The Day The Earth Caught Fire 1961 Screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest, directed by Val Guest. A British disaster film about the Earth being blown off it's axis by nuclear blasts.
We follow a reporter about just after the US and the Soviets conduct nuclear tests. The weather starts to change over a short period of time. The Earth has gotten hotter, rivers and lakes evaporate. It's found that the blasts have tipped the Earth by 11 degrees and things are awful all over. Shortly after it's revealed that the Earth is closer to the sun. The heat rises and many die. The governments of the world hope to correct that by blasting off 4 more big nukes.
It's a pretty good film. It's B&W except for some yellow tinted bits at the beginning and the end. It's a talky film but the script is good and there's a good cast behind it. I liked the scenes at the newspaper office as the staff deal with the crisis. There's a bit of romance mixed in with all the horrible calamity. It seems a bit bold for 1961. They use a good bit of stock footage to depict the disasters around the world. It's done quite effectively.
There's a rather ambiguous ending. Not sure why people do that sort of ending. Not my favorite story element. I watched a DVD from Kino-Lorber that has the 2014 remastered print. Looks nice. I'd want to watch it again sometime. Definitely worth seeing.
It Came From Somewhere 2022 Written by Steve Hermann and Bryan Parkerson, directed by Ashley Hefnew and Steve Hermann.
The movie is a modern attempt to recreate a low budget picture from the 1950s. It's a mash up of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Teenagers From Space. These parody films rarely work for me. The film makers never seem to understand that Ed Wood wasn't setting out to make a bad film. He thought he had something going on but he had more enthusiasm than talent.
This time the aliens are planning to take over the Earth by enacting Plan 10. The alien's soldier monster gets loose and befriends a little girl. One alien is a killing machine, the locals get blasted one after another, their skeletons pile up as the alien moves on. The other alien falls for an Earth woman. Ultimately the aliens fail in their mission. The Earth is saved until the next alien invasion.
Sadly it's not that good. Lucky for me it was only an hour. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. You can watch it on YouTube but I'm not going to watch it again. It's an insult after the first movie.
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