The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This film isn't what I would describe as a typical science fiction film. The plot serves as a prediction as to how our world has evolved into the place it has become.Edward Judd - hardly remembered now - is a savagely witty and cynical journalist whose newspaper he works for, provides the latest news with regards to the rather unusual weather that takes place.The screenplay is an excellent one and is brought to life by a gallery of familiar character actors, including Leo McKern, Michael Goodliffe amongst others.

I caught this film one afternoon back in the early 1980's and was completely blown away. To say it's ahead of its time is an understatement. It is the ultimate disaster movie but with style. Pete Stenning is the ultimate anti hero. A divorced reporter with nowhere to go who stumbles on a story of world obliteration. Edward Judd plays the role of Pete Stenning with panache. At its heart is Fleet Street where the centre of the London press was situated. Now sadly gone its a reminder of how newspaper reporting used to be that is one of simply reporting the news...no page 3 here. OK some of the production value is dated but the heart of the film is still very strong.

This is an interesting old British movie from the 60's about the effects on the Earth after two simultaneous nuclear test explosions by the U.S. and Russia. The planet gets knocked out of its normal orbit and starts heading toward the Sun, heating up as it gets closer to it. The film is an examination of the ways that the populous tries to cope with the discomfort, and the effects on the world's weather as it heads for a doomsday rendezvous with our burning star. Unfortunately for the writers of this picture, in the real world the immutable laws of physics make it absolutely impossible for a nuclear explosion to occur in more than one location on the Earth's surface at any one time, which is why there has never been, and could never be, a nuclear war - at least in the way in which we would imagine it to be, each side exchanging ICBM launches within minutes of each other; it's simply impossible and cannot happen that way. However, irrespective of that fact, the movie is entertaining but dramatic and not comical at all. It is a "serious" look at what might happen in such a situation. The picture is told from the point of view of the journalists of the local newspaper, and how they try to find out the facts and then report these to the public. Leo McKern makes a good effort as the editor. It is an o.k. film, somewhat entertaining in a serious way, touching on the sci-fi genre, but it's not my favourite sci-fi film. I give this one only 5/10, partly because of its serious, dramatic angle, the implausibility of the story and also because it was shot in black and white, probably to add to the gloomy subject matter. This picture looks and feels old and might actually benefit from a remake effort. See what you think.

The Earth's climate is heating up--and humans have to figure out how to cope with it.The movie was made in 1960, at the height of the Cold War--so in the movie, nuclear weapons, rather than greenhouse gases, are the culprit. But most of what you see transpiring could happen just as easily as the greenhouse effect increases. (Someone could really do a superb remake of this movie today, blaming CO2 instead of nukes.) In this movie, there are no jaw-dropping special effects, just ordinary folks struggling to cope with the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. As seen through the eyes of newspaper reporters, who report the facts to their readers--and try to figure out what it all means.A taut script, excellent acting, taut direction, good characterizations, and docudrama-like realism all keep the tension at a high level.