Director Roger Corman's first sci-fi film effort in 1956, "The Day The World Ended", is a low-budget, marginal film. The story involves an older man(Paul Birch) and his lovely, grown daughter,(Lori Nelson) who are holed up in their house after a nuclear holocaust has decimated most of the worlds population; their home has been protected from radioactive fallout by the surrounding mountains. The setting is limited to the house and its immediate surrounding area; Corman makes some attempt at post-holocaustic atmosphere by using smoke-generators in the surrounding foothills. At the start of the film, Birch and Nelson are suddenly besieged by five survivors, including a burrow - who all inexplicably arrive within a short time of
one another. One of the survivors has been affected by radiation and is horribly disfigured on one side of his face. It struck me as unusual that some of them appeared remarkably clean and well groomed for this sort of situation. The characters are varied and much of the conflict results from the contrasting personalities, especially in regard to the limited supplies and to geologist(Richard Denning's) and tough guy(Mike "Touch" Conner's, later TV's Mannix) heated competition over the young Nelson. Denning and Conners give the best performances in this film, Adele Jergens(Connor's girlfriend) also delivers an entertaining bit when reenacting her striptease dancing act. However, the interactive scenes within the house drag on and
on for most of the movie without a glimmer of the "mutant monster" (Paul Blaisdell); the monster finally appears after some foreshadowing, but is remarkably inept in its attack on Denning and Nelson and quickly dies from exposure to the "pure rain" that comes just in time. Anti-climatic; with Denning delivering the cliche', "Man created him, God destroyed him". Not much comic relief except for the ridiculous looking monster, who wouldn't frighten anyone but the very young (I saw it at a local drive-in when aged 12 or 13, and although it appeared interesting at the time to my youthful eyes, it was certainly not scary), and a laughable scene where Conners sticks his exposed hand out a window to collect rainwater in a container to see if it's contaminated by radiation. Some of the dialogue is atrocious, for example, one of the
characters suggests that human skin exposed to radiation could be called "atomic skin" - I rolled at that one. A one-time viewing of "The Day The World Ended" should be more than enough for most, except for perhaps the most ardent Corman fan.
