“The Flying Saucer Mystery” was released in 1950 and then re-released in 1952 containing more footage. It is an American documentary short and propaganda. No one is credited as being the director. The films run about nine and a half minutes and twelve minutes respectively. The film’s main claim to fame is that it is probably the first documentary about flying saucers.
The film was believed to have been lost for decades. Both versions resurfaced sometime in the 90’s. The Air Force created the short as a filler between movies at the local movie houses. The film does play very much like a newsreel and does incorporate some newsreel footage.
For the most part the mystery of UFOs remains a mystery. The film spends more time talking about man’s ventures into developing ships that fly and not on those that could be from other planets. Most of the information is the old standard explanations like weather balloons and swamp gas.
The people in the film are not actors. They are just scientists trying to explain various phenomenon and regular people who have seen things they can’t explain. It is obvious that they are, in some cases, reading from cue cards or just plain boring in their delivery. The stilted dialogue by those being interviewed is probably why the film was lampooned by Rifftrax.
Created three years after the Roswell incident, the film does very little in explaining anything to do with UFOs. It’s not great by any means but it is a somewhat interesting little tidbit and is mostly for UFO completists.
Between 1947 and 1969 more than 12,000 UFO sightings were reported to the top-secret Air Force team in charge of a project known as Project Blue Book. The team’s mission was to investigate all UFO claims to determine their authenticity and whether or not they posed a threat to national security.
1950 release
1952 release