The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

Please don't spend money on this.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Director Val Guest made some good stuff in his time. He did not deserve to end his career stooging for Cannon and Ball that's for sure! I really like his directorial style; he seems to have decided a documentary-style approach was the best way to present outre material; and what worked so well in his Quatermass movies works equally well here.What a refreshing change to have believable characters compared to the one dimensional stereo-types we get today. Having just watched SPECTRE, where the screen writers appear to never have met a real human, it was so good to watch this: well rounded, flawed guys trying to make sense of the momentous events.Edward Judd usually played slightly disagreeable types (at least in most of the movies I've seen him in) and this is no exception. He plays a journalist at the Daily Express who stumbles upon a story that the world is about to end due to twin nuclear missile tests forcing the earth from its orbit, and he does it very well. Slacking off as he's depressed over the failure of his marriage and only able to see his kid for a few hours once a week, hitting the bottle a bit too much, full of sarcastic rejoinders and bitterness, I found him totally convincing, much like the movie, in fact.Leo Mckern is also a stand out as Judd's colleague, who frequently covers for him and despite his acerbic nature is actually soft-hearted. Janet Munro has some quite sexy scenes as Judd's love interest, her near toplessness is surely the only reason I can think of for the film's original X certificate. Munro is very good, too.There is also plenty of historical interest as the film was actually shot in part at the real Daily Express print offices. Indeed, the paper's then editor, Arthur Christensen, also has a role in the movie!It's only real fault is the beatnik riot towards the end. This is just bloody silly and was injected only to add some false drama to the end. This movie didn't need it.The film is superb. Hollywood please don't remake it. I don't want Tom Cruise saving the world, or teenagers uncovering adult conspiracy theories amidst ten thousand special effects shots.

This movie showed man's foolishness sending the Earth to a fiery doom. That's so similar to global warming it's scary. Like this movie, global warming is a fiction.The story is awful, simplistic, ridiculous.Everything else about the movie is terrific. The sets are fantastic. The acting is top notch. The music is engaging. It was a tremendous production of a concept that belongs in a children's coloring book rather than in a serious movie.Nah, that's an insult to children.The Cold War aspect of the movie is also good. America's fear of the almighty USSR kept America sitting by as the USSR ran wild around the world. The story in this film expresses a ridiculous fear.Story: -100 Acting, Sets, Music, Direction: 10

Val Guest directed this apocalyptic sci-fi thriller that stars Edward Judd & Leo McKern as newspaper journalists in Britain who come to the awful conclusion that the world has been tilted on its axis, hurtling toward the sun after both American & Russian forces conduct nuclear tests that backfire badly, threatening the entire human race. Janet Munro plays Judd's contact and love interest, as things start to heat up... Talky film is well acted, with some memorable scenes, and a most striking(if understated) ending, but is marred by a slow pace and dry, arid atmosphere that makes film a hard(but still worthwhile) haul. Doesn't quite live up to that title...

This movie is so good, it hurts. Someone should tell me how the brits were once able to spurt out masterpieces like this, just like a kitchen oven spits out bread buns. And TDECF just seems to get better with each viewing. Those two orange-tinted sequences that frame the entire movie are simply beyond praise. How to say it in words? Behold the deserted streets, the empty riverbeds; the haunting, slow, drumbeat coming from somewhere; is that the heartbeat of a dying Earth, or rather the muffled strokes of distant church bells? And those terrible words that resonate all of the sudden like bullets in an empty City Hall: "The time is now 10.41...19 minutes before countdown...19 minutes". And then, a solitary Janet Munro, her fragile silhouette framed against the door of a deserted switchboard room. There's something childlike about her presence there, a rare mix of innocent curiosity and apprehensive expectation, as she hesitantly waddles her way to the switchboard. And the movie is barely 3 minutes old! That opening alone is enough to put TDTECF amongst the best. But even better is that final pub scene, the most poignant of the movie, with Harry and May watching their whole life escaping them in front of their eyes, while trying desperately to keep a stiff lip, holding to whatever they have left. As someone put it well, there's nothing sadder than a deserted pub when the world is about to end. (it seems confusing, but both tinted bits don't follow each other. Most of the second, until Peter leaves the pub, goes right before he appears in the first, after the passing car. Then, what's left of it completes the speech he started at the end of the first) This is what I would call a flawless movie. After several views I can't still find it fault. Maybe Stenning being just a bit too angry, but I guess that's part of the plot. A plot that's quite simple: an alcoholic reporter, and a bit of a loser, finds love and redemption when his path crosses that of a typical girl-next-door switchboard clerk, just about when the world is about to end. Or will it? Anyway, the writing is superb, the dialogues great and I have no problem with the characters being too witty--which some have criticized--as I assume they reserve their quote of lame one-liners for the times when they're off camera. Some have criticized also the great use of newsreels, but I disagree. That kind of material perfectly blends with what's going in the movie, what the cosmic disaster reserves for all of us, and give the story a eerie feeling of indisputable authenticity.I have watch bits of Munro's later movies in You Tube and I can't figure out why her career took a turn for the worse later, as here she's brilliant, luminous. She brights up every scene she's on and I must conclude that those Disney years were not that bad for her after all. And what she can't do with a good line (Don't make it so easy, be hard to get, make me fight for you!) She's also the lone protagonist of what must be one of the most erotic bits in movie History, that of her lying in bed after setting Peter in the bathroom and before the phone call. Her beautiful eyes longingly cast on the light under the door, her sweaty, palpitating, chest brimming with barely concealed intensity. This is a scene you have to watch in slow motion to fully appreciate and one that perfectly illustrates what Guest says in the commented version of the DVD, that the best thing is not to show but to suggest.And of course the science behind the plot is B.S. but if the creators of Casablanca got away with making Gen. De Gaulle a big shot in Vichy's France, who's counting? (as I recall, what makes Earth keep its orbital path around the sun isn't its rotation, but its inertial momentum; i.e., its speeding mass. And also, its rotation depends solely on its angular momentum. A-bombs going off in the poles won't do a thing, as they won't produce torque. In the Equator instead they would have a chance, if any, to do damage. BTW: the Chilean quake of Feb 2010 released energy equal to 1 million Hiroshima bombs or 400 50--megaton bombs, the biggest ever built, and that barely shortened the day in a tiny fraction of a second).All in all, a neglected masterpiece. Which is as well, as nobody will likely try to do remakes or a sequels to it. I say 8.5/10 on 10.