The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961)

A wonderfully produced, directed, photographed and well-acted sci-fi film containing a fast-paced witty script, characters with depth and a frightening believable plot. 

Directed by Val Guest
Produced by Val Guest, Frank Sherwin Green
Written by Wolf Mankowitz, Val Guest
Music by Stanley Black, Monty Norman
Cinematography: Harry Waxman
Edited by Bill Lenny
Production company: Val Guest Productions
Distributed by British Lion Films (UK), Universal-International (USA)
Running time: 98 minutes
Budget: £190,000 (approx.)

Cast

Edward Judd as Peter Stenning
Leo McKern as Bill Maguire
Janet Munro as Jeannie Craig
Michael Goodliffe as 'Jacko', the night editor
Bernard Braden as the news editor
Reginald Beckwith as Harry
Gene Anderson as May
Renée Asherson as Angela
Arthur Christiansen as Jeff Jefferson, the editor
Austin Trevor as Sir John Kelly
Edward Underdown as Dick Sanderson
Ian Ellis as Michael Stenning
Peter Butterworth as second sub-editor
Michael Caine as a police constable

Trailer

Sixty years ago panic engulfed the entire world. 

Sixty years ago the United States and the former Soviet Union simultaneously detonated nuclear devices. 

Sixty years ago the world’s weather changed dramatically. 

Sixty years ago the earth’s axis of rotation altered by eleven degrees. 

Sixty years ago Daily Express reporter, Peter Stenning and Meteorological Center telephonist, Jeannie Craig met and fell in love. 

What do all these events have in common? 

What links these seemingly unconnected occurrences? 

**********************

“The time is now 10:41, 

19 minutes before countdown…. 

19 minutes.”

Picture a world sixty years into our past – a world baking under the relentless searing rays of the sun. A solitary figure bathed in sweat picks his way through the orange flame-hued streets of a deserted London from which humanity has been banished by a seemingly vengeful son god, Rah.

The silence is palpable with the absence of civilization’s hustle and bustle, its chitter and chatter, and its clamor and confusion. What made life gleamingly nimble and agile now lies dull, dead and dormant – mute phones, motionless fans and deceased elevators.

The lone man, Peter Stenning enters his newspaper’s office building and manages to find someone to dictate his story to, but as to the likely audience…….THAT remains to be seen!

“It is exactly 30 minutes since the corrective bombs were detonated. Within the next few hours, the world will know whether this is the end or another beginning. The rebirth of man or his final obituary. For the last time, man pursued his brother with a sword, and so the final fire was kindled. The Earth that was to live forever was blasted by a great wind towards oblivion. It is strange to think that barely 90 days ago…” 

Read on for more….. 

Sci-Fi Stories That Inspired Classic Sci-Fi Films: “Colossus” by DF. Jones (1966)

“THIS IS THE VOICE OF WORLD CONTROL. I BRING YOU PEACE. IT MAY BE THE PEACE OF PLENTY AND CONTENT OR THE PEACE OF UNBURIED DEATH. THE CHOICE IS YOURS: OBEY ME AND LIVE, OR DISOBEY AND DIE!”

Move over HAL!!! 

Get ready Terminator & Skynet!!!! 

For, here comes…….

COLOSSUS!!!!!!

Colossus: The Forbin Project is a 1970 American science fiction film from Universal Pictures, produced by Stanley Chase, directed by Joseph Sargent, that stars Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, and William Schallert.

The film is based upon the 1966 science fiction novel, Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones. The story involves a supercomputer named Colossus that controls the United States' military defense system. After being given full control, Colossus becomes sentient and goes beyond its programming by linking with a similar Soviet system called Guardian.

Having control of both superpowers’ nuclear missile arsenal, Colossus is in a position to force peace upon the world on its own terms. Our every move and our very fate is in now in the hands of a machine. Colossus has purloined our cherished theory of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ and applied it as a way achieving that crazy Cold War theory’s implicit aim!

The growth of artificial intelligence and our concerns over its possible outcomes make this film both timely and relevant despite the passage of time and, in some viewers' minds, its feeling of being somewhat dated. The story is in fact quite prescient in terms of the way artificial intelligence and its purposes and uses have become a kind of Pandora's box that could unleash a whole raft of unforeseen consequences upon humanity.

