My favourite part in the movie is when the old billionaire who financed the whole project is prevented from boarding the space ship by the lead scientist who tells him, "You can't go, the new planet is for the young, not us," or something like that. His seat went to the young lady who didn't win a lottery position, allowing her to be with her sweetheart. The decrepit old billionaire is so pissed off, crying and determined to get on that space ship that with super human effort he manages to rise up out of his wheel chair and tries to walk ! The powerful blast from the space ship's engines literally sweeps him away. Priceless! This has stuck with me for like 55 years.
In the original book, Hendron made it to Zira. But they still did the "Moses can't enter the Promised Land" bit by having him die before the colonists took up residence in one of the cities left by the original inhabitants.
@@jimsteele9261 Not sure if you’re aware of this but there’s another book by the same authors titled After Worlds Collide. I read it over 50 years ago so don’t remember anything about it. Got it on order though so should be interesting to see if any of it comes back to me.
This film was sensational and should not be downplayed !!!!! It,s fantastic and way ahead of it,s time. The Special Effects and the incredible ending are priceless !!!!!
Thank you, Scott. And you're right, the special effects alone won it an award. And the actors? Excellent. In fact, this videos narrative was the first time I've ever heard it belittled. Even when the earth was being pulled apart by bellus' Roche zone, showing parts of the atmosphere being absorbed, that has stayed in my memory for 5 decades. Hard to believe that science fiction can have such influences.
@@luthermcgee3767 It can wouldn't it be nice if science fiction could be real, especially if man could be allowed to invent a time machine? I'd go back over 40 years and live the rest of my life back in a much happier time!
@@scottmiller6495 , Agreed, Scott. Well, I remember the original buck Roger's starring buster crab way back in the '30s about ships going to the moon, etc. What was sci fi then, is science fact, now. So who knows what the future holds? And going back in time? I've often thought of that myself. The sixties and seventies were the best of times.
@@luthermcgee3767 and don't forget the magical great 1980s! I hate getting political, but I loved Ronald Reagan America was so much better than now and boy did I enjoy life back then, Oh My 🤗🤗🤗
One writer had been approached by George Pal to write a screenplay of After Worlds Collide but Pal had passed away shortly he had talked to the writer. Perhaps someone could do the sequel someday.
I do wish they'd made "After world's collide". It would've been a good explanation to what happened in our stellar neibourhood after such a titanic CATACLYSM.
I don't recall where I used it, but that last image of "the New World," they've arrived on looks like Paradise. But there were some strange carvings on the mountain wall that definitely looks like they weren't created by nature. Just because they've arrived on a New World doesn't mean they are the dominant species, or going to be the dominant species.
As a sci-fi geek of 60+ years, was delighted to stumble across your series of Sci-Fi Cinema Retro clips and have been bingeing on them, non-stop for a couple of evenings. Being the proud owner of many of the movies reviewed, it always interests me to check someone else's viewpoint. Wishing your UA-cam series continued success. With that in mind would love to see your review of Stanley Kramer's 1959 movie On The Beach, a particular favourite of mine. Cheers.
I've never seen a George Pal film I didn't like. The man knew how to produce a quality film. 😊😊 I recently picked up the book for When Worlds Collide; and it came with the sequel After Worlds Collide. I'm looking forward to reading both of these 1930's classic novels in the near future. 😊😊
I added those 2 books to my collection back in the 1960s, and particularly liked the first book with its apocalyptic descriptions (notably the first passing of the Bronson bodies). I had to make do with stills from the film to whet my appetite, until I saw it on TV in 1986 when far from home. It was not till the early 2000s that I gained a DVD to add to my SF collection. While it is a classic, I would not be averse to a remake that respects the source book, even if it necessarily updated the science and its setting.
@EyeInTheSky982 I have both When Worlds Collide and After The Worlds Collide. They are superb, but the third book, written by different people, is just rubbish.
@@EyeInTheSky982 Yes, but it’s written many years after the first two, and by some other people. Dave Ransdell is not mentioned and the story is quite different. Not very good, I would say.
Loved this movie as a kid. When I look back at it now, it is charming. Everyone wore a nice suit and smoked on screen. This, "This Island Earth" and "War of the Worlds" were all so good.
Fantastic review of WWC!! Great information and knowledge about the movie. But......I believe a couple of things you should hear me out on. First, this movie is so ripe for an update. The movies Armageddon and Deep Impact were good, but they were not WWC at all. Secondly, the most underrated performance in a science fiction movie must be given to John Hoyt as Sydney Stanton. A man filled with such hate..just look at the scene in the beginning when he practically salivates over wanting the power to pick who will live and who will die!! God complex anyone? He is incredible in every single scene, just a marvel of a man acting as a man bent on destruction while trying to save himself. The scene when he thinks Zira is a fraud after the clock strikes 1pm, and then seeing how frightened he becomes calling out to his lap dog Ferris (Frank Cady in a great minimal performance) is mesmerising, but then it is outdone at the end when Dr. Hendron pushes him away from the ship!! Stanton is paralysed but walks!!! He is so freaked about dying, he gets up from his wheelchair and tries in incredible desperation to board the ship to no avail. I would love to see a remake and who would play Stanton. What a role to expand on! Hello Hollywood chiefs!! Anyone reading this? It’s money in the bag done the right way.
I totally agree with you this film is due a remake and I think now is the right time to do it. John Hoyt and his performance stuck in my mind after first watching it . What a peach of a role for an actor if it does get remade.
I love all three movies mentioned in fact I just bought the blueray of WWC recently. All three movies were greatly loved while growing up in the '60's. To me, the cast was perfect and to be honest I never realized how unknown most of them were. Barbara Rush's beauty and voice made me assume she was famous at the time. I never really questioned or felt put off by the painting at the end but I guess I knew it would of been difficult to come up with an amazing world and the painting sort of kept it dreamy and wonderful. I feel this is ever bit a classic as the other two movies mentioned.
I always loved that classic rocket ship/spaceship design, it was used with variations in several 50's sci-fi movies and TV shows, Destination Moon, Rocky Jones Space Ranger, etc.
The 1932 novel was much better although I do like the movie. I suppose I'll never really understand why screenwriters make subjective changes to the original material they're adapting to the screen. Often it doesn't improve what's on the screen.
