The Day the Sky Exploded

The actor voicing McLaren in the American version is Shane Rimmer, who also provided the voice of Thunderbird 1 pilot Scott Tracy. I win the contest!

To me, the oddest thing about this movie is McLaren's demeanor during the space flight. He looks like death warmed over, like he really really wants to go home right NOW, like he might vomit at any moment, and like he can barely bring himself to speak. Or admit that he feels like hell.

This movie is not bad enough to be a source of amusement for that reason alone. It makes a serious attempt to tell a story, and is more coherent and intelligent than some recent similar films which commanded budgets hundreds of times larger.

In THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED, a space exploration disaster causes impending doom when a super-asteroid heads toward Earth.

We know this is science fiction because in this story the UN takes immediate action, scrambling all forces to deal with the situation. In reality, they would convene in order to call for a future meeting, so they could decide whether or not to pass a resolution that could lead to a plan.

Thankfully, the fantasy UN is mighty!

Is this movie cheeezey? Oh yes, but it's also entertaining. Compared to the more modern, multi-million dollar space catastrophe films that tell the same basic tale, TDTSE is -very little- money well spent...

A multi-national space mission including astronauts from the UK, the USA and the Soviet Union venture into space but they experience technical problems resulting in the mission being aborted, but unfortunately this is just the first in a chain reaction of events which results in catastrophic disasters back on Earth, including scores of asteroids, earthquakes and extreme weather.

The Day the Sky Exploded is fairly notable for being the first Italian sci-fi movie. Having said that, this is a fairly limited claim to fame given science fiction wouldn't exactly go on to become one of the movie sub-genres that the pasta masters are most well remembered for. This one is fairly ahead of its time in some respects though and quite ambitious for its time. It also is unusual in that it showed Americans and Russians working happily together at the height of the Cold War. So, it has some interesting things about it for sure but on the whole it was pretty forgettable stuff unfortunately. Interestingly, it was also photographed by the great future directing legend Mario Bava; to be honest, the version I saw this was a public domain pan-and-scan copy in which it was difficult to really tell if it had great cinematography or not sadly.

A joint effort by the United States and the Soviet Union to send a nuclear powered manned flight into space results in a disaster which manages to ionize a cluster of meteors and send them on a trajectory toward earth. This causes a crises of the first magnitude as tidal waves are predicted to destroy cities near coasts all over the world. And that's just the beginning of the problem. Now, while this scenario had been done about seven years earlier in "When Worlds Collide", this film offers a different approach and succeeds (more or less) in spite of the limited budget which was spent to produce it. And although the acting certainly wasn't anything to get excited about, the special effects were pretty good considering the era this movie was made. All in all then, it's worth watching as long as people aren't expecting too much. All things considered then I rate it as about average. No more and no less.

This is significant as Italy's first science-fiction movie – two years after its first horror outing, Riccardo Freda's I VAMPIRI (1956); what connects these two films is the multi-faceted involvement behind the cameras of the late great Mario Bava. In fact, the latter was officially the film's cinematographer (curiously credited as Baja on the English titles!) but, as was his fashion, he helped out without credit in the special effects department and the direction as well – a fact also mentioned in Tim Lucas' Audio Commentary for the subsequently deleted Dark Sky DVD of Bava's KILL, BABY…KILL! (1966) and whose hearing prompted me to acquire this film sooner rather than later! Interestingly, the film's original Italian title LA MORTE VIENE DALLO SPAZIO translates to DEATH COMES FROM OUTER SPACE; this was picked up and slightly altered a few years later by another Spaghetti sci-fi entry i.e. Antonio Margheriti's LA MORTE VIENE DAL PIANETA AYTIN aka THE SNOW DEVILS (1967); besides, the film's English title was probably inspired by another contemporary sci-fi cheapie i.e. Fred F. Sears' THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED (1957)! The film under review emerges as a reasonably enjoyable and above-average entry but, probably stemming from a very limited budget, is bogged down by a talky script and much stock footage of rocket launchings and people rushing into underground shelters. The cast is also somewhat undernourished but does include Paul (Fritz Lang's Indian EPIC diptych [1958-59]) Hubschmid, Ivo (Bava's BLACK Sunday [1960]) Garrani and Giacomo (KILL, BABY…KILL!) Rossi Stuart essaying stock-types of lock-jawed astronaut, self-sacrificing professor and no-nonsense technician respectively. Equally predictable are the characters of the proud Russian expert, the astronaut's lonesome wife, the brainy female scientist, her lothario colleague and the crazed skeptic who reaches breaking-point as Armageddon looms. Nevertheless, despite – or, perhaps, because of – the lack of any really spectacular sequences (the rain of meteorites ostensibly about to annihilate mankind never pose that much of a threat since they are themselves destroyed just as they are entering the Earth's orbit!), one finds himself being charmed just the same by all these overly-familiar elements. Almost needless to say, hot on the heels of this movie came the Riccardo Freda/Mario Bava melange of sci-fi and monster movie – CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959) – which was an altogether livelier effort...