hyped garbage

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I'll start with the spoilers: there are no night scenes in this film and the catastrophe promised by the title is averted. Dr Laura 'Hutch' Hutchinson (Kathryn Grant) at one point suggests that the fissures appearing in the Earth's crust are "almost as if the Earth were striking back at us for the way we've robbed her of her natural resources"; making this an early "green" film. Eight years later in 'Crack in the World' (1965) a mining project results in the Earth splitting into two, but 'The Night the World Exploded' knows its limits (Miss Grant's stylish outfits look like the most expensive items in the budget) and most of the destruction is confined to stock footage (which includes film of the bombing of Pearl Harbor).Fortunately it has a fairly intelligent script and a capable and sincere cast to do it justice; and director Fred Sears again creates bricks without straw. The film probably cost what 'The Day After Tomorrow' spent on catering, but what little money that actually went on special effects has been judiciously spent, and the genuine generator room used for the climax is quite impressive. I'm sure the script is full of scientific clunkers, but most of the talk sounds intelligent enough. I personally know a bit about the Periodic Table, so I'll confine myself to pointing out that in 1957 the total number of known chemical elements then stood at 101. That the next element in line to be discovered is #112 (which was named Copernicium) would mean that this film is set in 1996.

A cutting edge scientist, Dr. David Conway (William Leslie) has developed a machine that he hopes can predict when earthquakes are going to occur. It works quite well, as we shall see, and a series of quakes happen which get progressively worse. Conway and his loyal assistant, Laura "Hutch" Hutchinson (Kathryn Grant), find that the culprit responsible is a previously unknown element with very explosive potential. The race is then on to solve the problem before the title disaster can take place.One might say that the budget for this modestly entertaining B picture is ultimately too low for its ambitions, but director Fred F. Sears ("Earth vs. the Flying Saucers") succeeds in crafting some tension. Much use is made of what is presumably stock footage, adding to the scope of the action (not to mention the running time, which is very short anyway). The "underground" sets and props aren't exactly convincing, but they don't distract too much from the fun. The fairly neat premise is admittedly somewhat close to that in the Universal production "The Monolith Monsters".A decent bunch of actors does help matters. Leslie isn't terribly expressive, but he's reasonably likable, and it's very easy to watch the young Ms. Grant, who's incredibly cute. Co- starring are Tristram Coffin as the dedicated Dr. Ellis Morton, Raymond Greenleaf as the governor who learns his lesson after failing to take Conway and Morton seriously, and Paul Savage as the curious and engaging Ranger Kirk.Passable special effects, and a rather amusing problem solving finale, help this to kill 64 minutes pleasantly.Six out of 10.

Did Roland Emmerich, the creator of recent disaster epics such as "Independence Day", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012" watch this movie as a child and decide to create the ultimate version of the same tale? It appears so as this movie, in just over an hour's running time, gives the same view of the possible last days of our earth, even if it doesn't have the typical "family" atmosphere surrounding it to add to the drama. The story behind the pending disaster focuses on an ambitious scientist (Kathryn Grant) who proves her ability to work in what was then a man's field and succeed, even if climbing down 90 feet into a cavernous pit did freeze her for a bit. William Leslie's young doctor uses that moment to become manipulatingly sexist, and that gets her going even if it kills her. She will risk her life, becoming trapped in this cave by herself when a huge earthquake hits and all oxygen leaves. What is causing all the worldly explosions becomes the focus of the scientific team who longs to save the world even if local politicians don't want to believe them, at first.A tiny black rock seems to be the cause of it all, and when it is discovered, the effects look silly and artificial. But even with some over the top dialog and dated effects, the movie does get more gripping as it continues, culminating in a scene over and inside what appears to be the Hoover Dam (given a fictional name) and is fraught with tension as the remaining characters realize what they are up against and how they must deal with it. Some of the quake scenes are obviously newsreel and stock footage, but there is some realistic destruction scenes obviously made for the film as well. The scenes in the limestone cavern are very closed in and might make anybody who suffers from claustrophobia feel a little at ease. These films are never about the acting, but making their point of what is setting the earth on a path towards doomsday and how the major characters deal with it. The script certainly could have been a lot worse, and the presentation a lot sillier, but fortunately, it manages to avoid that, making this quite a memorable second half of a double bill ("The Giant Claw", which it is a massive improvement over) as those days of movie going trends were coming to an end.

The Night the World Exploded (1957) ** (out of 4) This science-fiction film has pretty much been forgotten because director Fred F. Sears and producer Sam Katzman would follow it up with THE GIANT CLAW, which of course would find a major cult following. This film here has a couple scientists trying to discover the cause for a recent outbreak of earthquakes that are causing major destruction around the world. With the help of a machine, the two realize that the really big one is coming and they must come up with a way to stop it. THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED runs a quick 64-minutes and is pretty entertaining throughout but at the same time there's just no way for the film to tackle all the important issues brought up in it and especially with such a small budget. The budget is without question one of the smallest I've seen from a Katzman production and there's really no evidence that any money was spent on this thing. Right from the start we're greeted with non-stop stock footage, which shows the destruction of the earthquakes, the mass problems that followed and even the flooding. All of these things have an impact on the story and when we cut away to the stock footage it's just so obvious and it does take away from what you're seeing. I will give the filmmakers a lot of credit for coming up with a pretty good explanation as to why the earthquakes are happening and what it's going to take to stop them. The film is mostly dialogue driven so extra credit has to go to the fact that it really never gets boring. Yes, some of the scenes are dragged out a bit but not to the point where you get bored. Kathryn Grant and William Leslie play the leads and offer up fine performances. If you're looking for a film with ground-breaking effects then you're certainly not going to find it here but fans of the 50's sci-fi should be mildly entertained.