The ending was puzzling. Why is it that nothing is said about the obviously intelligent being-created structures on the left of the screen and to the right, in the distance (pyramids!)?
That was setting the stage for the (unfortunately nonfilmed) sequel, to be based on "After Worlds Collide." I read both novels and, to me, it was much more exciting. It turns out that a number of other arks were built by various countries the face of the upcoming collision. The one seen in the film based on "When Worlds Collide" was a prototype which carried maybe 50 passengers. A larger American ark successfully carries about ten times as many. A French ark gets out of the atmosphere, but to the horror of the prototype ark's onlooking passengers, burns out some of its thrusters and crashes back on Earth. A British ark lands in a lake on the now thawed out new planet, but over half its passengers survive. There was also an ark from the Communist Bloc, which lands near the largest of the domed alien cities that had been built by the planet's extinct inhabitants in the hope of saving their civilization from the long interstellar journey caused by a rogue star ejecting it from its original solar system. World War III occurs on New Earth. The sequel calls out for a new film!
Nice review, TUG. While on the subject of 1950s classics, I suggest a review linking the various stories from Nigel Kneale, notably the Quatermass spinoffs. I have the BBC Quatermass Collection, plus his biography. What a brilliant scriptwriter he was.
Nice and informative video. I just finished this novel, and am intrigued to see the film now. I love these styled sci-fi films. Love the channel. I just subscribed.
Watch "Destination Moon". Most of the science is realistic and, despite it's 1950 date, is entirely watchable. Their crew tech, who is from the Bronx, is asked if he'd like to stay a bit. He replies, "Nah...no broads, no booze, and no baseball."
Larry Keating, best known for his role as Roger Addison on the "Mr. Ed" television show, shows his versatility as a dramatic actor in this great sci-fi movie. To bad he died about 15 years later due to leukemia.
We've known for some time that during solar system formation it's not unusual for planets to be gravitationally ejected into the depths of interstellar space. Recently it's been discovered that there are more rogue planets in deep space than there are planets orbiting stars. So...think of interstellar asteroid Oumuamua that passed through the solar system a few years back. Replace it with a Neptune sized rogue, alter its trajectory slightly and hey...When Worlds Collide.
A couple of comments: 1. I would like to see a modern update with more recent science and technology. 2. I liked the character of Dave Randall. He's ready to sacrifice himself, not seeing a need for pilots; yet his cool-headed piloting of the ark to a landing pretty much saves the day and the entire remnant of mankind.
At 5:44, the New Tork City square that's swallowed by a big wave is Herald Square, at 34th Street, Broadway, and 6th Avenue (or "Avenue of the Americas").
A watchable sci-fi disaster movie. Good story and acting. @ times a little dry.Visuals & SFX were impressive for the era.Big fan of 50s atomic age sci-fi / horror. Those movies had some fantastic movie posters... best of all time.
I would suggest that some of the "meh" response you're feeling comes from the incredible familiarity with the template that this film created. (It's also fun to note that I have DVD copies of this film and "War of the Worlds" -- and there's a scene in both pictures showing a group of people listening to the radio in a general store where all the filmmakers did was change the voiceover on the soundtrack, LOL.)
Recently bought the movie from ebay. Watched it numerous times. Great creation for those times but not sure if a remake would top it even with more advanced technology. But could be interesting to see maybe star kate winslet and Leonardo Decaprio
Great video but I have to say this is one of my all time favourite films. Even Geoff Love did a cover version of the theme for the budget classic record 'Star Wars and Other Space Themes'.
I went 1:52 in and already knew that you were poking fun at this movie. Naughty of you. Great Movie! P.S. Edit-Sorry about that. Right after, you started to be serious. Thanks.
Modern "end of the world" films may have 20x the budget that George Pal had. And infinitely greater f/x technologies. But this has 10x the effect of such modern ballyhooed CGI epics as "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon". And unlike those films, there is no sentimental "deux ex machina" that saves the Earth at the last moment and everyone is happy. The World actually gets destroyed in this film. It tackles issues that no other film of the time dared to touch.
I heard George Pal talk at a convention. He said, "We tested 'When Worlds Collide' and the audiences loved it, so the studio thought that the new world painting was good enough. A case of a preview going too good." (This fits your story of the studio not wanting to pay the money.) Easy to see in the ending scenes of building the rocket and the riot scenes is Academy Award nominee; Stuart Whitman. But the IMDb credits him as 'man by bank'.
I thank ChatGPT for identifying this movie whose name I didn't know and which had scared me so much when I saw it as a child. Greetings from Argentina. =)
I watched it goggle-eyed at the time. It had a lasting effect in my life....on pub crawls!...why?...the endless discussions on.....just who would you take?...what male/female split.....what trades...what age groups....how many children....what animals, if any....most importantly; how many of each trade would you take; for human 'redundancy'. Over the years, there's never been agreement; try it on your next gathering! Who goes?
The problem with the book and movie is that when the twin bodies approach the Earth, there are floods and earthquakes across the entire planet, but yet apparently no such catastrophes happen on the planet Zyra?
One of my all time favorites. I fell in love with science fiction at the age of 9 back in the 70s because of this movie. The art that went into this movie was ahead of it's time for the most part.
I am “ opposed to remakes on general principles “. When Worlds Collide is one of my favorite movies! I wished they had made the last scene look a little more real, but that is my only complaint.
This reminds me of an end of the world movie I saw as a child that was Japanese where the South Pole was turned into a giant rocket engine to move the Earth out of the way of an approaching planet on a collision course with the Earth. I don't remember the name of it. Ridiculous concept though! LOL!
I wouldn't be interested in a remake of this movie, but I would be interested in a version that more closely follows the book and continues with After Worlds Collide. That would probably require more of a mini-series rather than a feature film.
