THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED (1958)

THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED (1958)

Tagline: Nope.

(Sci-Fi, Drama, Animals Getting Out Of Town) [G]

Note – This movie was never given an MPAA rating, but I think it would have been a G. It was also titled DEATH COMES FROM OUTER SPACE. Both the titles sound pretty terrifying. 

At this moment, the safety of the human race is entrusted to the very weapons that were created for its own destruction. Let us commend ourselves to God.

In this one, John MacLeran ends up being the first man to try and go to the moon. The mission fails and part of the atomic rocket ends up exploding in the Delta asteroid cluster. The incident sends a group of asteroids on a collision course with earth. Now it’s up to a bunch of scientists to figure out how to stop the impending doom. Meanwhile, the nations of the earth have formed a sort of nuclear coalition to see if they can nuke their way out of the catastrophe they created. 

First off this movie is noted as being either the first or one of the first Italian sci-fi films. The version I watched was the American one with all dubs, but there aren’t any issues really in that regard. I think the acting for the most part was fine. The copy I watched of this was pretty bad, but it did look like there was a ton of stock footage involved here. 

What works in this movie is that we get a pretty cool idea for “why” a bunch of meteors would be headed towards earth. I am taking into account how little we really knew about space back in 1958. The other thing that works is the effects in the final sequence of the film. We get one of the more rad “let's nuke it” scenes in not only the 1950s but really ever. It’s pretty awesome looking. The other thing that works is the cast. Even with the dubs the acting really isn’t a problem at all in this film. 

What doesn’t work is when you take into account what we know about space and meteors now. If you do that, this whole movie is just really silly premise-wise. The other issue is that the scenes with actual “sky exploding” or destruction are few and far between. This leaves us relying on a script that just isn’t all that interesting. There is a bit of a love story, but it feels like it’s just an afterthought and we don’t know these characters well enough to care about them. We also don’t get a great score and the narration sounds like what you would hear if you just showed up at a parking lot carnival and the barkers are trying to get you to buy more rings to toss. For the time that was the news style at times, but in this movie, it’s pretty over the top. 

I don’t really know anyone from this cast outside of Paul Hubschmid who plays John McLaren. Hubschmid is most known for THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and is a good actor. His role in this didn’t blow me away, but it definitely wasn’t bad either. 

Unless you can find a high-quality version of this, it’s unfortunately not really worth the watch. With a rather large pool of 50s sci-fi out there (even movies with similar plots), this is pretty low on the list of what I consider good. To its credit, the ending is quite specular, just not enough to fix the movie’s pacing or weak dialog. I give this one a 2 out of 7.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF ROYAL FILM AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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