The Day the Earth Caught Fire

The Alphoids' glimmering ship is like Superman's Fortress of Solitude on ecstasy, one of the film's highlights.

Directed and written, I find this really interesting, by great British filmmaker Val Guest, who did a lot of interesting genre work, including the first two Quatermass films, which are excellent, and The Day the Earth Caught Fire, which is also really, really great.

Um, he did The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas.

I- that's one of my favorites, uh, which got a 4K from Hammer recently.

We're gonna do the gag at the beginning, aren't we? I know we are.

Val Guest, who we talked about earlier, previously directed with Judd in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, which is a great little British sci- science fiction movie.

Love that film.

Yeah.

and welcome to smash pod this week we'll be joining the world on the brink of total flaming disaster and making sure we tell everyone it was much hotter in 1976 yes it's the day the earth caught fire and joining me to get the warm willies on a ghost train why it's toby

haydoke Oh, John, I want to inject some fire into Smirshpod because I want to redeem myself after X the Unknown, where I seem to recall you valiantly were going.

And then there's a scene where this happens.

And I thought, I quite like black and white movies.

And I was absolutely consumed by it.

And I think I'd heard it mentioned by a man in a comic shop once, this film called The Day the Earth Caught Fire with Leo McKernan.

So I kind of vaguely knew, but I missed the beginning.

So I was guessing that's what it was.

Well, let's move on to 1961, which brought us any number of giant monster movies, Gorgo and Konga from the UK, Mothra from Japan, and Reptilicus from Denmark.

But my choice for this year has to be one of Val Guest's greatest films, the bleak and possibly terrifyingly prescient The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

It begins with journalist Edward Judd walking through an abandoned London, imaginatively shot by Guest with the use of orange-yellow filters, who begins to dictate what might be his final story.

Guest co-wrote the script with Wolf Mankowitz, indeed they were co-nominated for a BAFTA, and brings an almost documentary feel to this story of what happens when science goes wrong.