Read the sequel over 45 years ago but have pretty well forgotten everything about it. Got it ordered so should be interesting to see if how much my memory gets jogged. Last time I watched this movie was probably close to 55 years ago so quite the experience seeing what parts I remembered. Not much, aside from the earthquake scenes and Earth being destroyed plus the very end view of their new home.
for the cast - you could have mentioned Stuart Whitman in a minor role as one of the candidates for the new planet - he would go on to a modest career - but exceeding that of any other cast member - - it's among my favorite of the films you mention (Destination Moon & War of the Worlds & the Thing) - besides trying to capture the source novel's mood - it was a gorgeous film to look at - with characters motivated by astute psychology - - for me the cons are Richard Derr's oh-so-american south african - a simplistic morality (rich guys are evil and must die) - a silly dramatic moment (the effects of the star's passing will be felt at precisely the top of the hour - well - maybe a half-a-minute later) - and the pitiful painted landscape at the end
"Modest career"? That's a bit of an understatement. Whitman was IMO a lower B-list actor with a long career and starring roles, which is a pretty solid accomplishment.
@@JLee-rt6ve- that's what i would call modest - he wasn't a big draw at the box office - and didn't star in big films - the discrepancy here is the use of "modest" - and the issue of subjectivity
This is a good movie, there is a blueray version and it looks very good, but no remakes please. Hollywood would stuff it up and soil my memories of the original.
In my opinion, a few slight changes should be considered if there was a remake: keep the actors, they were astounding . But, the both inside, and outside needed a few modifications; inside- more scientific equipment lining the walls ( it looks empty) the harnesses the survivors are wearing should look more modern too. And outside the ship, there should be a little more detail ( not like Douglas trumbull,. ( Although he's brilliant), but just hints of details that suggests various exterior functions of the ship. Even if they didn't make these modifications, the movie as a whole was excellent- especially the appearance of bellas in the sky, and the geographic upheavals generated by the passing of zyras . But the iconic scene was the earth entering bellas roche zone and the tidal forces literally tearing the earth apart.
It has a lot of elements that showed up in the Futurama Episode: A Farewell to Arms, which conflated a colliding planet (Mars) with the end of the Myan Calendar-although some bbq sauce on the screen and a dramatic font revealed that it was instead the Martian Calandar, to depict an escape from the earth to the intercepting planet. The most interesting callback that makes me think it's a tribute to When Worlds Collide, is the evacuation ship has no ammenities but several rows of fairly pedestrian seats, like it's a bus or something. It's not even an efficient use of space. (practical space, not the final frontier) just the same 30 or so seats.
Hi Ed. A relatively new follower here. Have you tought on doing one of your brilliant analysis on “Deep impact” or is it already a written one done. I would love to see a video because that movie is one of my favorite 90’s flick and I still enjoy it these days.
I have a rule that a movie has to be at least 30 years old before I’ll cover it. I do remember really enjoying Deep Impact (much more than Armageddon at least), and I know there’s a lot of interesting trivia about it. For example, it started life as a Spielberg adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s The Hammer of God, but when Armageddon started pre-production, Dreamworks decided to rush the project in order to get their movie out first. Spielberg was too busy to do it, and there was another script laying around about an asteroid impact, so Dreamworks hired somebody else, merged the two scripts (until virtually nothing of Clarke’s novel remained), and thus, you have Deep Impact.
@@TheUnapologeticGeek Agreed. I find this better than Armaggedon. I guess I’ll have to wait six more years for your video on Deep Impact to come. 😁 Thanks for the answer!
I just subscribed and the world 3 years after you made this video is on the brink of collapse. Is your ark ready yet? Remember you said you’d have room on your ark for those that subscribed. I’m ready to go. Say, where are we going anyway?
I must disagree! Though The War of the Worlds is more elaborate, I consider this one the better story. The suspense is high and it really works (except, of course, for that last painting of the new world). Well paced and a cool idea!
I was thinking that Bellus was a brown dwarf star able to produce heat, but not high enough for fusion. That's why (in my opinion) zyras was able to have plantlife on it. It couldn't otherwise if traveling through the cold limitless voids of space far from any sun. Just saying.
I think in the books, Bellus was a gas giant and Zyra was an orbiting class M planet. They weren't sure if the two planets were originally associated or if that happened when the passing star tore them out of their original orbits. The plant life was supposed to have grown from seeds ans spores preserved by the frozen atmosphere once our sun thawed it out.
@@jimsteele9261, Thank you, Mr. Steele. It actually makes sense according to the novel. I've never read it, because I never had access to it. Sounds like it would be great reading.
@@luthermcgee3767 Yes, both the original book and the sequel, "After Worlds Collide" are worth reading if you find them. I got them from a used book store many years ago.
I can see it now. Lucasfilm announces a remark of When Worlds Collide. Here is the press release. 'Coming soon. A visionary re-imagining of a Sci-Fi Classic. When Worlds Collide tells the story of up-start adventurer and bush pilot Wilma Kelly--played by Jennifer Lawrence-- who, while visiting an African national observatory discovers a object hurtling toward Earth. (Why the actual astronomers working there--or anywhere around the world--did not discover this sooner is explained away with the simple acknowledgement that they are all White Men) Alone in her belief that the object will strike the Earth, Wilma must marshal the CEOs of major corporations (by this time ALL female and Diversity Hires) to pull together the funds to build one Space Arc in an ever desperate attempt to save at least some of Earth's Diversity. The ship will carry plenty of frozen embryos so NO White Males will be among the passengers or crew of the Space Arc--lovingly christened 'Diversity One'. Join us--in theaters or on Disney+--as we journey with Wilma, her non-gender specific partner Pat on a mission to saw remnants of humankind When Worlds Collide.' Ugh. Even writing that made me queasy.
I think an updated When Worlds Collide would make more sense today than ten and could be great - an Elon Musk figure promoting a massive Space-X project just to garner money using fear only to realize there is a real threat requiring an entire fleet of such vehicles as governments start tearing each other apart.
I would be for a remake if it WASN'T made in Hollywood. I can count on one hand remakes that were as good or better than the original; Little Shop of Horrors, 3-10 to Yuma, Cape Fear and True Grit. Hollywood can't make a good movie anymore because they're too busy pushing "the message" and appealing to "modern audiences". Maybe a sequel would be good, showing a real-time passage of time. Eighty years later, after living on Zyra, they try to repopulate earth. But a remake? Except for the exceptions above, they usually suck.
