Rating:
***/*****, or 7/10
Starring:
Richard Denning, Lori Nelson, Mike Connors
Directed
by Roger Corman
USA:
Golden State Productions, 1955
Truth is,
few of the films from Roger Corman's early days of directing schlock
movies for a dime are 'good' in the usual sense of the word. In fact,
most (if not all) of them are cheap exploitation quickies shot for
next to nothing so they could do nothing but make a profit in
drive-in theaters screaming for content to cater to teenage love
birds more interested in each other in the dark than in the goings-on
present on the big screen in front of them. Flicks like The Beast
with a Million Eyes (1955), Swamp Women (1956) and It
Conquered the World (1956) nowadays are interesting only to geeks
revelling in bad taste or film students exploring the fringes of
acceptable study material. Still, the occasional sort-of decent film
can be found among Corman's early work for those with enough
patience and the stomach for digesting campy creature features from
the Fifties. Day the World Ended I count among these very few.
Stories
about man's inability to coexist in peace with his fellows, even when
such cooperation would be to both parties' mutual advantage in the
struggle for basic survival, have often resulted in fascinating
pieces of audiovisual excitement studying the human condition and
continue to do so to this day even when you thought little more could
be added to the subject, except for different, usually
interchangeable threats. You think people watch popular shows like
The Walking Dead only for the excessive gore and neat-o zombie
make-up? Think again: they watch it for the gripping human drama
involved in living together under extreme circumstances. Corman
applied the same formula to this post-apocalyptic tale of tragedy
almost sixty years ago, as he tells the story of a small band of
survivors who seek refuge in the same remote mountain location when
the bombs finally fall, a typical fear of the Fifties where such an
occurrence never seemed so unlikely. Among those that would live are
a survivalist, his pretty daughter, a geologist, a loudmouth crook,
his slutty girlfriend and a man with a terrible secret. Of course
tension quickly mounts between these disparate people over the usual
things, like who's in charge, who rations the food and who ends up
dating the daughter. Most of the film consists of people arguing, but
fortunately the movie only lasts 79 minutes and the man with a secret
mutates into a horrifying monster (read: guy in a silly suit) to
spice things up a bit. Corman proves quite adept in suspensefully
paving the way for the creature's first appearance between all the
petty bickering. And even though you know the actual monster isn't
gonna succeed in living up to this buildup to his rampage, if you
know and accept what type of movie you're watching before you start,
you might be able to get a kick out of this film regardless of the
total lack of production values, even if only for laughs (who ever
said Corman made serious movies anyway?). Aficionados of Fifties'
Sci-Fi films will also be grateful to see Richard Denning star as the
handsome scientist and noble man of action, as the actor is almost a
staple of the science fiction films of this era, starring in genre
pieces like the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
and less well remembered pictures like The Black Scorpion (1957)
and Target Earth (1954).
The
dystopian themes of Day the World Ended, effectively
underscoring that man is his own worst enemy (hardly a novel notion
in 1955 to begin with), have since been addressed in other films and
television ad infinitum (compare various episodes of the different
Twilight Zone series, as well as recent films like The
Divide and The Mist for example) yet continue to fascinate
and appeal to people, who cannot help but wonder if this was really
what it came down to when the world went to hell. Corman crafts a
fairly entertaining film out of the subject matter, which remains one
of his best, though that is hardly saying something. Though I
wouldn't exactly recommend this type of film to anyone, I can
honestly say that if you ever fell the need to go sit and watch an
obvious cashgrab B-movie from a master in creating such fare the
likes of Corman, it might as well be this one. You could do far worse
and really, really waste your time.
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