Movies like The 27th Day

The 27th Day is a 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film, distributed by Columbia Pictures. It was produced by Helen Ainsworth, directed by William Asher, and stars Gene Barry, Valerie French, George Voskovec, and Arnold Moss. The screenplay by John Mantley is based on his 1956 original science fiction novel of the same name.

Englishwoman Evelyn Wingate, American reporter Jonathan Clark, Chinese peasant Su Tan, German physicist Klaus Bechner, and Soviet soldier Ivan Godofsky are randomly transported to an alien spacecraft in Earth orbit. There, they are met by a humanoid referring to himself only as "The Alien", who explains that he is the representative of a world orbiting a sun about to go nova. Needing a new world to inhabit within the next 35 days, yet prohibited by their moral code from killing intelligent life, The Alien provides each of the five with sets of three capsules in a clear, round, hand-held case. Each set is capable of destroying all human life within a 3,000-mile diameter; their expectation is that humanity will use all the capsules, obliterating itself, leaving the Earth for the aliens to populate. The capsules' containers can only be opened by the thought waves of the person to whom they were given. Once out in the open, they can be used by anyone, but only during the next 27 days, after which the capsules become inert. The Alien states that if humanity does not destroy itself, the Alien's cannot invade and will perish. He also explains that if one or more of the five die, their capsules will self-destruct and become harmless.