to the US government, but Russel decided to meet with the aliens in secret, figuring that he could resolve the situation if they wanted to speak with him. As such, he contacted the aliens using the same frequency they used to broadcast the message, where the aliens responded and arranged a meeting at Chesapeake Bay, 6 A.M. local time.
At the arranged time, Russel arrived at the bay, accompanied by Carol, a military officer named Major Huglin, and a police officer who followed them. The alien flagship landed and took all the humans aboard, in the same chamber where they first held General Hanley, and then took off for space. In orbit, the aliens told Russel to look at his watch, and Russel thought that it had stopped, but the aliens explained the time-acceleration principles of their ships, especially how it was tied to their internal magnetic fields. The aliens then explained why they wanted to speak with Russel, also explaining their origins, their current fleet positions, and their demands, ordering Russel to have all world leaders gather in Washington D.C. to negotiate the alien occupation of Earth. To better coerce the doctor into complying, the aliens showed him an image of one of their ships vaporizing a US Navy destroyer, showing that their weaponry was vastly superior to that of Earth, and that they will strike key positions on the planet if their demands were not met. Russel asked why the aliens don't just launch a direct invasion on all fronts, but the aliens replied that they did not want to risk a prolonged war against all of Earth's forces, as the humans using nuclear weapons in retaliation could render the planet uninhabitable, and thus useless to them.
Major Huglin, wanting to know how much the aliens knew of Earth, began questioning them about the United States, and the aliens used the still mind-controlled General Hanley to respond. Huglin and Carol recognized Hanley's voice, and the aliens revealed him, showing Hanley in a trance-like mindless state. The officer then pulled his pistol on the aliens, but his bullets bounced off the windows separating the aliens from the humans, and the aliens promptly took control of his mind as well, returning to Earth and depositing the other humans back on the ground, giving Russel 56 days to arrange the meeting of world leaders. Over the course of that time, the aliens sent scout probes to spy on Russel, and near the end of the waiting period, they discovered that he was using what he learned of the saucers' magnetic fields to fashion a weapon capable of disrupting the fields. The probe was quickly destroyed by Major Huglin, but the flagship deployed to the location of the weapons lab, where Russel, Carol, and Huglin, accompanied by US military scientists, attempted to flee with a prototype of the weapon. The humans fled into the woods as the ship landed and deployed some ground troops, but the humans fired the weapon on the ship, making it wobble on its landing gear. However, the weapon's intensity wasn't high enough, allowing all but one alien to get back on board and take off. The last remaining alien went after the humans, encountering a scientist who was trying to flee and promptly disintegrating him, then blasting a nearby army vehicle, making its way to the weapon prototype, which was mounted on another truck. Huglin, armed with a rifle, then confronted the alien and quickly shot it, killing the alien and allowing the humans to remove its helmet, seeing the aliens' true visage before its body faded away.
The saucer kept flying over the woods to find the humans, but an Air Force bomber was called in to shoot it down, although the bomber's guns had no effects on the flagship, which then fired back on the bomber and destroyed it. The flagship then blasted the lab to pieces and began firing on the trees, setting them on fire in an attempt to flush out Russel and his companions. However, the humans escaped it, and the aliens decided that Hanley and the officer were no longer needed, jettisoning both out of the saucer and to their deaths. Russell and his surviving companions made it to another secure location, taking the alien life support armor with them, where military scientists analyzed it, finding out what the suits were made of and how they worked. Using the suit's communications uplink, the military recorded and deciphered messages being sent by the aliens, including plans of attack to be timed with the positions of stars and planets if Russel did not comply. Then, the aliens transmitted a message to Earth, ordering them to look to the sun, telling them of eight days and nights of meteorological convulsions following eruptions on the sun, after which all world leaders were to convene in Washington D.C.. The same message was translated into every Earth language and transmitted across the globe for twelve hours, going silent soon afterwards, when the sun flared up as said by the aliens. The solar activity caused weather phenomena for the next eight days, hampering communication and evacuation efforts, leaving 60% of the population of Washington D.C. unable to leave. When the days elapsed, the 56-day period was over, and the aliens saw that the world leaders did not convene as ordered, and as such, deployed their fleet to invade D.C., their spacecrafts invulnerable to anti-air weaponry.
However, it turns out that Russel had developed stronger models of the disruptor weapons, creating several that were mounted on military vehicles, and as the aliens fired on anti-air emplacements, the military used their disruptor weapons to make one of the saucers crash into the Capitol Reflecting Pool, disabling it. The aliens turned their attention to the disruptor-carrying trucks, while some ships started firing on nearby buildings, jamming ground communications. One ship moved to attack the White House, landing and deploying alien troops, who remained inside the ships' forcefield and fired on US soldiers who were defending the building. With the soldiers occupied, the saucer took off again to fire on the White House itself, but a disruptor truck drove in and made the saucer go down against nearby buildings instead, another truck forcing a saucer that was disintegrating other structures to crash through the front of Union Station. The army systematically brought down other saucers across the city, but at least three saucers escaped the counterattack and targeted the disruptor trucks. However, one was brought down over the Lincoln Memorial, and the other two moved to attack the Capitol Building, one landing in front of it while the other remained in the air. The grounded ship deployed aliens to breach the building, but as they left their forcefield, they were promptly shot by US soldiers. The ship took off again, but the disruptors made it crash almost immediately, leaving only one ship left, the disruptors making it crash into the dome of the Capitol Building, where it exploded, destroying all aliens aboard. With their ships down, surviving aliens on the ground were rendered vulnerable to conventional firearms, and were killed by military forces, ending their invasion and rendering their species extinct.