I love this movie now and in my childhood when it would show up on TV shows either after the news on Friday nights (Ghoulardi, ect) or on a Saturday afternoon. This movie looks great, but I was always disappointed in how they show the actual collision watched from the Ark is over in seconds and they look like they were doing a pretty good job showing it. I'm for a remake as long as over the top directors like Emmerick doesn't get his hands on it.
Add Spielberg also. After what happened to the remake of Westside Story, Spielberg blew it major time. I'm open to George Lucas doing the remake minus Kathleen Kennedy.
@@carterbentonjr399 I'm trying to be generous with Spielberg's West Side Story, but I have no idea why he would want to remake a movie that was already quite literally perfect.
Ah I lovge this series of 50s SCI FI films. THere were a whole load of them shown on BBC2 when I was around 7 and I could stay up evey week to watch such classics as WWC, Invaders from Mars, Fantastic planet, TDTESS, TDTECF and This island earth,,, Fantastic. :)
Very nicely done review! And I agree with the ranking the film gets here - good, but behind Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing, and War of the Worlds.
When Worlds Collide reminded people of nuclear devastation?! What a ridiculous assumption. If anything it reminded people of the fact that we're at the mercy of nature.
Well babe resurrected thee Earth ending disaster movie in the new film Don't Look Up. Where they treat it is a satire commentary on global warming. Which is about what you need to do nowadays to get people interested in this
If you look sharp you could see a very young steward Wittman in the scene near the end when the men were arguing in the room where they sleep. He is below standing where a person is yelling on top of the bed saying the drawing was fixed.
Old movies didn't leave you guessing about a scene, like the newer ones usually do. For example; They'll add a "Totally unrelated" scene / plot into a movie, but never explain how / where it cam from.
Read Flood and its sequel Ark by Stephen Baxter instead, much better than any remake of this movie would be and based on a similar premise. The novels are also grounded in real science.
I'm not generally PC-obsessed and I get that this was the 1950's, but you must admit the final 40 or so rocket passengers chosen to start a new world on a new planet were all young white Americans. Half were male. To reproduce they would need more females and fewer dudes...if you get my drift. I loved when we first meet the doctor and he says he is not a scientist but an ENT doctor, then lights his cigarette. LOL
Interesting thought on the male-female ratio; perhaps in a remake they would correct that, and, like Starbuck in the newer Battlestar Galactica, make the Dave Randall character a female pilot....
This is why we really needed the sequel. After Worlds Collide tells of arks from other nations that made it to Zyra, and it's just a better story overall than WWC.
I liked this movie when I first saw it in the 1980s on tv. It's a lost gem that get missed when talking about end of the world movies. This to me is a classic. That brought about 2012, Armageddon ( to me a piece of crap of a movie, Armageddon that is, Deep Impact, that actually showed something Armageddon didn't show was half of the damn meteor broke off and hit the earth with drastic consequences, as with Armageddon showed we destroyed this rock the size of Texas with just a nuclear bomb put in it. One nuclear bomb is gonna bring down something the size of Texas. I call that BS.
A modern remake i not possible in our destructive Woke culture. 40 people? Screenwriters would be risking their careers if they didn’t write open LGBTPANTRANS Black, Asian, Native American characters as well as requisite 3rd world citizens on the ship to Zyra.
![Sci-Fi Classic Review: THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971) [REUPLOAD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ygwi7nm1S_c/mqdefault.jpg)
My favourite part in the movie is when the old billionaire who financed the whole project is prevented from boarding the space ship by the lead scientist who tells him, "You can't go, the new planet is for the young, not us," or something like that. His seat went to the young lady who didn't win a lottery position, allowing her to be with her sweetheart. The decrepit old billionaire is so pissed off, crying and determined to get on that space ship that with super human effort he manages to rise up out of his wheel chair and tries to walk ! The powerful blast from the space ship's engines literally sweeps him away. Priceless! This has stuck with me for like 55 years.
What they didn't say was that the young couple was allowed to go for the most basic reason of all....make babies and restart the human race
In the original book, Hendron made it to Zira. But they still did the "Moses can't enter the Promised Land" bit by having him die before the colonists took up residence in one of the cities left by the original inhabitants.
@@SteffiReitsch “Mein Fuehrer, I can walk!”
Kids today would probably find this movie corny and quaint, but I love it, a classic 1950s sci- fi movie.
@@jimsteele9261 Not sure if you’re aware of this but there’s another book by the same authors titled After Worlds Collide. I read it over 50 years ago so don’t remember anything about it. Got it on order though so should be interesting to see if any of it comes back to me.
This film was sensational and should not be downplayed !!!!! It,s fantastic and way ahead of it,s time. The Special Effects and the incredible ending are priceless !!!!!
Thank you, Scott. And you're right, the special effects alone won it an award. And the actors? Excellent. In fact, this videos narrative was the first time I've ever heard it belittled. Even when the earth was being pulled apart by bellus' Roche zone, showing parts of the atmosphere being absorbed, that has stayed in my memory for 5 decades. Hard to believe that science fiction can have such influences.
@@luthermcgee3767 It can wouldn't it be nice if science fiction could be real, especially if man could be allowed to invent a time machine? I'd go back over 40 years and live the rest of my life back in a much happier time!
@@scottmiller6495 , Agreed, Scott. Well, I remember the original buck Roger's starring buster crab way back in the '30s about ships going to the moon, etc. What was sci fi then, is science fact, now. So who knows what the future holds? And going back in time? I've often thought of that myself. The sixties and seventies were the best of times.
@@luthermcgee3767 and don't forget the magical great 1980s! I hate getting political, but I loved Ronald Reagan America was so much better than now and boy did I enjoy life back then, Oh My 🤗🤗🤗
@@scottmiller6495 , Agreed. Who could forget Ronald Regan? From iconic actor to iconic president.
One writer had been approached by George Pal to write a screenplay of After Worlds Collide but Pal had passed away shortly he had talked to the writer. Perhaps someone could do the sequel someday.
I do wish they'd made "After world's collide". It would've been a good explanation to what happened in our stellar neibourhood after such a titanic CATACLYSM.
I don't recall where I used it, but that last image of "the New World," they've arrived on looks like Paradise. But there were some strange carvings on the mountain wall that definitely looks like they weren't created by nature. Just because they've arrived on a New World doesn't mean they are the dominant species, or going to be the dominant species.
