Day the World Ended (1955)

So much average

Expected more

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

After directing two westerns, Roger Corman turned into territories where he is best known of - science fiction and monster movies. 'Day the World Ended' is typical Corman's vehicle. After an atomic war destroys human civilization, a small group of people trying to survive in the house prepared for nuclear holocaust by former Navy commander. The group of people must face many threats and problems - how the radioactive contamination affects them and when will it dissipate, there is also a monster loose in the valley, and of course the most important, the relationships between people who all want to stay alive as long as possible, while the supplies of clean food and water decline.The film starts with nuclear blast, and we are already thrown into a post apocalyptic world where these seven people might be the only survivors. All the action takes place in one house and in the valley surrounding it, so no need to get excited about seeing ruined city landscapes. There are plenty pseudoscience and some outright laughable moments, but all this is compensated by pretty good acting and hauntingly claustrophobic atmosphere through most part of the film (until the finale reveals the monster who we only saw through shadows and moving leaves) that is pretty close to the eerie feeling in 'Night of the Living Dead'. While we only get the subtle glimpses of the monster, the thing is not that bad and I actually kept the fingers crossed that it could stay that way. Of course, I know it's Roger Corman's movie, and finally we have to see the hideous (in the movie's context and in awful costume's context) beast in it's laughable glory so the main hero could have heroic battle with it.With all that 'Day the World Ended' remains one of the best and most haunting early Corman monster movie, and for a hardcore fan - it is a treat.

Fun Roger Corman flick about a small group of people who survived a nuclear war only to be in danger from a monster. The survivors are a geologist (Richard Denning), a guy with a Moe Howard haircut who suffered radiation burns (Paul Dubov), a hotheaded hoodlum (Mike Connors) and his stripper girlfriend (Adele Jergens), an old prospector (Raymond Hatton), and a father (Paul Birch) and his daughter (Lori Nelson). They spend most of the movie hanging around Birch's house talking, fighting, and lusting after Nelson, but it's not as boring as it sounds. The characters are pretty one-note but the actors are able to keep them interesting enough. The monster is courtesy of Paul Blaisdell. It's a pretty kooky-looking creature. This is a low budget movie so don't expect much from the effects or production values. But there's a charm to it, as with many of Corman's early films, that I find hard to resist.

It's nigh impossible to fault Roger Corman's THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED: working with pocket change, a single set and just a handful of "second string" actors, he manages to give us an entertaining little end of the world tale. The fx, for the most part, are bargain basement- with the notable exception of The Monster, a Paul Blaisdell original. (Had I my druthers, The Monster would've been on screen much longer than it is- a lifelong complaint when it comes to Monster Movies-, but we take what we can get.) I've always preferred Practical Effects, especially when it comes to Monsters, but the vast majority of Today's Monster Movies tend to rely on cgi. Not that it helps: most cgi look like what they are (computerized cartooning) and rarely invoke fright. In fact, one of the things I do when I enter one of these comments is I TAKE AWAY points when I rate a multimillion dollar cgi show: to make Something from nearly Nothing- as Corman often did- is quite an accomplishment: to squander millions of dollars on unbelievable cgi is downright laughable (not to mention lazy).

The Day the World Ended looks super cheap, but it is actually a watchable movie. It all begins with a nuclear holocaust. As poisonous radiation blankets the earth, only a few pockets are able to sustain normal life. The film is about one such pocket located somewhere in a mountainous desert probably in or near California.A father and his daughter are hunkering down in their remote house, fully prepared to survive the nuclear winter. Five survivors straggle down from the nuclear fog-bound hills and make it to the house. There are seven people in the house, but only enough supplies for three (the father and daughter were expecting her fiancée to join them).At this point, the movie becomes a great little character study. The small time hood and the hero, Rick (Richard Denning), compete for the affection of the daughter, Louise (Lori Nelson). An ex-stripper tries to hang onto her man while the father tries to keep everyone in line. The dying guy, surprisingly, does not die, but begins to have strange longings for the nuclear fog and strong cravings for raw meat. An old prospector and his mule round out the cast. The father can't get anyone on the radio, so these folks might be all alone in the world, trapped in a small house, surrounded by poisonous fog.The sets are by far the worst part of the movie. The house looks like a Palm Springs vacation home rented out for the weekend. It just does not look like the father and daughter live here (for a guy who was planning to survive a nuclear war you'd think he would at least remember to trick out his house!). The decor is dull, which is bad because we spend most of the movie looking at it. Oh and the curtains! All the windows are curtained. The characters spend lots of time peering out of the curtains (but we never see what they are looking at), and they enter and leave through curtained doors too. It just looks really cheap.If some of the scenes took place in another room, especially one with survival gear, the film might have been much more interesting. I felt like I needed to see what a 50s survival bunker (or storeroom) might have looked like. After all, it was not unheard of for people to have converted basements or backyard bunkers during this time period. Unfortunately the movie was too cheap to show something that really needed to be shown.The most interesting plot dynamic involves Louise. She has been hoping for her fiancée to arrive at the house, but he does not. Her father urges her to forget about him (and marry Rick within the week and get busy repopulating the earth). But she is not ready. At odd times Louise hears a strange psychic piping noise that seems like a voice calling her (no one else hears it) and she feels she is being watched.It's not too long before the household realizes there is a monster on the prowl outside. And the father and Rick start coming up with theories of humans and animals mutating into monsters due to radiation. I don't think the monster looks any worse than most cheap monster-suits of this genre. At least the monster is somewhat mysterious. The monster uses its psychic piping noise to lure Louise out of the house. Will she be taken by the monster into the poisonous fog? Will the monster let her go? Can Rick kill the monster and save the girl with an army surplus M-1 rifle? Whatever happened to the fiancée? The theme of the movie is survival, but with an emphasis on letting go of the past, letting go of the dead, and finding love and reasons to live in the midst of catastrophe. The only survivors in the movie are those able to let go and embrace a new future as the poisonous nuclear fog dissipates.