XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

grizzledgeezer This film is worth seeing -- up to the last five minutes.Up to then, it's an excellent story about good questions -- if you could wipe out all of humanity, without damaging anything else -- would you? How would your enemies react? Is there any justification for ever killing anyone? The poster's claim that it took guts to make this film is not far-removed from the truth.At least, up to the end. Unfortunately, the ending is an absurd, self-serving cop-out. At least one other reviewer reveals it, so be cautious about which reviews you read. If you have any intelligence, you're likely to scream and holler and jump up and down, crying "No! No! No! No! No!".

fenian2153 An alien has just given you a box with three capsules in it. Only YOUR thought impulses can open the box. Each capsule can destroy all human life in a 3000 mile radius. If you die, your capsules become useless. After 27 days, ALL the capsules become useless. You are one of five humans to be given such a box. Thanks to the alien, EVERYONE on Earth knows your identity. WHAT DO YOU DO? Do you run and hide? Do you report what you know to your government authorities? Do you use the awesome power of the capsules to wipe out billions of human lives? There's something else to consider: the aliens' world is dying. They mean to inhabit Earth whether or not there are humans about. Are they peaceful or warlike? Benefactors or conquerers? You don't know. WHAT DO YOU DO?

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.

classicsoncall I guess I owe the Turner Classic Movie channel a big thank you for it's New Year's Day hangover relief recipe, a full day of sci-fi programming that offered some great well known classics, along with (for this viewer) previously unheard of gems like this one - "The 27th Day". It's premise immediately called to mind the plot for the the best film of it's kind in the genre, "The Day The Earth Stood Still". However, instead of offering the citizens of Earth an ultimatum as in the latter picture, 'The 27th Day" gives five ordinary Earthlings from the world powers a device that has the potential to eradicate all of mankind. Right off the bat, one begins to wonder what in fact you might do yourself if given such a responsibility.One can't miss the era's anti-Communist propaganda theme in the course of the story, though the message seems a bit deeper than one might originally think. During the 1950's, China was emerging as a world power, but was still largely ineffective in pushing it's huge weight around; interestingly, the Chinese girl Su Tan opted to commit suicide rather than face the decision to deal with her device. Whereas the Russian private Ivan Godofsky reflected a willingness to die rather than reveal the secret of the doomsday device to his military superiors. It reinforced for me the idea that the vast majority of humanity would have no problem living peaceably together, except for their leaders who believe in the superiority of their nation or race. The movie points out how easy it is for reason, discipline and restraint to give way to fear, as people find it easy to fear most everything, not the least of which would be an alien threat of the outer space kind.The only thing I found to be rather troubling with the story was it's resolution in the way it played out German Bechner's (George Voskovec) mathematical interpretation of the alien capsules. The Soviet General is shown defeated and dying as a 'confirmed enemy of freedom', but just how the alien gizmo could fine tune it's radar to locate individuals like that was way beyond the movie's ability to explain adequately. I also got a kick out of Professor Bechner's entreaty to the aliens at the end of the story from a seat at the United Nations; giving them fifteen seconds to respond from somewhere out in the far reaches of outer space. Geez, couldn't he have allowed for atmospheric disturbances or some other technicality? Why not a full sixty seconds!!About the only recognizable name actor in the flick is "War of the Worlds" alumnus, Gene Barry. Remember that scene in the tavern with the English woman Eve Wingate (Valerie French)? There was a TV playing over the bar with a Western shootout on view; I'd like to think it was an episode of 'Bat Masterson', but that series came out the following year. In a different scene, Barry's character Jonathan Clark got in a line to Eve about American rock n' roll, calling it 'music almost'.Anyway, for a chance viewing on an otherwise dreary, rainy New Year's Day, the film wound up an unexpectedly good and interesting treat, even if dated against the backdrop of current world events. Catch it if you can.