@@bgibson135There were also pyramids on the horizon as well.
As a sci-fi geek of 60+ years, was delighted to stumble across your series of Sci-Fi Cinema Retro clips and have been bingeing on them, non-stop for a couple of evenings. Being the proud owner of many of the movies reviewed, it always interests me to check someone else's viewpoint. Wishing your UA-cam series continued success. With that in mind would love to see your review of Stanley Kramer's 1959 movie On The Beach, a particular favourite of mine. Cheers.
I've never seen a George Pal film I didn't like. The man knew how to produce a quality film. 😊😊
I recently picked up the book for When Worlds Collide; and it came with the sequel After Worlds Collide. I'm looking forward to reading both of these 1930's classic novels in the near future. 😊😊
I added those 2 books to my collection back in the 1960s, and particularly liked the first book with its apocalyptic descriptions (notably the first passing of the Bronson bodies). I had to make do with stills from the film to whet my appetite, until I saw it on TV in 1986 when far from home. It was not till the early 2000s that I gained a DVD to add to my SF collection. While it is a classic, I would not be averse to a remake that respects the source book, even if it necessarily updated the science and its setting.
@@EdMorbius46 I was thinking a remake would be what the world needs right now; but as you say, one which respects the source material. 😊😊
@EyeInTheSky982 I have both When Worlds Collide and After The Worlds Collide. They are superb, but the third book, written by different people, is just rubbish.
@@YDDES 😲😲😲😲 Waitwhatnow!?!?! There's a third book!?!?!
@@EyeInTheSky982 Yes, but it’s written many years after the first two, and by some other people. Dave Ransdell is not mentioned and the story is quite different. Not very good, I would say.
I remember a still of the rocket launching at the top of the ramp from the first copy of "Star Log" magazine I picked up.
Although not on the high level of War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, it's still an excellent film.
Loved this movie as a kid. When I look back at it now, it is charming. Everyone wore a nice suit and smoked on screen. This, "This Island Earth" and "War of the Worlds" were all so good.
And I'm reading the book and its sequels. The circumstances of the collision are somewhat different. Recommended reading.
Fantastic review of WWC!! Great information and knowledge about the movie. But......I believe a couple of things you should hear me out on. First, this movie is so ripe for an update. The movies Armageddon and Deep Impact were good, but they were not WWC at all. Secondly, the most underrated performance in a science fiction movie must be given to John Hoyt as Sydney Stanton. A man filled with such hate..just look at the scene in the beginning when he practically salivates over wanting the power to pick who will live and who will die!! God complex anyone? He is incredible in every single scene, just a marvel of a man acting as a man bent on destruction while trying to save himself. The scene when he thinks Zira is a fraud after the clock strikes 1pm, and then seeing how frightened he becomes calling out to his lap dog Ferris (Frank Cady in a great minimal performance) is mesmerising, but then it is outdone at the end when Dr. Hendron pushes him away from the ship!! Stanton is paralysed but walks!!! He is so freaked about dying, he gets up from his wheelchair and tries in incredible desperation to board the ship to no avail. I would love to see a remake and who would play Stanton. What a role to expand on! Hello Hollywood chiefs!! Anyone reading this? It’s money in the bag done the right way.
I totally agree with you this film is due a remake and I think now is the right time to do it. John Hoyt and his performance stuck in my mind after first watching it . What a peach of a role for an actor if it does get remade.
Your work is superb. Keep it coming. A remake has been spoiled by the Armageddon & Deep Impact films. Too bad.
I loved the book. Read it when I was a kid and still have it. I like your narration style. Subbed!
There were two great books...When Worlds Collide and its sequel After Worlds Collide.
@@alantasman8273
Don't know if I ever read After Worlds Collide. Maybe I'll buy a copy.
@@browngreen933 Both it and its sequel are great read...I read them when I was much younger.
I love all three movies mentioned in fact I just bought the blueray of WWC recently. All three movies were greatly loved while growing up in the '60's. To me, the cast was perfect and to be honest I never realized how unknown most of them were. Barbara Rush's beauty and voice made me assume she was famous at the time. I never really questioned or felt put off by the painting at the end but I guess I knew it would of been difficult to come up with an amazing world and the painting sort of kept it dreamy and wonderful. I feel this is ever bit a classic as the other two movies mentioned.
I always loved that classic rocket ship/spaceship design, it was used with variations in several 50's sci-fi movies and TV shows, Destination Moon, Rocky Jones Space Ranger, etc.
It looked like the German V-2. That's what people thought a rochet looked like back then, and a lot of stock footage was available. 🙂
The 1932 novel was much better although I do like the movie. I suppose I'll never really understand why screenwriters make subjective changes to the original material they're adapting to the screen. Often it doesn't improve what's on the screen.
The ending was puzzling. Why is it that nothing is said about the obviously intelligent being-created structures on the left of the screen and to the right, in the distance (pyramids!)?
That was setting the stage for the (unfortunately nonfilmed) sequel, to be based on "After Worlds Collide." I read both novels and, to me, it was much more exciting. It turns out that a number of other arks were built by various countries the face of the upcoming collision. The one seen in the film based on "When Worlds Collide" was a prototype which carried maybe 50 passengers. A larger American ark successfully carries about ten times as many. A French ark gets out of the atmosphere, but to the horror of the prototype ark's onlooking passengers, burns out some of its thrusters and crashes back on Earth. A British ark lands in a lake on the now thawed out new planet, but over half its passengers survive. There was also an ark from the Communist Bloc, which lands near the largest of the domed alien cities that had been built by the planet's extinct inhabitants in the hope of saving their civilization from the long interstellar journey caused by a rogue star ejecting it from its original solar system. World War III occurs on New Earth. The sequel calls out for a new film!
Nice review, TUG. While on the subject of 1950s classics, I suggest a review linking the various stories from Nigel Kneale, notably the Quatermass spinoffs. I have the BBC Quatermass Collection, plus his biography. What a brilliant scriptwriter he was.
I have When Worlds Collide on Blue Ray and I think it is an excellent film.
