Richard Dominguez The 27th Day is a great character study (my favorite type of movie, always prefer a good story to good special effects any day) about an alien that gives 5 people from the 5 superpowers the means to destroy each other.All they have to do is not use it for 27 days and the earth will be saved.Naturally filmed when it was there is a lot of hostility among each others. The story revolves around the realization of the evil power in their hands and how everyone stands to lose.Just as they make this realization their respective governments find out that one of their citizens holds this destructive power and governments being what they are ...... Really enjoyed it.

Scott LeBrun Five disparate individuals from across Earth are contacted by an alien intelligence (Arnold Moss). They are American newspaperman Jonathan Clark (Gene Barry), English woman Eve Wingate (Valerie French), German scientist Professor Klaus Bechner (George Voskovec), Chinese woman Su Tan (Marie Tsien), and Russian soldier Ivan Godofsky (Azemat Janti). Each is given a "box" containing capsules with tremendous power - the power of life and death. If all five people can refrain from exploiting the destructive power of the capsules, Earths' people will be spared by the aliens, who are looking for a new planet to colonize.Scripted by John Mantley from his novel, and directed without frills by William Asher, "The 27th Day" is marked by an intelligent and interesting premise. It won't be to every taste because instead of dazzling us with action scenes or special effects, it instead focuses on examining the human tendencies towards xenophobia, paranoia, self destruction, and conflict. Naturally, people in power do end up discovering the amazing "gifts" bestowed upon the five strangers, and learn of their potential. Events escalate towards a tense showdown with the Russians, who see the annihilation of the Western world within their reach.Jonathan and Eve, all too aware of what reactions will be once the world at large learns their identities, attempt to hide out (and predictably, fall in love, although this subplot remains appreciably minor). The most important breakthroughs are made by Professor Bechner, who means to study the capsules in greater detail.The performances are solid from the well chosen cast. Likable leads Barry and French are extremely well supported by actors such as Stefan Schnabel as the warmongering Russian general, Friedrich von Ledebur as the sincere Dr. Neuhaus, and Paul Birch as an American admiral. Paul Frees and Mel Welles appear unbilled; the greatest contribution is by Mr. Voskovec, one of those actors who makes exposition worth listening to.This definitely merits a look from fans of '50s science fiction.Eight out of 10.

Michael_Elliott 27th Day, The (1957)*** (out of 4) There were dozens and dozens of science fiction movies released throughout the 1950's and for everyone like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL you got at least ten "Z" movies like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. The movie here seems to be forgotten even by the biggest sci-fi fans. I had personally never heard of the film, which is saying quite a bit because of the amount I read on various message boards. When sci-fi films were mentioned this one here never came up and that's a shame because it's a real gem. The film has an alien from a dying planet giving capsules to five people. These capsules have the power to destroy life on Earth, which would give the aliens a place to move. The humans can determine their fate but sure enough there are some bad people who want to use the capsules for their own gain even though they don't fully understand their power. During the decade people in this country were afraid of aliens from space and anything dealing with the Cold War so this movie combines both and makes a very entertaining movie out of it. There's really not too much "action" that goes on here and the monsters don't have four eyes or green bodies. Instead the monsters are pretty much certain humans who want to do bad in the world. The way the film makes this capsules so important and powerful was a nice move but so is the pay off at the end. The very final thing in the movie is a tad bit too preachy but the message is still there. Gene Barry, Valerie French, George Voskovec and Stefan Schnabel add nice performances as well. When people think of sci-fi from the 1950's it's doubtful they'll think of this movie but it's a real shame because here's a gem that needs to be rediscovered.