Colossus was given the task of avoiding nuclear Armageddon and achieving world peace, freedom from hunger and disease. Fine! But in order to achieve that objective, what steps would need to be taken? What consequences could arise and for whom? What would be the end result? Failure to ask the right questions could result in a fate that is distinctly Orwellian.

The film adaptation of Jones’s story is very good, containing as it does a pleasing mix of intelligence, humour, satire and drama. The book version explores the makeup of the characters associated with the Project more thoroughly, as well as the contentious relationship between Forbin and the US President. The appearance and personality of the latter comes across quite differently to the film version's president who seems to be somewhat Kennedyesque.

I fully recommend reading DF Jones’ novel and viewing the film version. You might also like to read Jones’ The Fall Of Colossus, and Colossus And The Crab.

Colossus PDF read

Colossus by DF Jones (Borrow)

Movie Script

Full Film Link

CBC Radio Drama Download

Sci-Fi Stories That Inspired Classic Sci-Fi Films: “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton

Trailer

Summary:

When all but two of the residents of Piedmont, New Mexico, are found dead after the return to Earth of a US space satellite (Scoop VII), the head of the US Air Force's Project Scoop declares an emergency.

Dr Stone and his team of top scientists consisting of Drs. Dutton, Leavitt and Hall, transfer to a secure hi-tech facility, known as Wildfire, which had been constructed as a base in the event of an alien biological life form being returned to Earth from a space mission.

Such an event appears to have happened and it is up to the scientists to try to isolate the alien life form while determining why two people from Piedmont (an old Sterno drinker with an ulcer and a six-month-old crying baby have managed to survive.

As the scientists continue with their study of the alien life form, they are about to be confronted by the dual danger of its having mutated along with the lab’s fail-safe nuclear self-destruct device should it manage to escape!!!

************** 

Comparisons

The Andromeda Strain was made into a movie in 1971 and was directed and produced by Robert Wise. The film and the book quite closely parallel each other with a few minor deviations such as the Peter Leavitt character being a female, Ruth Leavitt in the film version.

[Spoiler alert paragraph!!!!]

The ending of the movie also differs from the book. In the book, Stone speculates that the Andromeda Strain will migrate up into Earth’s upper atmosphere where the oxygen content is lower, better suiting its growth and where it will mutate into a benign form. In the movie version, the now benign mutated bacteria drifts out over the Pacific Ocean into which it falls to be destroyed by the salt water.

Context

Crichton’s novel was written within the context of the Cold War and the resulting space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. The political and military conflict between the superpower rivals forms an important part of the backdrop to the events in the story. For instance, Project Scoop is part of a U.S. government program for the development of biological weapons. Should a Scoop satellite come down in a major city in the Soviet Union, war would likely result and that is why it was decided that the Russians would not be informed about the likelihood of any deadly disease occurring. The kind of Cold War mentality that was evident would dictate a preference for a few million Russians dying of disease as opposed to many hundreds of millions of people dying as a result of nuclear war

Assessment

I personally favoured the film treatment of the story. In the original book version, I felt that the story was bogged down by far too much scientific exposition, detail and explanation of processes involved. There were moments when I literally nodded off!

Audiobook Online

PDF Download

©Chris Christopoulos 2020

Classic Sci-Fi Film Ladies: Part 5 (1958 – 1959)

Welcome to the final tribute to the wonderful ladies who appeared in the classic sci-fi films of the 1950s. It’s been a long time coming for this installment, so let’s start off with…….

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

Earth's second mission to Mars is sent to discover the fate of the first mission. A sole survivor of that mission is found, the expedition's former commander who claims to an unbelieving audience that his crew were killed by a hostile Martian life form. On the way back to earth, that life form stowaways away aboard the ship and begins hunting down and killing the crew.

Shirley Patterson as Ann Anderson who also appeared in World Without End (1956) and The Land Unknown (1957).

Ann Doran as Mary Royce, the ship’s doctor

And…followed by;

I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

Aliens arrive on Earth to possess the bodies of humans. One such victim is a young man, whose new wife, Marge soon realizes something is wrong with him. In fact, the man she married isn't a man at all, but an alien replacement as are most of the men in her small town!!

Gloria Talbott who also appeared in, The Cyclops (1957), Daughter of Dr Jekyll, and The Leech Woman (1960)

Read on for more.......