Nice and informative video. I just finished this novel, and am intrigued to see the film now. I love these styled sci-fi films. Love the channel. I just subscribed.
Watch "Destination Moon". Most of the science is realistic and, despite it's 1950 date, is entirely watchable. Their crew tech, who is from the Bronx, is asked if he'd like to stay a bit. He replies, "Nah...no broads, no booze, and no baseball."
Larry Keating, best known for his role as Roger Addison on the "Mr. Ed" television show, shows his versatility as a dramatic actor in this great sci-fi movie. To bad he died about 15 years later due to leukemia.
I'm a big old time radio fan. I hear his voice all the time in "This is Your FBI"
Ah, Destination Moon! One of the few movies that involved sci-fi grandmaster Robert Heinlein.
We've known for some time that during solar system formation it's not unusual for planets to be gravitationally ejected into the depths of interstellar space. Recently it's been discovered that there are more rogue planets in deep space than there are planets orbiting stars. So...think of interstellar asteroid Oumuamua that passed through the solar system a few years back. Replace it with a Neptune sized rogue, alter its trajectory slightly and hey...When Worlds Collide.
A couple of comments:
1. I would like to see a modern update with more recent science and technology.
2. I liked the character of Dave Randall. He's ready to sacrifice himself, not seeing a need for pilots; yet his cool-headed piloting of the ark to a landing pretty much saves the day and the entire remnant of mankind.
If they made a modern version, they would make it diverse. And I have grown to hate diversity. It ruins everything.
Greetings fellow earthlings
At 5:44, the New Tork City square that's swallowed by a big wave is Herald Square, at 34th Street, Broadway, and 6th Avenue (or "Avenue of the Americas").
A watchable sci-fi disaster movie. Good story and acting. @ times a little dry.Visuals & SFX were impressive for the era.Big fan of 50s atomic age sci-fi / horror. Those movies had some fantastic movie posters... best of all time.
This is one of my all time favorite films. When I first saw this film I was scared because a man spoke of the end of the world on the radio.
5:55 *I've never seen this sequence before!*
I would suggest that some of the "meh" response you're feeling comes from the incredible familiarity with the template that this film created. (It's also fun to note that I have DVD copies of this film and "War of the Worlds" -- and there's a scene in both pictures showing a group of people listening to the radio in a general store where all the filmmakers did was change the voiceover on the soundtrack, LOL.)
I never get tired of the movie. Was always bummed a proper sequel never got made
Recently bought the movie from ebay. Watched it numerous times. Great creation for those times but not sure if a remake would top it even with more advanced technology. But could be interesting to see maybe star kate winslet and Leonardo Decaprio
Kate and Leonardo are a bot old for leading roles in sci fi now, aren't they? Maybe 2 younger actors who are as good as they are!
Because of woke culture half would be trans and the other half a mix of various races with no white people at all. Sorry Leo and Kate, you're out.
Thanks for the retrospective. A large part of the movie is how people behaved when the end was imminent.
The ship from "When Worlds Collide" is similar to "Destination Moon"
Read and loved the books. Always wish I could have read what happens *after* After Worlds Collide. Might make a good TV series.
There is a follow up to After Worlds Collide called Beyond Worlds Collide, written by Jeff Deischer and published in 2016.
@@marksieving7925 Really? I never heard of it. I'll have to look that one up. Thank you.
Great video but I have to say this is one of my all time favourite films. Even Geoff Love did a cover version of the theme for the budget classic record 'Star Wars and Other Space Themes'.
I went 1:52 in and already knew that you were poking fun at this movie. Naughty of you. Great Movie! P.S. Edit-Sorry about that. Right after, you started to be serious. Thanks.
One of my all time favorite films! But I still would have loved to see what the DeMille version would have looked like.
Wow. A high budget DeMille version would have been great.
Modern "end of the world" films may have 20x the budget that George Pal had. And infinitely greater f/x technologies. But this has 10x the effect of such modern ballyhooed CGI epics as "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon". And unlike those films, there is no sentimental "deux ex machina" that saves the Earth at the last moment and everyone is happy. The World actually gets destroyed in this film. It tackles issues that no other film of the time dared to touch.
I heard George Pal talk at a convention. He said, "We tested 'When Worlds Collide' and the audiences loved it, so the studio thought that the new world painting was good enough. A case of a preview going too good." (This fits your story of the studio not wanting to pay the money.) Easy to see in the ending scenes of building the rocket and the riot scenes is Academy Award nominee; Stuart Whitman. But the IMDb credits him as 'man by bank'.
Stuart Whitman had a small uncredited role as one of the workers building the rocket.
I thank ChatGPT for identifying this movie whose name I didn't know and which had scared me so much when I saw it as a child. Greetings from Argentina. =)
I watched it goggle-eyed at the time. It had a lasting effect in my life....on pub crawls!...why?...the endless discussions on.....just who would you take?...what male/female split.....what trades...what age groups....how many children....what animals, if any....most importantly; how many of each trade would you take; for human 'redundancy'. Over the years, there's never been agreement; try it on your next gathering! Who goes?
The problem with the book and movie is that when the twin bodies approach the Earth, there are floods and earthquakes across the entire planet, but yet apparently no such catastrophes happen on the planet Zyra?
One of my all time favorites. I fell in love with science fiction at the age of 9 back in the 70s because of this movie. The art that went into this movie was ahead of it's time for the most part.
I am “ opposed to remakes on general principles “. When Worlds Collide is one of my favorite movies! I wished they had made the last scene look a little more real, but that is my only complaint.
They go back and clean up effects for older movies. Why not the ending to this one? I would buy that.
This reminds me of an end of the world movie I saw as a child that was Japanese where the South Pole was turned into a giant rocket engine to move the Earth out of the way of an approaching planet on a collision course with the Earth. I don't remember the name of it. Ridiculous concept though! LOL!
You can run, but no can hide
I would like to see a remake of the colossus of new york
Always liked this movie. Kinda wish some one would remake it with improved effects.
I wouldn't be interested in a remake of this movie, but I would be interested in a version that more closely follows the book and continues with After Worlds Collide. That would probably require more of a mini-series rather than a feature film.
