ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Boy, ya gotta love a movie that promises big things like this --



-- and doesn't disappoint its audience one little bit.



This must have been a real crowd-pleaser in 1951, and it kept right on doing that through several re-releases over the years, including one in the 1980 when it was co-billed with War of the Worlds at the last of the drive-in theaters around the country.

Of all the 1950s movies that featured great "practical FX" (models and miniature landscapes), this one is a showcase for state-of-the-art work in that area.















The finished product is still a joy to behold, despite all the advances in special effects over the last 64 years.











The characters are very appealing, and the story moves right along. The cast is a real plus, too.











I wish they'd made the sequel -- After Worlds Collide -- that was planned but never went into production.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Zackuth]

I have liked this movie since I first saw it as a kid. When I was 18 or 19 I found both books at a bookstore and was able to buy them. I never knew there was a sequel planned but I would have like to have seen it. I wonder how close the book would have been followed?

[bulldogtrekker]

Nice photographs. I especially like the BTS photos and the photo of Barbara Rush.

[orzel-w]

Lots of great photos!
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Custer]

I do have a slightly tatty paperback copy of the novel, by Philip Wylie & Edwin Balmer; it first appeared in 1932/1933 as a serial in The Blue Book Magazine. The sequel appeared a year later, and got through quite a few Paperback Library printings in the sixties. The physical copies on Amazon seem a bit expensive, but if you've a kindle, you can buy After Worlds Collide quite reasonably, and find out what a second movie would have had to work with...

[Pow]

George Pal was the unsung Spielberg/Lucas of the 50s/60s.

Barbara Rush was married to Jeff Hunter at one time. Jeff,as Captain Christopher Pike,was the lead on the first Star Trek TV Pilot "The Cage."
John Hoyt was the ship's doctor(Boyce)in that same pilot.

Doesn't the lead actor in WWC look like Danny Kaye in that behind the scenes photo?

The rocket launching reminds me of Gerry Anderson's Fireball XL-5 TV series.

[Custer]

Ah, Fireball XL-5 - that was the proper way to launch a spaceship, I can't imagine why they don't do it that way today...

[trekriffic]

Pegasus Models makes a nice kit of the spaceship complete with a section of the track to rest on. I've been holding off getting it but may just have to pull the trigger now.

ParaGrafix also makes a photo-etch brass add on set with girders and bulkheads if you want to do the "under construction" version of the ship.

[scotpens]

[Custer]

You would think that getting a spaceship or aircraft up to launching speed along a track would be a cost-effective way of doing things — perhaps using linear induction? Even using booster rockets ought to work, as, if they stayed behind and just fell into water or sand, it would be easy to re-use them for the next scheduled launch.

Or we can just wait for anti-gravity to be invented.

[Krel]

It dates back, at least as far as the 1930's with the Saenger-Bredt antipodal bomber. A sled launched suborbital bomber concept. The Germans had plans to use it to bomb New York, after they developed the Atom Bomb.

According to some experts, dropping down into the valley, then rising back up the slope would not be effective. It would bleed too much velocity.

David.

[Brent Gair]

I've always been a fan of the launch rail idea and some of my old books from the 1960's show some interesting concepts based on the idea of using rails and a rocket sled...and an induction system would be even better today.

I think the problem is in the way manned spaceflight developed. Historically, in both the US and USSR, the boosters were military missiles that were repurposed to carry manned capsules. These boosters were really quite fragile and designed to be stressed in a specific direction. The Atlas in particular had a paper thin skin that derived significant structural strength from the fuel and propellants holding equal pressure outward on the skin. The early versions (prior to silo deployment) could be stored on their sides but had to have their "balloon tanks" pressurized and then be erected to a vertical position for fueling. You couldn't fuel one of those things on it's side and send it hurtling down a track.

All those early Redstone, Atlas and Titans were very much the same in that regard.

I really like launch rails but they need a system built from the ground up to take advantage of the idea. Given the birth of manned spaceflight during the coldwar, I don't imagine either side was of a mind to put aside the exisiting military boosters and take an extra 5 years to develop specialized launchers.

[Bud Brewster]

Now that they've grounded the shuttles and we don't even have a reusable space vehicle, perhaps the long-rang plans involve something along these lines.

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

[Krel]

[Pow]

Given the many reboots of the classic sf films from the fifties such as The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing, War Of The Worlds & so forth, it amazes me that WWC has not been revived.

The astonishing visual FX of today would do it justice.