LOS PLATILLOS VOLADORES (1956)
Article 2620 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-7-2008
Posting Date: 10-15-2008
Directed by Julian Soler
Featuring Adalberto Martinez, Evangelina Elizondo, Amalia Aguilar
Country: Mexico

A man hopes to gain enough money to marry his fiancee by installing an airplane engine in his car and using it to win a race. However, the car becomes airborne and crashes near a small town. The residents think the car was a flying saucer and the inhabitants Martians. Hilarity ensues (I think).

I got this plot description from “The Motion Picture Guide”; since my copy of this Mexican science fiction musical comedy is in unsubtitled Spanish, I found it very difficult to follow. Some of the humor is fairly clear; there’s a lot of mugging, for example, and, quite frankly, I haven’t seen this much eyebrow bobbing since my last Groucho Marx movie. There’s also a subplot about a tall lanky girl getting the hots for the man mistaken for a Martian. The musical numbers are weird, though I can’t really call them memorable. There’s also a subplot about an evil Russian trying to kill the man during a sabre dance. Real martians also show up at the end of the movie. To be honest, this one doesn’t look too promising.