Read the sequel over 45 years ago but have pretty well forgotten everything about it. Got it ordered so should be interesting to see if how much my memory gets jogged. Last time I watched this movie was probably close to 55 years ago so quite the experience seeing what parts I remembered. Not much, aside from the earthquake scenes and Earth being destroyed plus the very end view of their new home.
Except for that fakey painting at the end, I find the old version excellent!
I'd love to see that Zyra scene remastered, with more realistic effects.
It was pretty brave of a Hollywood studio to actually make a movie about the end of the world back then.
for the cast - you could have mentioned Stuart Whitman in a minor role as one of the candidates for the new planet - he would go on to a modest career - but exceeding that of any other cast member - - it's among my favorite of the films you mention (Destination Moon & War of the Worlds & the Thing) - besides trying to capture the source novel's mood - it was a gorgeous film to look at - with characters motivated by astute psychology - - for me the cons are Richard Derr's oh-so-american south african - a simplistic morality (rich guys are evil and must die) - a silly dramatic moment (the effects of the star's passing will be felt at precisely the top of the hour - well - maybe a half-a-minute later) - and the pitiful painted landscape at the end
"Modest career"? That's a bit of an understatement. Whitman was IMO a lower B-list actor with a long career and starring roles, which is a pretty solid accomplishment.
@@JLee-rt6ve- that's what i would call modest - he wasn't a big draw at the box office - and didn't star in big films - the discrepancy here is the use of "modest" - and the issue of subjectivity
This is a good movie, there is a blueray version and it looks very good, but no remakes please. Hollywood would stuff it up and soil my memories of the original.
Agreed...remakes can work..but today they seem to go out of their way to screw them up.
Yes. A remake would be another woke Hollywood disaster. I still cannot watch Star Wars any more.
In my opinion, a few slight changes should be considered if there was a remake: keep the actors, they were astounding . But, the both inside, and outside needed a few modifications; inside- more scientific equipment lining the walls ( it looks empty) the harnesses the survivors are wearing should look more modern too. And outside the ship, there should be a little more detail ( not like Douglas trumbull,. ( Although he's brilliant), but just hints of details that suggests various exterior functions of the ship. Even if they didn't make these modifications, the movie as a whole was excellent- especially the appearance of bellas in the sky, and the geographic upheavals generated by the passing of zyras . But the iconic scene was the earth entering bellas roche zone and the tidal forces literally tearing the earth apart.
I like the big fuel gauge on the control console....almost like you'd see in a 30 foot long Cadillac!!
Its two leading ladies are both still with us, ages 95 and 92.
The similarities between the ark in WWC and that of the ships being tested in Boca Chica by SpaceX is uncanny.
Good catch!
great video.
It has a lot of elements that showed up in the Futurama Episode: A Farewell to Arms, which conflated a colliding planet (Mars) with the end of the Myan Calendar-although some bbq sauce on the screen and a dramatic font revealed that it was instead the Martian Calandar, to depict an escape from the earth to the intercepting planet.
The most interesting callback that makes me think it's a tribute to When Worlds Collide, is the evacuation ship has no ammenities but several rows of fairly pedestrian seats, like it's a bus or something. It's not even an efficient use of space. (practical space, not the final frontier) just the same 30 or so seats.
My favorite classic SCI SFI film.
You forgot the uncredited Stuart Whitman.
Hi Ed. A relatively new follower here. Have you tought on doing one of your brilliant analysis on “Deep impact” or is it already a written one done. I would love to see a video because that movie is one of my favorite 90’s flick and I still enjoy it these days.
I have a rule that a movie has to be at least 30 years old before I’ll cover it. I do remember really enjoying Deep Impact (much more than Armageddon at least), and I know there’s a lot of interesting trivia about it. For example, it started life as a Spielberg adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s The Hammer of God, but when Armageddon started pre-production, Dreamworks decided to rush the project in order to get their movie out first. Spielberg was too busy to do it, and there was another script laying around about an asteroid impact, so Dreamworks hired somebody else, merged the two scripts (until virtually nothing of Clarke’s novel remained), and thus, you have Deep Impact.
@@TheUnapologeticGeek Agreed. I find this better than Armaggedon. I guess I’ll have to wait six more years for your video on Deep Impact to come. 😁 Thanks for the answer!
they should do After worlds collide ...but update the social-political zeitgeist & change the "Midianites" in to the "Mericas' ..... jmho ~
I love this film. Just purchased it here on UA-cam.
I just subscribed and the world 3 years after you made this video is on the brink of collapse. Is your ark ready yet? Remember you said you’d have room on your ark for those that subscribed. I’m ready to go. Say, where are we going anyway?
It can't be any worse, right?
I must disagree! Though The War of the Worlds is more elaborate, I consider this one the better story. The suspense is high and it really works (except, of course, for that last painting of the new world). Well paced and a cool idea!
I was thinking that Bellus was a brown dwarf star able to produce heat, but not high enough for fusion. That's why (in my opinion) zyras was able to have plantlife on it. It couldn't otherwise if traveling through the cold limitless voids of space far from any sun. Just saying.
I think in the books, Bellus was a gas giant and Zyra was an orbiting class M planet. They weren't sure if the two planets were originally associated or if that happened when the passing star tore them out of their original orbits. The plant life was supposed to have grown from seeds ans spores preserved by the frozen atmosphere once our sun thawed it out.
@@jimsteele9261, Thank you, Mr. Steele. It actually makes sense according to the novel. I've never read it, because I never had access to it. Sounds like it would be great reading.
@@luthermcgee3767 Yes, both the original book and the sequel, "After Worlds Collide" are worth reading if you find them. I got them from a used book store many years ago.
@@jimsteele9261 , Thanks. I usually keep my eyes open for old bookstores. That how I found out about H P Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard.
