THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1959)

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1959)

Tagline: There are no laws... no rules. It's man-to-man with the last girl on Earth at stake! A unique, spectacular drama packed with more surprises, more amazing sights than you've ever seen.

(Sci-Fi, Drama, It’s The End Of The World As We Know It) [G]

Note: This movie was never given an MPAA rating, but I think it would have gotten a G. 

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

In this one, a miner named Ralph Burton gets trapped in a mine and eventually finds his way out to discover that the whole world has faced a radioactive assault leaving what is very likely just 3 people in the United States. With just two males and one woman left, you can only guess what issues arise as they try to live their lives and try to contact more survivors. 

First off this movie takes for freakin ever to get going. Harry Belafonte is a brilliant actor who plays Ralph Burton, but one-man shows are always tough and about 30 minutes into this thing we are leaning completely on him trying to find people and starting to freak out because he can’t. 

For quite some time watching this I wasn’t really sure if this movie was just trying to show us people who can’t get along even at the end of the world, or if aliens with googly eyes were going to show up and teach them how to grow giant pumpkins.  What it ends up being, is that Burton is fixated on race, getting power and phones running, and how the world used to work more than he needs to be in this situation. Sarah Crandall played by Inger Stevens is focused on haircuts and probably trying to figure out why Burton is so grouchy. There is a race element in this movie, but it takes the way back seat to human nature and jealousy and the complication of having just 3 people for hundreds of miles or more. In the movie though, no one is racist in spite of some claims. They are just grumpy or jealous or frustrated. 

I did like the movie's final message, but person number 3, Benson Thacker played by Mel Ferrer is a giant jerk. I would give him like $20.00 and tell him to go live 3 states over. Also of note is that there are only 3 people in this entire movie. We don’t see anyone else. The other thing is that this was shot pretty NIGHT OF THE COMET style where the film crew had about an hour of no one on the streets, where they could shoot a post-apocalyptic movie. I should also mention the score is pretty great.

This movie gets high accolades for its sincere and superb performances as well as for touching on a subject regarding race that at the very least was thought-provoking. As far as 50s sci-fi this one is definitely off the beaten path and I haven’t seen it mentioned once in the year I have been in at least 3 sci-fi social media groups. One reason is that the movie's only sci-fi element is that it takes place in an “end of the world” situation. In the 50s, if it was the “end of the world”, that was probably because of radiation and radiation was the grandfather of 50s sci-fi. Space exploration was probably the grandmother? 

Outside of the messaging and performances this really wasn’t my type of sci-fi movie, so I am going to give it a 4 out of 7 on merit, but others definitely have it higher than that.
 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF HARBEL PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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