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.

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.

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...

It is hard to give a rating to old movies like this. This Italian/French film is a predecessor to modern fare like Meteor or Armegeddon.

No Bruce Willis, but Paul Hubschmid, the first Swiss film star. He is on a team of astronauts that included a Frenchman and a Russian and was selected for the first mission in space. Such international cooperation! Absolutely brilliant for the time. It will be even more amazing as the film goes on.

Don't look for great acting or fancy special effects. Stock footage is the norm and the dialog is corny, but there is a bright shining moment when they know they are all doomed and some scientist wigs out.

The solution to the falling meteor is the use of all the nation's atomic warheads. Like that would happen. You know the USA or Russia, probably both, would hold a few in reserve. I am sure the USA did, as I saw no missiles leaving silos.

It's interesting to see the first films of this type before CGI, which is why I am investing the week exploring them.

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.