I love a disaster movie and one of my favourite is ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’, which I caught up with thanks to YouTube. British made and shot on location respectively Manchester, London and Bath and at Shepperton Studios.
When the Soviet Union and USA detonate simultaneous nuclear bomb tests, on different sides of the world it sets off a strange meteorological event that begin to affect the globe.
Actor Edward Judd plays a hard-drinking reporter, Peter Stenning, who besides his drinking is going through a messy divorce on top of being given lousy assignments. Has the temperatures rise his friend and fellow reporter Bill Maguire played by Leo McKern sends Stenning to the British Met Office to get data on the strange temperatures.
While at the Met Office, he meets a young telephonist Jeanie played by Janet Munro the love interest in the film. It is soon discovered that the test had altered the climatic zones and changing the pole and the equator. The newsroom goes into over drive seeking information and conformation on the story they plan to run. Stenning who runs into Jeanie are in gulfed in a thick mist that descends on London forcing Stenning to spend the night at Jeanie’s flat. Where upon a terrible storm hits London washing away the mist. Also helps with the fact Stenning and Jeanie are at the time are engaged in having sex, but being a 1961 made film that fact is left to the imagination.
The increasing heat causes water in the Thames and round Britain to evaporate and the government announces a state of emergency calling for rationing supplies as a plan is hatch to save the world has the whole orbit of the Earth has been pushed towards the sun. Scientists conclude that the only way to bring the Earth back into a safer orbit is to detonate a series of nuclear bombs in Siberia.
People start evacuating the cities while those staying behind start to loot water wherever they could find it and attack people. Jeanie who was imprison for giving Stenning information about the upcoming disaster is released and takes up a job at the newspaper. Jeanie falls prey to the looters has she takes a bath but is saved my Stenning.
Stenning, Maguire, and Jeanie gather at a bar to await the outcome as the clock counts down to zero. When the bombs detonate, somewhere in Siberia around 30 seconds later the blast was felt in a deserted London has dust falls from the bar's ceiling. In the print room of the newsroom there are two versions of the newspaper's front page have been prepared: one reads "World Saved", the other "World Doomed".
The film concludes with the sound of pealing church bells leaving audience to decide whether this heralds a new beginning or the end of mankind.
My Rating
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