The Night the World Exploded
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Night the World Exploded |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1957 |
| length | 64 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Fred F. Sears |
| script |
Jack Natteford Luci Ward |
| music | Ross DiMaggio |
| camera | Benjamin H. Kline |
| cut | Paul Borofsky |
| occupation | |
| |
The Night the World Exploded is an American science fiction and disaster film directed by Fred F. Sears from 1957 .
action
The geologist Dr. Together with his research assistant Laura Hutchinson, Conway has developed a particularly powerful seismograph . Therefore, the two are also the first to predict a devastating earthquake that threatens several US states. They warn the authorities in vain, so that the quake claims many lives. Only now are the two given full attention. What they have to announce, however, is bad news: the earthquakes will spread across the world and will increase in intensity even further.
Conway and Hutchinson, whose professional employment relationship is hampered by a tension between mutual but negated love, descend into one of America's deepest caves in order to track down the cause of the phenomenon. There they take strange, rock-like samples that turn out to be highly explosive. It is a previously unknown element that reacts with the nitrogen contained in the air. This process can be neutralized with water. Conway and Hutchinson realize that greedy mining and uncontrolled oil drilling around the world have reached a layer of earth that has released this element and now threatens to destroy the whole world.
As earthquakes intensify worldwide, Conway arranges a meeting of leading scientists from all nations, despite the concerns of his superiors. Through this alliance it is possible to find the solution to the problem: In all earthquake regions tunnels, tunnels and caves are flooded with water. In arid regions, the deployment of a globally united military can help. In the home region of Conways and Hutchinsons, of all places, a particularly high occurrence of the unknown element threatens to cause a catastrophic explosion that endangers the whole world. But they can also solve this problem. A piece of the element transported in vacuum is transported to a nearby dam and the dam's controlled explosion floods and neutralizes the underground hot spots.
Conway and Hutchinson finally admit their love and kiss deeply.
Origin and reception
Director Sears, whose Hollywood career began as an actor, made various films for genres popular at the time, including the science fiction genre, from the early 1950s. His film Fliegende Saucers attack ( Earth vs. the Flying Saucers ), made the year before and in which Ray Harryhausen played a key role, is one of his best-known productions and was also very successful internationally at the time. The Night the World Exploded was established in June 1957 as a double feature with Sears' The Giant Claw ( The Giant Claw nachgeschoben). The film was also released in cinemas in some European countries, but not in German-speaking countries.
The contemporary critics were not very convinced. The New York Times, for example, said that the film was deliberately inexperienced, both in terms of the staging and the messages conveyed.
Leading actress Kathryn Grant was best known for her role in the classic film Sindbad's Seventh Voyage ( The 7th Voyage of Sinbad ).
Web links
- The Night the World Exploded in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Review of The Night the World Exploded (1957) , New York Times