The Day the Sky Exploded

I've only two films by Paulo Heusch, and both of them are very early, but gosh darnit if they don't display some of the aspects that make Italian trash cinema so entertaining then I'm a something's something! Bad dubbing, crazy logic, loads of stolen footage, insane plot, terrible acting and all that jazz (although there's no boobs or gore...that happened later), I would say this film has it all if it weren't for the fact that Paulo loves to concentrate on folks talking to each other on microphones rather than give us any action. I seriously had my attention wandering throughout this film, although it did give a few laughs.

The plot involves sending a pilot into orbit and then on to the moon in a process that takes up the first twenty minutes of the film, but eventually our ethnically diverse mix of scientists gets our guy up in space, but then things go wrong and he's force to detach his cockpit for Earth while sending his fuel filled rocket into an asteroid belt, which causes a load of asteroids to head for Earth, Armageddon style! Let's whittle it down a bit. You've got scientists all over Earth reporting what not to each other (including Glasgow!) while the Earth gets hotter and hotter, the animals go nuts, and society collapses. This is all demonstrated by stock footage, most of which has a single loop of dialogue where you can hear a woman scream "My Baby" over and over and over again, so look out for that.

You've also got a few side plots, one of which involves the astronaut and his family and the other involving a scientist trying to get into the pants of a frigid female scientist type person. Cue loads of crappy old school sexism.

I also loved that my copy was full of missing frames and got a laugh out of the bit where the frigid scientist bursts into a room with something important to say, only to have the film jump, the scientist disappear from the shot, and leave two male actors staring at each other for some reason.

No where near as funny as his later Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory, this is still a nice early example of what makes these film so much fun.