ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Here's another example of how much fun it is to relate personal feelings about a movie to inspire other fans to give it a chance. Jimbo Berkey's wonderful site, Free Classic Movies, offers these comments for The Day the Sky Exploded, along with pictures and a link to watch it or download it!
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It is Saturday afternoon on a cold winter day and instead of being outside playing I am glued to the television set in the corner of the room watching an old movie from Italy.

My big sister Carol walks in and glances at the television for a moment and then declares to me that the actor's lips do not match the words.

'I know," I reply with awe and apprehension, "but it doesn't matter . . . the earth is going to be destroyed in a few minutes!"

Some of the best science fiction of the 1950's came from Russia, Germany and Italy, and this Italian atomic thriller is one of the best. It is 1958, and the united world is sending an atomic manned rocket into space to circle the moon and return safely to earth.

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All goes well until astronaut John McLaren, played by Paul Hubschmid, fires the third rocket and something goes terribly wrong. Astronaut McLaren hits the eject button and his top capsule separates from the Atomic rocket and he makes his way back to earth.

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Now we have a runaway Atomic Bomb loose in space . . . of course the worst will happen.

The rocket collides with an asteroid in a large field of asteroids and there is a nuclear explosion that attracts hundreds of asteroids that will turn and head toward the earth.

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Hundreds of huge fire-ball meteors will soon pepper the earth in a few hours destroying the our planet . . . there will be tidal waves, firestorms and terrible destruction, and the world will soon end.

It looks like the end of the world as we know it, and there is nothing that the nations of the world can do but watch as balls of fire descend from the sky burning the planet to a crisp!

Pop a big bowl of white kernel popcorn with plenty of warm melted butter on it and enjoy the show.

____Jimbo Berkey
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I'd never seen this movie until I availed myself of Jim Berkey's site and enjoyed it with Bulldogtrekker, chatting on Facebook while we watched it.

Interesting movie, if not a classic. Give it a shot, guys. Then tell us what you thought about it — good, bad, or indifferent.

And please note that Jimbo provides an easy download link at the bottom of each movie's page, with simple instructions for how to use it. What a guy!

The Day the Sky Exploded
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Some folks have mentioned that they were wary about downloading the JWPlayer needed to watch Jimbo's movies.

Okay, so here's a version from Youtube you can watch. The picture quality appears to be the same on both versions.

But watch the energetic trailer first, which proudly proclaims, "In The Day the Sky Exploded, there are no green monsters roaming the streets — but you will see a devastating mass of meteors hurtle toward Earth at a thousand miles a minute! In The Day the Sky Exploded there are no 50 foot spiders — there are thousand-foot tidal waves, crushing cities!"

The trailer certainly got me in the mood!


____________ The Day The Sky Exploded - trailer


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____________The Day the Sky Exploded (1958)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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As I mentioned above, I downloaded this movie (the first Italian sci-fi film ever made) and watched it while chatting with Bulldogtrekker on Facebook, something we like to call synchro-cinema (a term coined by Bogmeister years ago).

But today I read the story summary from Wikipedia for this movie, and I was appalled by how completely ridiculous the plot is! Read the summary below see how many totally absurd ideas this hot mess contains!
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From somewhere in the Australian desert, the United Nations launches an atomic rocket on a manned moon mission, but one of the engines malfunctions.

The pilot, American John McCleary, disengages the capsule and returns to Earth. The atomic booster, however, continues on, eventually exploding in the Delta asteroid cluster. The explosion dislodges the asteroids from their orbits. They coalesce into one giant cluster heading for Earth.

When there seems to be no reasonable hope that humans can avoid the crash, scientists find that the Moon will pass in front of the cluster, shielding Earth from most of it. However, a small part of the cluster is not shielded and continues towards the Earth.

As the cluster approaches it causes worldwide disasters: tidal waves, wind, firestorms and earthquakes. Mass evacuations lead to panic and riots. Mankind's only hope is to arm every missile on earth with a nuclear warhead and fire them all at the cluster.

One scientist loses his sanity and disables the great computer needed to calculate all the firing data.

McCleary leads a group of men to overpower him, and is shot. The computer is restarted. The missiles are launched, destroying the cluster and saving Earth.
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The key paragraph here is obviously this one.

"The pilot, American John McCleary, disengages the capsule and returns to Earth. The atomic booster, however, continues on, eventually exploding in the Delta asteroid cluster. The explosion dislodges the asteroids from their orbits. They coalesce into one giant cluster heading for Earth."

Uh . . . what the hell is the Delta asteroid cluster?

How could an explosion dislodge them all from their orbits when each asteroid is actually thousands of miles from it's nearest neighbor — not even visible with the naked eye?

How the hell could they "coalesce into one giant cluster heading for Earth"? Once they've been blown AWAY from each other, how could they come back together?

This movie has got to hold the world's record for the most number of silly non-science concepts in cinema history! It illustrates the fact that movie makers who produce SCIENCE fiction movies know less about science than the average sci-fi fan who goes to see these films!

I don't get it, folks. I just don't get it . . .
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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This is regarded as Italy's first serious sci-fi picture. The DVD copy I have, though an official release, is pretty poor in picture quality, no better than a VHS version, and with jump cuts.

This may affect my estimation of the film. I found it to be pretty boring. A rocket is launched into orbit in the first act, with one astronaut aboard. Not much else happens in the first 15 minutes, besides the astronaut saying goodbye to his wife.

I expected it to pick up after the slow first act but the pace remains the same — deadly slow. The rocket launch is deemed a failure, since it was meant to go further (to the moon), but is canceled following a malfunction.

The astronaut returns to Earth, but the rocket booster continues on to the asteroid belt. Eventually, the impact has detrimental effects on Earth. There's footage of large scale animal movement, indicating the onset of some cataclysm, such as tidal waves.

But, most of the story focuses on dull soap opera (the astronaut, his wife, and another couple), a lot of discussion and footage of technicians working their radios or radar equipment.

There's finally stock footage of massive flooding and fires, as well as cartoon-like special FX of Earth being bombarded, as well as one guy going nuts as the disasters worsen, but it's too little too late.

BoG's Score: 2 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus