End of the World (1977)

good back-story, and good acting

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Confused, self-contradicting aliens who really need to Google "cloning" – or at least ask Ed Wood what he thinks it means."What are we going to do now?" the beautiful Sue Lyon asks her stupid husband. "The only thing we can do: go it alone." Well, of course; whenever faced with alien invaders far more powerful than you, the best thing – and the "only" thing – to do is to "go it alone". Ever consider reporting your findings to your superiors, to CIA – to the KGB, for that matter? Of course not – when one is an imbecile one "goes it alone". Here we have a moron with actual SCIENTIFIC evidence that aliens are among us, but he decides to fight them on his own. Well, not quite: he's got his equally ineffectual wife to help him defeat them. And then he wonders why his plan fails and the Earth ends up exploding like a cheap tennis-ball-sized prop! Duh.I also have a bone to pick with this whole "cloning" business. Lee and his nuns are supposed to be clones – and yet one of the nuns briefly shows a lizard-like alien limb. Perhaps the writer of EOTW is confused about the admittedly INCREDIBLY complex term "to clone". It's very likely he thinks that cloning is the process of dressing up as another person – in which case any masked ball would automatically become a clone ball and every Halloween has millions of young clones seeking sweets. These aliens aren't clones; they're merely disguised as humans. That's all. Besides, if they're such adept cloners, then why didn't they simply clone the guards at the science institute? That would certainly be a much more efficient and easier way to attain those whateveritistheywerelookingfors. No, the story isn't particularly well thought out. "Earth is poisoning the universe with its disease, so it must be destroyed". This is the kind of dialogue we've come to love and expect from Ed Wood's movies. In fact, he couldn't have written it any "better" himself. Funnier yet, only 5 minutes after informing the humans that Earth will be annihilated, "cloned" alien Lee tells the dumb scientist and his lovely wife "it's a pity that you cannot come with us, because on our planet your talents are used to build, not to destroy": this, coming from an alien who had just helped orchestrate the destruction of an entire planet, and for no logical reason than some cockamamie vague B-movie pseudo-science theory about "disease spreading throughout the universe". What, like Ed's solarbonite?Made in 1978, but plays out like a low-budget 1957 flick. This is dumb B-movie fare. And slow as hell. Almost nothing happens in the first half-hour. This plot could have been easily compressed into a 23-minute episode of "The Twilight Zone". A very weak episode, I might add, because this much bad logic is rare in that show.To give you an idea how cheesy EOTW is, the last scene has Earth blowing up like a firecracker. Ed Wood could not have done it better than that.

This movie was not as bad as many of the critics whom filled out the IMDb.com review suggest.Its main flaw is it take a long time to develop, and there are Dominique like voids of dialogue where the actors must carry the scene with body language.Christopher Lee portrays the main antagonist, a priest who was kidnapped then cloned by aliens who seek to both destroy the Earth (so its diseases cannot spread across the galaxy) and to return to their home planet, in which there is no war, disease or famine.None of the other actors did a particularly good job. Dean Jagger, whom portrays the male protagonist is okay at best, and the female lead is played by Sue Lyon. She is not the best actress of her time, and cannot carry her silent scenes very well compared to Lee or Jagger.Not that Lee or Jagger did exceptionally in this case, but it is a LOT to ask of an actor to carry a silent scene.The plot is very "Twilight Zone", the special effects and sound effects seem to come straight out of the old television Star Trek series.A scene where Jagger removes a contraption the aliens need to return home, in fact, looks almost 100% like the scene that Star Trek 2 the Wrath of Khan would sue when Spock is attempting to fix the ship's warp drive. Eerily similar.Some shots are very Kubrickian featuring drawn back and isolated shots.The story is fair to good, if not very slow to develop.This film lacked about 2 to 3 'steps' to make it a success, but its not a bad way to spend a couple hours.

Wow, this film had 'crap' written all over it! The sound effects appeared to have been done by some guy using computer, a crappy synthesizer and pinball sound effects for EVERYTHING! In fact, it was the director who also handled the sound...and it showed. Also, I know this will sound terrible, but veteran actor Dean Jagger looked like death warmed over--like he was dying of cancer. Now I know he went on to live another 14 years, but here in "End of the World" he looks like he's on borrowed time. Plus, because the director was also the guy in charge of sound, Jagger's severely weakened voice came off as only a little more than a raspy whisper. Additionally, while a film in the public domain is no guarantee of horrible quality, it IS pretty highly correlated! You can clearly see why no one would want to bother renewing the copyright on this...film.As the film progresses, a series of natural disasters strike. While the number and intensity are unusual, no one suspects anything...except for one egghead with a computer. He's been trying to decipher some signals from space and he is able to interpret three words that make it seem like aliens MIGHT have something to do with one of the disasters! In addition to this strange occurrence, he also uses his equipment to try to determine where some huge radio signals are coming from---and it appears to be from a convent! It seems the nice father in charge (Lee) is communicating with aliens! Don't you just hate that?! Sadly, once the egghead figures all this you, the film really, really loses steam. When he is confronted by these aliens disguised as people, you'd think there'd be a lot of action and tension. Instead, the entire scene is amazingly muted and dull--with a monologue by Lee that sounds as animated as his reading a phone book! After all, you'd THINK seven aliens disguised as a priest and six nuns would be pretty cool--and even more so because of their cool machinery. But you'd be wrong--there is no excitement whatsoever to this--how could that be?! It's because it's all so talky and lifeless, that's how.Overall, the film is a major chore to finish, as there's just nothing interesting about it. Plus, while it's bad and cheap, it's just not bad and cheap enough to be fun for a laugh--it's just bad!

Your mind will not be satisfied by this no—budget doomsday thriller; but, pray, who's will? A youngish couple spends the actual end of the world in the hidden laboratory of some aliens masquerading as Church people.Small _apocalyptically themed outing, END OF THE WORLD has the ingenuity and the lack of both brio and style of the purely '50s similar movies. And it's not only that, but EOTW plays like a hybrid—not only doomsday but convent creeps as well. The villain of the movie is a well—known character actor.This wholly shameless slapdash seems a piece of convent—exploitation, that significantly '70s genre which looks today so amusingly outdated. Anyway, the convent's secret laboratory is some nasty piece of futuristic deco! Christopher Lee is the pride of End of the World; but the End of the World is not at all his pride!