The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)

Director:

Terence Fisher

Writer:

Harry Spalding (writer)

Genre:

Horror | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Who... Or What Were They... Who Tried To Wipe All Living Creatures Off The Face Of This Earth?

Plot:

A crack space pilot returns to earth to find the planet has been devastated by some unknown forces. There are a few survivors...

Plot Keywords:

Robot | Invasion | Alien Invasion | Expectant Mother | Poison Gas

Cast

Willard Parker	...	Jeff Nolan
Virginia Field	...	Peggy
Dennis Price	...	Quinn Taggart
Thorley Walters	...	Edgar Otis
Vanda Godsell	...	Violet Courtland
David Spenser	...	Mel
Anna Palk	...	Lorna

Runtime:

62 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved (Certificate #20758) | USA:Not Rated (DVD) | UK:A

Filming Locations:

Shere, Surrey, England, UK

Company:

Lippert Films

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Last Man on Earth (1964)

Invasion! - but Let's Not Have a Screaming Fit

A warm-up by director Fisher for his "Island of Terror"(66) and "Night of the Big Heat"(67), this is a template for alien invasion pictures: there's a small group of survivors (in rural England) and marauding invaders, here in the form of slow-moving robots. Since the invaders never do move beyond a slow walk, they never seem to pose a serious threat unless you happen to run right up to them (which one of the characters does indeed do). Then they zap you with a touch of their cold hand and you eventually turn into a controlled zombie. It sounds a bit silly, but the film manages to convey an eeriness to the whole setting. Maybe because it's in black & white, it also reminded me a bit of "Night of the Living Dead"(68). The sense of isolation and the threat are very similar.

What sets this above other sci-fi films of the fifties & sixties is the lack of clunky, melodramatic dialog. The intent by the filmmakers and actors is that this is really happening. The survivors are an average group of citizens, caught in a traumatic situation. None of them are prepared or trained for something like this. There's always that one troublemaker in the group, of course, brandishing a revolver and behaving like an ass. But the story needs that extra tension to make it more interesting. It's low budget, but they didn't really need a lot of money to show empty streets or just several bodies littering the landscape. This one, though, really begs to be remade with a decent budget, as a full throttle invasion story. A similar Americanized version was the earlier "Target Earth"(1954).