The day the earth caught fire

[TheRoadWarrior]

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THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE


Is this the end or another beginning?

British Science Fiction. 1961

Screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest

Directed by
Val Guest


Fully restored and remastered version by NETWORK, the original tinting is included in this version.

Starring: Janet Munro - Leo McKern - Edward Judd

Look out for an early brief appearance by Michael Caine as a policeman.

Jacket:-
Nuclear tests conducted by the Americans and Russians, inadvertantly knock the world off its axis. Weather patterns around the globe are disrupted but temperatures rise universally. Did the tests do more than was first thought?

This excellent and underated Brit SF classic revolves around three characters, whilst also being a compelling portrait of Fleet Street.

Three characters - Peter Stenning, a hard-drinking reporter. Bill Maguire, science correspondent. Jeannie Craig, Stenning's girlfriend.

Craig is beautiful and the performances are strong, it's a wordy script, but it has a terrific atmosphere, the sfx holds up and seeing the mist roll up the Thames is a stand-out scene.

The main impact for me is partly how topical this film still is and the ominous atmospherics, it really does convey tension that becomes a tension-city rollercoaster at times.

The lead up to the final minutes is incredibly well handled, the professional attitude of Stenning and the others, using old fashioned British grit to get the job done, and roll out that final copy before the world . . . ends.

[Oscar Deutsch]

Are they re-releasing this?

I bought this quite recently in a Network sale - they seemed to have two versions on the go, one a special edition, but I'm not sure if that was simply a vanilla release. The extras on the special edition were fairly spartan anyway. One thing that puzzles me is that it seems to be rated 15 for the extras. There is a still of Janet Munro topless in the publicity galley, but it would barely warrant a 12 I'd have thought!

[TheRoadWarrior]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Day-Eart...3566056&sr=1-2

I have this version, to my knowledge, there is no new realease Oscar, but I can see why it's confusing.

There appears to be at least two available, the one with the picture of the three actors, and the newspaper in the b.g on the dvd cover, and mine, the former being the cheaper version without any extras.

My version has the commentary with Val Guest, and the interview with Leo Mckern. It is rated 15, but as I've never looked at the stills, I'm unsure as to what is in there.

Confusingly- an Amazon reviewer seemed to be suggesting that there are two special editons, with less extras on one of them?? I can't see this, there's mine, above, and the cheaper one also by Network, with the newspaper/characters jacket.

One reason for the 15 might be, and I barely noticed this I have to say, until I'd watched it around three times. Janet Munro is topless in the film as well. There's one scene where she is in bed and the sheets slilp and well, there you go.

It would be clear in the cinema, on dvd, blink and you miss it.

[TheRoadWarrior]

to add: I place it, for some reason, in the same category as "When Worlds Collide". I keep both side by side in my collection.


Any discussion of this flim, please post away folks. I think it's a classic and would like to hear what others think?

[Paul Moran]

I think I have the same version as TheRoadWarrior. Watched it in March 2007 (when I bought it) but not since. I must have blinked during the Janet Munro topless scene!

[drterror666]

I must have blinked during the Janet Munro topless scene!

I think Oscar meant that there is a gallery of pictures on the disc with the topless one in it.

[drterror666]

From what I can gather, Janet Munro was washing her hair and someone was snapping shots. It's argued that she didn't know the person was there, but, hey, that's show business. Anyway, for your visual pleasure...

[Oscar Deutsch]

Yup, that's the one - there is a fairly lengthy scene in which she parades around with a towel on and lies in bed which would have been daring for the time, I imagine, but at no point when I was watching it did I see anything pop out which would have raised an eyebrow (or anything else, for that matter!).

The film itself appears only to ever have been an X at the cinema (after unspecified cuts) and a PG for home viewing:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/AFF008781/

It's the extras that appear to have garned the 15 rating:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/AVV169463/

Although the BBFC's way of listing them doesn't really provide any helpful info as to what they are, really - I think I've watched all of them, and the above still is the only contentious thing I can find - surely that barely warrants a 12, let alone a 15?

Anyways, agreed, absolutely top film. I remember catching this on, perhaps, an early evening BBC2 screening once, and was absolutely mesmerised. I can't have been much older than early teens but the atmosphere was fantastic, even in a version without the tinting and panned-and-scanned. They truly don't make 'em like that anymore!

[TheRoadWarrior]

Oscar - I think your last para exactly sums up why I bought it, memory, the sound of, now... how do I describe this, a bell, or tolling at the beginning sets up an atmosphere which I associate with Brit SF of that era, and a sort of Quatermass vibe or feel. It's ominous and eerie.

But now I'm fascinated, this film was just out of the 50s, so we know just how repressive society was back then. Thanks for the still from the extras DrTerror , I already liked Janet Munro, now I feel like I've got to know her a little better!

Re the cert 15 debacle, There's a nipple shot in bed, to be blunt, the bedsheets slip, it may even be in shadow, she smiles at the camera or just off camera knowingly (probably why I thought, uh, what's that expression playing off, oh, us!)

I now kind of see this film as pushing boundaries, and detect a certain mischief in the production team's intentions.

In KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES, that behomoth for SF films of the 1950s. I recall reading a review (in there or elsewhere) where THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was classified as the masterpiece, and ... 'CAUGHT FIRE as not quite making the grade into that pantheon, but I'd disagree with that viewpoint!
As we do around here!

Unlike THE DAY... STOOD STILL , THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE has not dated as severely imho, 'STOOD' relies upon old fashioned shock in places, the UFO's shape is 1950s through and through, which is fne, the stiffness of some of the acting (if I recall, I have it on dvd but haven't watched it for eons), let it down a little now.

I sometimes wonder why Network, or whomever, release some of these products, and confuse us, as the 'special ed' was not exactly expensive??

[Oscar Deutsch]

You can feel yourself starting to perspire during the heatwave scenes. As sci-fi goes, it doesn't rely on aliens or anything outlandish, it's premise is something that would have been almost entirely believable at the time, with the fear of the bomb and its effects almost a complete unknown. It had eerily empty London streets decades before 28 Days Later. And more than that, it's also a corking newspaper room flick, depicting scenes of bustling Fleet Street offices and print works that have sadly long gone.

Damn it, I'm going to have to watch it again now, with particular attention to Janet Munro's bedsheets!

[TheRoadWarrior]

I like summer, I like heat, but with the weather the way it is now, those scenes have an added foreboding. Are we going to all melt one day. The poles moving out of alignment is tagged as unlikely or nonsense, but I watched a programme a few years ago on El Nino, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C...rn_Oscillation and apparently it slows the revolutions of the earth down, and that's just a bunch of clouds. Who ever knows... it's not so exaggerated methinks. At least not for the imaginative leap.

That's what I like about movie discussions, they get you excited all over again about a great movie, and sometimes, only sometimes, something as innocent as a nipple may pull you back into a whole movie! Well, if you're me that is.





edit to add- bell was wrong, I was looking for the word 'gong' earlier, or 'gong-like'.

[Kel E]

I thought it was interesting how they discussed "climate change" even before the eco-disaster movies of the 1970s.

Also the scene where the teens are going crazy in the street and apartment building and dousing everyone in water-- the hairstyles and lack of clothing felt unusually modern to me-maybe because they were all wet. Cant think of another film from the early 60s that felt that way.

The film that I always watch when its super hot is Island of the Burning Doomed/Night of the Big Heat

"The earth will become just another hot planet."

"Like so many in the constellation."