"The Day The World Ended" : 1956 - A Review. - AudioHead

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"The Day The World Ended" : 1956 - A Review.

168.10.128.147

Director Roger Corman's first sci-fi film effort in 1956, "The Day
The World Ended" is a low-budget, marginal film. The story involves
a rancher (Paul Birch) and his grown daughter, (Lori Nelson) who
are holed up in their house after a nuclear holocaust has decimated
most of the world's population; their home has been protected from
radioactive fallout by the surrounding mountains. The setting is
limited to the house and immediate surrounding foothills; Corman makes
some attempt at post-holocaustic atmosphere with smoke generators.
At the start of the film, Birch and Nelson are suddenly besieged by
five survivors and a burrow - who all inexplicably arrive within a
short time of each other. One of the survivors has been affected by
the fallout and is horribly disfigured on one side of his face. It struck me as unusual that most of the survivors, with the exception of the radiation-afflicted survivor and the old straggler and his donkey, appeared remarkably clean and well-groomed. The
characters are varied and much of the conflict results from the contrasting personalities, especially in regard to the limited supplies and to geologist Richard Denning's and tough guy Mike "Touch"
Conner's(later TV Series,"Mannix") heated competition over the young,
pretty Nelson. Denning and Conners give the best performances in this
film, Adele Jergens(Conner's girlfriend) also delivers an entertaining
bit when reenacting her striptease dancing act. However, the scenes
drag on and on for most of the movie without a glimmer of the "mutant
monster"(Paul Blaisdell); the monster finally appears after some
foreshadowing, but is remarkably inept in its attack on Denning and
Nelson and quickly dies from exposure to "pure rain". Anti-climatic, with
Denning delivering the final cliche', "Man created him, God destroyed
him".
Not much comic relief except for the ridiculous looking monster, who
wouldn't frighten anyone but very young children (I saw it at a local
drive-in theater when aged 12 or 13, and although the monster appeared
interesting to my young eyes, it certainly was not scary), and a
laughable scene where Conners sticks his exposed hand out a window to
collect rainwater in a container to see if its radioactive.
Some of the dialogue is atrocious, for example, one of the characters
suggests that human skin exposed to radiation could be called "atomic
skin", I rolled at that one.
A one-time viewing of "The Day The World Ended" should be more than
enough for most, except for perhaps the most ardent Corman fan.

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Topic - "The Day The World Ended" : 1956 - A Review. - AudioHead 09:22:14 08/21/00 (0)

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