[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/invasion_of_the_saucer_men.jpg]]

->''"Pffft! That could be'' '''any''' '''50s sci-fi film!"''
-->-- '''WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob''' on the film's title, ''Film/ShakeRattleAndRock'' review.

''Invasion of the Saucer Men'' is a 1957 science fiction horror BMovie. Yes, there really is a 1950s science-fiction B-movie titled ''Invasion of the Saucer Men''. It was adapted from "The Cosmic Frame", a short story by Paul Fairman that ran in ''Magazine/AmazingStories'' (May of 1955, available [[https://archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v29n03_1955-05_cape1736/page/n61/mode/1up here]]).

The movie concerns a town named Hicksburg, wherein a spaceship lands in the nearby woods. Drunk opportunist Joe Gruen (a young Creator/FrankGorshin) ventures out to find it. Meanwhile a teenage couple - Johnny (Steve Terrell) who works in a garage, and Joan (Gloria Castillo) who is the daughter of the city attorney - are driving down lovers lane when they run over one of the epononymous [[MyBrainIsBig bulbous-headed]] aliens from the spaceship. The two go off to tell of their encounter to the police, and while they're gone, Joe comes across the alien corpse. The aliens kill via injecting people with alcohol with their retractable fingernails, and do so to Joe. They substitute his corpse for the run-down alien's. The police come with Johnny and Joan back to the site and find Joe, thereby assuming that the two were drunk and ran him over, hallucinating that he was an alien. Without the police's help, the town's teens are forced to take on the aliens themselves...

Was [[MadeForTVMovie remade for TV]] in 1965 as ''Film/TheEyeCreatures'', which is a much worse movie.

The design of the character of Morbo from ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' is based on that of the aliens from this film.

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!!This film provides examples of:
* AdaptationExpansion: It's a very short movie but they still needed to expand on the short story to get it to be as long as it is. "The Cosmic Frame" ends with Johnny being wrongfully arrested for running a man over (after being framed by the aliens - hence the title). The film carries the story on a ways past that, with Johnny eventually successfully clearing his name and getting a HappyEnding.
** AdaptationalProtagonist: The main character of "The Cosmic Frame" is actually Johnny's dad, Sam, but the filmmakers, knowing who their audience would be, decided to change the focus to the teen couple themselves. This meant expanding Joan's role [[AscendedExtra in particular]], since she only has a single line of dialogue in the original story, while Sam [[DemotedToExtra barely appears in the film]].
** AdaptationalVillainy: The aliens are clear-cut villains in the movie, while in the short story, they're more AmbiguouslyEvil. They frame Johnny for the death of Frank (the equivalent character to Joe from the movie) as an act of revenge; admittedly, he ''did'' run over one of them. However, it's still unclear what happened to Frank, and whether the aliens may have killed him for a less justifiable reason.
** AdaptationalWimp: The aliens have no particular WeaksauceWeakness in the original story, and by the end of it seem to have more or less [[TheBadGuyWins won.]]
** DecompositeCharacter: Farmer Larkin and Joe Gruen are both split off from Frank Williams, a character [[TheGhost we hear about but never meet]] in the short story. Joe also has elements of the short story's version of Lee Hayden (Joan's dad), inheriting his desire to financially capitalize off the dead alien; in the movie, Lee never even sees one of the aliens or believes in their existence.
* AdultsAreUseless: None of the adults believe the teenage main characters except for Artie.
* AlienInvasion: Please refer to the title.
* AliensInCardiff: The aliens land in the woods outside a small town.
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Averted, but the government agents try it nonetheless.
* AliensStealCattle: Averted brutally when one of the aliens attacks the farmer's prize bull and gets an eye gouged out. Toward the end we see that [[spoiler:[[ImprobableAnimalSurvival the bull, though wounded by the alien's claws, has survived]]]].
* BenevolentConspiracy: The military men who destroy the alien spaceship are sworn to secrecy about the entire encounter, in order to keep the world safe. One soldier ponders how many other units have encountered similar phenomena and likewise had to stay quiet about it.
* BizarreAlienBiology: Retractable finger-needles that inject some sort of alcohol as a weapon. They can also detach themselves and run amok on their own if the aliens are killed.
* CassandraTruth: Because they all smell like booze.
* DittoAliens: Low budgets will do that to you, but it could be [[Film/TheEyeCreatures so much worse]]
* DrunkDriver: Johnny is accused of being this, which leads to him getting arrested for running over a guy.
* EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion: [[spoiler:Courtesy of the alien's WeaksauceWeakness]]
* ExposedExtraterrestrials: The aliens seem perfectly comfortable strutting around nude.
* FlyingSaucer: It's even in the title.
* {{Gorn}}: There is a shockingly gory scene (for the time) this was made at one point when one of the Saucer Men has their eye gouged out by an enraged bull.
* HorrorComedy: While a few scenes are clearly intended to be genuinely shocking, the movie is full of comic relief moments and mostly has a fairly light tone. The remake, ''Film/TheEyeCreatures'', is even DenserAndWackier.
* LittleGreenMen: Whether it's played straight or for laughs is somewhat unclear.
* MakeOutPoint: Ends up saving the day. When Johnny and Joan realize the aliens' WeaksauceWeakness, they enlist all the other couples at the point to [[spoiler:kill the remaining aliens with their cars' headlights, on the logic that their fellow teens will believe them where the [[AdultsAreUseless adults wouldn't]]]].
* MistakenForAliens: The police suspects that the drunk youths mistook the guy they run over for an alien.
* MyBrainIsBig: The big, veiny variety.
* NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer: The narrator assures us that yes, Hicksburg really was the name of the town. In the original short story, it was called Kensington Corner
* PoliceAreUseless: The police, naturally, refuse to believe there are aliens, or even investigate the possibility.
* TerriblePickupLines: Joe asks a waitress for directions, specifically asking her to tell him how to get to "first base with you tonight." It doesn't go very well for him.
* TerrorAtMakeOutPoint: It's when driving away from the lover's lane that our central couple first encounter an alien.
* TouchOfTheMonster: A movie with this title simply would not be complete without a poster that bore this trope.
* WeakenedByTheLight: [[spoiler:The aliens.]]
* WeaksauceWeakness: [[spoiler:The aliens die in bright light. This raises the question of how they expected to conquer a planet that gets so much sunlight.]]

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