The Night the World Exploded (1957) – Friday Night At The Home Drive-In

Poster for The Night the World Exploded (1957)The Night the World Exploded (1957) by #FredFSears
w/
#KathrynGrant #WilliamLeslie

Scientists locate the epicentre of earthquake activity and find an explosive ore is working its way up from the depths of Earth.

“Super-quake tilts the earth!”:

“I am a scientist, I guess, but I’m a woman, too.”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

The Night the World Exploded (1957) begins with a scientist named Dr. Conway building a machine that somehow measures pressure and/or predicts things like earthquakes. He finishes it just in time to get a reading predicting a massive earthquake in the next 24 hours. He and his colleague, Dr. Morton, rush off to the capital city, where they try to warn the governor and convince him to evacuate one million people from the city. The governor doesn’t go for it because there’s no proof that these guys are right…

Of course the earthquake happens, and thousand die. But that’s not the worst of it. According to the machine, there are going to be several more earthquakes all over the world. And even THAT’s not the worst of it. Apparently the entire planet has already been knocked off of its axis by the first earthquake.

Something bad is clearly happening, but Drs Conway and Morton have no idea what it is. So they, along with beautiful scientist Laura “Hutch” Hutchinson, set out to find some answers… Continue reading

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Last Woman on Earth (1960)

Poster for Last Woman on Earth (1960)Last Woman on Earth (1960) by #RogerCorman
screenplay: #RobertTowne
w/
#BetsyJonesMoreland #AntonyCarbone

A gangster, his wife, and his lawyer may be the last people alive.

“They fought for the Ultimate Prize!”

“You mean you’d exile one-third of the human race?”

#Horror #SciFi
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

Last Woman on Earth (1960) is one of three movies that Roger Corman made in Puerto Rico. He made Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) back to back with Last Woman on Earth to save money (shoot two movies while on location in one place). Last Woman on Earth is probably the better of the two. It was written by renowned screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown (1974), The Last Detail (1973)) and feels kind of like an old episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964).

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Friday night at the home drive-in: Day the World Ended (1955)

Day the World Ended (1955) by #RogerCorman

w/#RichardDenning #LoriNelson #AdeleJergens

In a world devastated by a wide-scale nuclear war, all that remains are teetering ruins and a handful of scrappy survivors.

”ATTACKED… by a creature from hell!”
“The terrifying story that COULD COME TRUE!”
“A new high in naked shrieking terror!”

#Horror #SciFi  
#NotQuiteClassicCinema
#FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn

We’ve become used to post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows that deal with zombies. We used to see a lot of post-apocalyptic movies about people in the desert fighting over gas, or water, or the last fertile woman on the planet. Day the World Ended (1955) is a much earlier post-apocalyptic story of survivors simply trying to stay alive. They wind up stuck together in a house in valley that was somehow protected from the radiation fallout that is killing people and animals everywhere else (or something like that).

A threat of mutant monsters from outside the valley looms over the survivors, but as with many of the best movies of this kind, the real danger comes from within the group, as tension between the survivors begins to rise… Continue reading