Nightfall

I first read Isaac Asimov's sci-fi story, Nightfall, in the 1980s when I was asked to help find financing to make a film version by the person who then owned the movie rights. I read the book and was moved... Asimov's story says much about the nature of scientific knowledge and religious superstition, and it says much about how we are locked into our world and often not able to transcend it. At the end, the scientists of the day discover that the religious nuts were right all along about one basic fact... but their interpretation of this fact was quite wrong. Asimov had a long and prolific career as a writer of sci-fi but Nightfall, written when he was only nineteen was one of his more (most?) famous stories.

I couldn't raise the money for its filming and lost track of the project. So I was excited to see the film. What a disappointment. It had been filmed in India (is that we they got the money finally?) and the story greatly expanded. It had been made into a love story - it did not explore the nature of knowledge at all. The lead actress was quite unconvincing, pathetic, actually. I had my whole family watch the movie with me and was quite embarrassed. They kept asking me what I thought but I would say nothing as they would have all walked out... I kept hoping is would improve. But it didn't.

Wow, this is a stinker. They took a great SF short story and turned it into utter rubbish. Isaac Asimov is spinning at 3000 RPM in his grave. Why would they do this? Why would the Asimov estate consent to let this buchery be done?

My favorite line: "I projected an image into their minds", Brooks explaining his strange. Funny how Goodman failed to ask how he managed to project into a bunch of snakes minds that they would blow up and they actually did...

Dante has a special place for people who make films like this. I wish them an eternity in it...

This story was originally a short story by Isaac Asimov that was critically acclaimed. It was next expanded into a novel that received mixed reviews. It has now further deteriorated into a dreadful film.

This film was far below B movie standards. Every element of it was poorly done. I've seen better acting in high school assembly halls. The screenplay was horrible with dialogue so bad it could make you retch. The music was shrill and the sound quality poor. The special effects were below 1960's standards. Even the editing was poor. The whole film was simply pathetic.

Asimov's original theme of the battle between science and religion was almost completely lost in an attempt to make the story into a `Raiders of the Lost Arc' adventure. The explanation of why darkness fell on the planet centered on the eclipse of one sun, but failed to explain what happened to the other five.

This film was abysmal. I rated it a 2/10. Stay away.

As an Isaac Asimov fan, and sharing the idea that "Nightfall One," his SF story is possibly the best SF story ever written with many others, I had hopes on this film. It's nothing like the story, there's nothing in common other than there are six suns around the planet, there's a scientist, and the night surely falls to madden people who had never experienced a night for 1,000 years. The film is totally crap, acting is awful, the script's based on the astronomer's stupid daughter's antics and a shabby love-story between her and a priest/guard, and I simply can't believe how Asimov's estate allowed this piece of crap to be filmed. It's surely an abomination to the works and memory of the great master of Science-Fiction and I am totally appalled by the awfulness, stupidity, shallowness, and total lack of respect to the original script. The characters in the short story then became characters of a novel -not as good- by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, but nothing in it suggested such terrible imagination at the part of the script-writer. I, for one, am ashamed of this whole effort and I hope the video ruts in shelves. It is, in short, a grave insult to a wonderful author who gave us everything modern SF is working with from robots to the main ideas of the Star Wars, Star Trek (even Star Trek's famous insignia is from Asimovian Empire's starship-and-sun sign), and many other films and novels. Pity that Asimov (with the probable exception of Fantastic Voyage) could never be cinematised correctly. I mean, when I watched Bicentennial Man, I had felt betrayed. As to this abomination, I can't find enough words to abhor it. May its producers, actors, and script-writers rot in Hell!

Okay, in Asimov's story, a technologically secure and superficially confident society falls to ruin because they burn books and civilization itself in the one night they experience in a 1000 years.

In the movie, a superstitious voodoo society on the verge of collapse is made no worse by the first night in a thousand years.

The written story can be compared to the Heart of Darkness -- oh, the horror of letting go of reason.

In the movie, the poorly acted characters go from nowhere and nothing to nowhere and nothing.

To have a story, something must happen. One would think that the first nightfall in centuries would be something. But, the film-makers manage to make this something into something boring.

For a long time nothing happened, then, suddenly and without warning, nothing continued to happen.