Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

Chris Gaskin I'd been after The 27th Day for years and at last, recently obtained a copy off Ebay on the Colombia Classics label.An Alien gives 5 random people capsules that if opened before the 27th day is up, could wipe out human life. The 5 people then have lots of people after them, the journalist and British girl go into hiding at a Millatary installation.I found this movie very enjoyable and tense, especially when the people were hiding, evading capture.The cast includes Gene Barry (War of the Worlds), Valerie French and Paul Birch (The Day the World Ended).To sum up, excellent.Rating: 3 stars our of 5.

fluffy2560 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.

Robert J. Maxwell There's this extraterrestrial guy known as "the Alien" who zips to earth in a flying saucer and kidnaps five ordinary people -- an LA reporter (Gene Barry), a nice English singer (Valerie French), a German-American egghead (George Voskovic), a Russian soldier (Azemat Janti), and a Chinese girl (Marie Tsien).Once the puzzled guests are comfortably seated in the Alien's space yacht, he explains to them that his culture lives on a planet that is about to be demolished by a novating sun. All the people on his planet naturally want to evacuate to the planet Earth and live in Las Vegas. Well, not necessarily Las Vegas. But they don't want to live among an earthly population who have been ruled by impulses from their reptilian brains and have been warring constantly with each other. And the Alien's own culture doesn't permit them to exterminate the present population on Earth.Therefore, he proposes to give each of the five captives a little scallop-shaped box, each of which contains capsules that together will destroy all human life on Earth -- and nothing BUT human life. The Alien opines sensibly that earthlings will use the capsules to destroy everyone, thereby sparing the Aliens the distasteful trouble of doing so. The earthlings have 27 days. At the end of that time, the capsules will become powerless. Each of the five boxes will turn to dust if their owner dies during the 27 days. The Alien then deposits them back on earth, in the places whence they came. He does not wish them good luck.Well, things happen fast. The Chinese girl commits suicide and her box does indeed disintegrate. The Russian soldier isn't a bad chap but his bloodthirsty leaders shoot him full of drugs and drag the secret of the capsules out of him. The British babe throws hers in the sea. There is a good deal of political intrigue and running around. The singer joins Gene Barry and they hide out for a while in an out-of-season race track before giving up to the authorities.The Russian general, now in possession of the ultimate weapon, demands that the US withdraw its troops to North America. The US complies but the treacherous Red begins to recite the longitude and latitude of 3 locations in the Americas -- one for each capsule -- that will depopulate all of North America and parts of Central America, leaving the way clear for an invasion by the USSR and its partners. The humble Russian soldier rebels and tackles his leader who dies before he can carry out his nefarious plan.How does he die? Here's how. The German scientist -- a GOOD German scientist because he is on OUR side -- figures out from some hieroglyphics printed on the capsule and from some off-hand remark by the Alien, that the capsules will only kill BAD PEOPLE. That's how the Soviet general dies. And that's how all the bad guys in Russia and China presumably die too.This is ludicrous. All the bad guys are limited to Asia? And all the good guys live in Europe and North America? So far this has been a slightly sluggish but thoughtful story made for adults. Then suddenly it collapses in upon itself, squashed flat by the heavy weight of reassuring morality it carries. John Mantley wrote the novel this story was based on and at least he had some token Westerners bite the dust too -- an occasional Archbishop, a couple of politicians. And Mantley also recognized that true evil must be measured on at least an ordinal scale, not a nominal one. That is, some people are less evil than others. In the novel, those with SOME bad ideas suffered miserable headaches while the evil was burned out of their brains, but they survived.Yet, this isn't a junky movie. It's rather like a thought experiment. There are no monsters and no splashy razzle dazzle effects. What there is, is useful and kind of horrifyingly simple. An elderly scientist volunteers as a subject to see if the capsules really do what they're intended to. He's afloat in mid-South Atlantic in a raft, accompanied only by some goats and pigeons. The capsule is sent to his coordinate and -- poof. He disappears. His empty clothing flops to the deck. Neither the pigeons nor the goats give a damn but observers aboard the distant US destroyer do.It's a little slow for the kids, and maybe for some adults. No giant grasshoppers or anything. And the plot has a couple of holes that need caulking badly. But the film remains a sly and perceptive comment on human nature. In real life, of course, it would be unsafe to predict the happy ending we see in this movie.