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Fantastic!

Absolutely Fantastic

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

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.

Five ordinary earthlings are given a box by a benign alien (a fine and credible performance by Arnold Moss) containing capsules capable of killing millions of people. If they can refrain from using the capsules with twenty-seven days, then the earth will be spared from annihilation.Director William Asher relates the intriguing story at a steady pace and maintains a serious thoughtful tone throughout. John Mantley's compelling script offers an intelligent and provocative exploration of human nature as well as mankind's capacity for either self-destruction or self-preservation. Gene Barry as cynical reporter Jonathan Clark and Valerie French as the sweet Eve Wingate make for appealing leads; they receive sturdy support from George Voskovec as the kindly Professor Klaus Bechner, Stefan Schnabel as a sadistic power mad Russian general, Friedrich von Ledebur as the wise and noble Professor Karl Neuhaus, Paul Birch as a hard-nosed admiral, and Azemat Janti as resolute Russian soldier Ivan Godofsky. The ubiquitous Paul Frees has a small uncredited role as a newscaster. Henry Freulich's crisp black and white cinematography provides a nice sharp look. A solid little movie.

Interesting little movie, a product of the times and rather short at 1h 15m. This is simply an American propaganda movie of the 1950s. Leading man Gene Barry does a workman like job as the conscience of the few chosen to carry the weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the cast provide sufficient background decoration including the always interesting Stefan Schnabel in an early role looking very Stalin like as megalomaniac leader of the USSR. With a face like that, he was made to play the Soviet heavy. Odd casting decisions here and there - leading lady Valerie French is OK to look at but she sounds bizarrely and comically like Princess Diana. I was surprised to see she was actually British as it sounded like she'd been badly voice coached. Clearly some budget problems beset this movie with quite large chunks set inside a stable/tack room at a California race track. Having set themselves a time line involving 27 days (e.g. 27th Day of the title), they had to fill the story up somehow and try and introduce a mechanism for creating romance between the leading man and woman. Worth watching as a movie of the times and as a bit of social history, but I think other movies like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" do a more entertaining (if tacky) job of providing allegories of good versus evil and democracy versus dictatorships common in movies of the Cold War.

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.