THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED
Like most critics, I have a love/hate relationship with 'horror' movies of the 1950s. With the possible (if you subtract Raymond Burr) exception of the original Godzilla most of them suffer from bad acting, bad scripting, bad directing. . .just a general case of badness.
This is why The Day the World Ended surprised me so much. From the director of such strangely named crap as Teenaged Cavemen and Carnosuar (cheapest of the Jurassic Park rip-offs), Roger Corman, comes a movie that's actually, kinda good.
Note the word "kinda".
Like most 'horror' movies of the 50s, this one starts out with a narrator telling us just how horrible nuclear technology is and how we will eventually destroy are selves with it. Predictably, we destroy ourselves with it. But, fear not, for the narrator also tells us that (to be read with a proper Charlatan Heston impression) GOD HIMSELF has spared some of us.
ROLL CALL!
We have gangster boy, Tony (and his EYE-talian accent, both played by Mike Conors) and his main squeeze Ruby (Adele Jergens).
We've got geologist and all American hero, Rick (Richard Denning, who you might remember from Creature From the Black Lagoon) who, out of the goodness of his heart, rescues Radek (Paul Dubov) who just so happens to be suffering from radiation exposure and is slowly mutating into. . . something else, something. . . not human (ominous music goes here)!
We have an old fashion gold digger Pete (Raymond Hatton) who I think is suppose to be our comic relief, except for the fact that he never does anything really funny (except talk with his hick accent).
Finally, we have Captain Maddison (Paul Birch) and his daughter Louise (Lori Nelson). Maddison new this day would come so he constructed a bomb shelter in a deep valley with food, water, and all the trappings of survival. All our other characters show up at his door during the first five minuets of the movie.
Since they all show up in such an awful hurry we mutual away the remaining 74 minuets of this movie getting to know our characters. We find out Tony was a gangster (although his clothing, the gun he carries and his EYE-tailian accent practically scream "gangster" anyway). We learn the Ruby was a stripteaser (we are forced to take her word for it since she never actually strips. But its 1956 so what can we do?). We also learn that Captain Maddison was at a hydrogen bomb test in which animals where exposed to the radiation. Instead of dying 3 of them survived and became gross mutations. He and Rick immediately begin to throw sidewise glances at Radek.
For good reason too, because Radek is acting mighty strange. He begins to venture out of the house at night and starts to eat radioactive animals. We see a quite interesting scene of him about to chow down on a contaminated rabbit, but he drops it and runs off. A moment later the reason he dropped it, a big scaly hand, picks up the rabbit and eats it off screen.
That's right kiddies. While big rubber monsters where trashing Japan, smaller rubber monsters where trashing America. Both the IMDb and The Encyclopedia of Monsters call the small rubber monster here the "Mutated Man". We'll talk about him in a moment.
Anywho you can see the rest of the movie's plot from here. While the men fight for who gets to sire the new human race they must also face the Mutant Man, who chases Radek back to the compound and kills him (at least I think he kills Radek, it looks like Radek is Vulcan neck pinched to death, but I digress, you have to do that a lot with 50s 'horror' movies).
Which brings us to other problems this movie has. Since they entire movie takes place in one house and the surrounding valley its evident that this movie ether had no budget, or Roger Corman just chose not to use it.
And that brings us to the monster suit. Since this is a 'horror' movie of the 1950s, it doesn't show you the monster for a while. Instead, it shows you pieces of him. And arm here, a fuzzy image there, and so on. Unfortunately, when you see the monster itself its not even close to what you expected it's a lot cheesyer. Especial the monster in this movie. Instead of being afraid of him like your suppose to I can't help but laugh (and laugh, and laugh) at the creatures outlandish appearance. Needless to say, when the monster encourages only laughter it seriously detracts from any fright the creature might have inspired.
On to the humans. While only one person in the cast is truly bad, no one is really good ether. The one who comes close is Richard Denning as Rick. While this isn't his best work (again, that would be Creature from the Black Lagoon) he does a pretty good job. Raymond Hatton as Pete isn't our Odious Comic Relief, but his is odious. I prayed for his death and I suspect you will too. Don't worry, the movie answers your prayers. The women are predictably useless, and since Louise is the younger bleach blondes (for some reason God chose to spare two bleach blondes, complete with make-up) we both know she will faint and then be carried off by the Mutant Man. Unlike me, she faints of fright, not because lack of oxygen from laughing at the creature's appearance.
But, despite its flaws, The Day the World Ended does have some high points. The fact that the creatures appearance is kept secret from most of the movie does create some genuine suspense. Not much, but some. As do the scenes where Maddison shows Rick pictures of the mutated animals. None of the dialogue is ground breaking, but that's to be expected. Plus Paul Dubov is kind of good. He's not given much to do, and if he had gotten more screen time, the movie might have scored higher. As is he uses the time he has to build up expectation for what the monster will be. "I have an enemy," he says enigmatically. And since we don't see the monster until the last 20 minuets, the first 59 minuets of this movie are actually quite good and worth your rental dollars.
RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)
A LOT BETTER THEN IT COULD HAVE BEEN
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