vandino1 Here's a film that means well but is so shoddy budget-wise, and so tortuously contrived story-wise, that it nearly collapses into the 'Worst Movies Ever' category by the end. It's not THAT bad, but it's a far cry from being an underrated or undiscovered "gem" that many of the reviewers in this forum would like to claim of it.This is basically a mashing of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and "Red Planet Mars." The basic gimmick is a make-up compact-like device that contains lipstick-sized human-killing-only "bombs." The aliens hand it over to human-kind figuring it'll speed up our race to destroy ourselves (since the aliens can't do it themselves and they want our planet for their own survival). But instead of handing the devices off to the leaders of five different powerful countries, they hand it off to five various individuals---then announce it to the world. And they don't explain to anyone how to open these devices... and they don't say what's inside the devices and whether it's good or bad. It's all very vague and unnecessarily confusing when these aliens have a 27 day deadline to get the job done. It's also known as bad writing. And the worst example of the forced and, dare I say stupid, writing follows halfway through. That would be when the Soviets get their device opened first and immediately threaten total destruction of North America. That would be workable... except that the U.S. contingent (led by Gene Barry) open one of their alien devices soon after. Stalemate, right? Mutually assured destruction, right? Nope. For some reason the U.S. says nothing. In fact, all demands of the Soviets are met (pulling out of Europe, the Mediterranean, etc.) and, even faced with a 48 hour deadline that North America will be destroyed, the U.S. still REFUSES TO REVEAL THEY'VE GOT THE WEAPON, TOO! Huh? After this kind of egregiously inept story-telling the film has no where to go intelligently. It simply slaps on more idiocies involving messages decipherable by only one man (the German Scientist) who proceeds on a hunch based on a vague clue ("The alien said it had the power of life AND death." How meaningful) that leads to a laughable finale involving a Soviet leader crawling on the ground for the open compact evidently more concerned with meeting that deadline to destroy North America than he is with the brain-splitting sound wave that is killing him. But he's an "enemy of freedom" and is wiped out like his fellow freedom enemies across the globe, because the German scientist in the U.S. has figured out how to use the device not to kill all humankind... but only the bad people. Somehow the device has some supernatural ability to determine, like Santa Claus, who's been naughty or nice. No matter that a miscalculation on the Scientist's part might have wiped out millions of "innocents" even accepting the preposterous idea that he would have discovered and accepted the device's "enemy only" capabilities. In the end, it all becomes a reversal of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" wherein instead of the aliens threatening the Earth with destruction if we don't mend our ways, we show the aliens that we've mended our ways and are now welcomed and respected by the alien collective out there in the universe. Bravo, earthlings. Applause. But let's not forget that at the time of this film (1957) the U.S. and Soviet Union already had the SAME SITUATION as presented in the film, involving nuclear weapons. Therefore the crucial element in the plot is totally repetitious. Both the U.S. and the Soviets already had weapons capable of blowing up the entire world. We moved from A-Bomb to H-Bomb in a game of one-oneupmanship that only led to détente. What difference would a more powerful weapon make? Even if the Soviets threatened the U.S. with the alien weapon the U.S. could counter with good ol' fashioned nukes to destroy the Soviets. So, what would be the point? And lastly, it's ridiculously forced storytelling to have the human race be saved or destroyed by the actions of one man (the German scientist) and then have the aliens congratulate mankind for waking up and joining the "friends of freedom" across the universe. Mankind DIDN'T wake up... one lone scientist just figured out the way to use the device to kill bad people. And Gene Barry didn't even help--because he played a people-distrusting cynic! It's a weird (or just plain bad) film indeed that lets its top-lined star play such a non-heroic, virtually useless character (try to recall ANYTHING that Barry does in this film that's productive). Sadly, it seems there are viewers out there who find this heavy-handed Armageddon nonsense to be a deep and thought-provoking sci-fi take on Cold War hysteria. It's hysterical alright. One last note: the film features the famous voice of Paul Frees as a news announcer and actually has him on camera in one scene. It's surprisingly rare when Frees is on camera so this is one opportunity to see the face behind so much fabulous voice-over work. I assume his character wasn't an "enemy of freedom" and made the cut when that scientist fired off the weapon.