I can see it now. Lucasfilm announces a remark of When Worlds Collide. Here is the press release. 'Coming soon. A visionary re-imagining of a Sci-Fi Classic. When Worlds Collide tells the story of up-start adventurer and bush pilot Wilma Kelly--played by Jennifer Lawrence-- who, while visiting an African national observatory discovers a object hurtling toward Earth. (Why the actual astronomers working there--or anywhere around the world--did not discover this sooner is explained away with the simple acknowledgement that they are all White Men) Alone in her belief that the object will strike the Earth, Wilma must marshal the CEOs of major corporations (by this time ALL female and Diversity Hires) to pull together the funds to build one Space Arc in an ever desperate attempt to save at least some of Earth's Diversity. The ship will carry plenty of frozen embryos so NO White Males will be among the passengers or crew of the Space Arc--lovingly christened 'Diversity One'. Join us--in theaters or on Disney+--as we journey with Wilma, her non-gender specific partner Pat on a mission to saw remnants of humankind When Worlds Collide.' Ugh. Even writing that made me queasy.
The plot is entertaining, the bad thing is the end, a very crude painted landscape, I need more script, but still like something...
I love this stuff
Thanks!
If hollywood remade when the world stood still, they can remake anything.
I think an updated When Worlds Collide would make more sense today than ten and could be great - an Elon Musk figure promoting a massive Space-X project just to garner money using fear only to realize there is a real threat requiring an entire fleet of such vehicles as governments start tearing each other apart.
You might want to check out a Chinese movie called, The Wandering Earth, if you have not already.
I would be for a remake if it WASN'T made in Hollywood. I can count on one hand remakes that were as good or better than the original; Little Shop of Horrors, 3-10 to Yuma, Cape Fear and True Grit. Hollywood can't make a good movie anymore because they're too busy pushing "the message" and appealing to "modern audiences". Maybe a sequel would be good, showing a real-time passage of time. Eighty years later, after living on Zyra, they try to repopulate earth. But a remake? Except for the exceptions above, they usually suck.
"The new world isn't for us. It's for the young."
Yes! Ha ha Mr. Stanton, you paid for the ship and now you get to watch it take off without you.😆
This was a great movie with the only real flaw being that cheapy painting at the end.
I love this movie now and in my childhood when it would show up on TV shows either after the news on Friday nights (Ghoulardi, ect) or on a Saturday afternoon. This movie looks great, but I was always disappointed in how they show the actual collision watched from the Ark is over in seconds and they look like they were doing a pretty good job showing it. I'm for a remake as long as over the top directors like Emmerick doesn't get his hands on it.
Add Spielberg also. After what happened to the remake of Westside Story, Spielberg blew it major time. I'm open to George Lucas doing the remake minus Kathleen Kennedy.
@@carterbentonjr399 I'm trying to be generous with Spielberg's West Side Story, but I have no idea why he would want to remake a movie that was already quite literally perfect.
Why haven't you reviewed the movie “Meteor”?
I will make sure it's on my list!
@@TheUnapologeticGeek
Just a reminder, that the one from 1979 with Sean Connery & Natalie Wood. It’s on Pluto TV.
I still think it's an excellent movie.
Ah I lovge this series of 50s SCI FI films. THere were a whole load of them shown on BBC2 when I was around 7 and I could stay up evey week to watch such classics as WWC, Invaders from Mars, Fantastic planet, TDTESS, TDTECF and This island earth,,, Fantastic. :)
This movie is good!, it should be a remake of this movie now
They would ruin it with breast-feeding men.
@@mburk8329 😃
No more remakes it just destroyers the original classic .do after the world's collide
Very nicely done review! And I agree with the ranking the film gets here - good, but behind Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing, and War of the Worlds.
I'm opposed to remakes on principle. Come up with something new, and don't try to get through the door on somebody else's push.
I'm the few who like this movie and always thought it could be remade and if she was still alive a brief cameo of Barbara Rush.
Did you consider that your branding is an apology?
When Worlds Collide reminded people of nuclear devastation?! What a ridiculous assumption. If anything it reminded people of the fact that we're at the mercy of nature.
Well babe resurrected thee Earth ending disaster movie in the new film Don't Look Up. Where they treat it is a satire commentary on global warming. Which is about what you need to do nowadays to get people interested in this
Got," Melancholia." No hope. Lots of Space Ark's. out there. leaving the earth behind. I liked, "Knowing".'bout the end of the world that is.
If you look sharp you could see a very young steward Wittman in the scene near the end when the men were arguing in the room where they sleep. He is below standing where a person is yelling on top of the bed saying the drawing was fixed.
Typhoon
George Washington
Old movies didn't leave you guessing about a scene, like the newer ones usually do. For example; They'll add a "Totally unrelated" scene / plot into a movie, but never explain how / where it cam from.
I love end of world movies.. tribulation is coming fast
I would love to see a modern remake of this movie, but today's political correctness would dilute it (Just like every other remake)
Read Flood and its sequel Ark by Stephen Baxter instead, much better than any remake of this movie would be and based on a similar premise. The novels are also grounded in real science.
I'm not generally PC-obsessed and I get that this was the 1950's, but you must admit the final 40 or so rocket passengers chosen to start a new world on a new planet were all young white Americans. Half were male. To reproduce they would need more females and fewer dudes...if you get my drift. I loved when we first meet the doctor and he says he is not a scientist but an ENT doctor, then lights his cigarette. LOL
Interesting thought on the male-female ratio; perhaps in a remake they would correct that, and, like Starbuck in the newer Battlestar Galactica, make the Dave Randall character a female pilot....
This was the 1950s. If one were to do a movie within a movie set in 1951 that had what you suggested the movie would be considered a fantasy.:-)
This is why we really needed the sequel. After Worlds Collide tells of arks from other nations that made it to Zyra, and it's just a better story overall than WWC.
Actually you would want an even number of males and females. For all we know, they may have had frozen genetic material they carried along.
As I recall, the book did indeed make the same point about male to female ratio for the survival of humanity.
I liked this movie when I first saw it in the 1980s on tv. It's a lost gem that get missed when talking about end of the world movies. This to me is a classic. That brought about 2012, Armageddon ( to me a piece of crap of a movie, Armageddon that is, Deep Impact, that actually showed something Armageddon didn't show was half of the damn meteor broke off and hit the earth with drastic consequences, as with Armageddon showed we destroyed this rock the size of Texas with just a nuclear bomb put in it. One nuclear bomb is gonna bring down something the size of Texas. I call that BS.
A modern remake i not possible in our destructive Woke culture. 40 people? Screenwriters would be risking their careers if they didn’t write open LGBTPANTRANS Black, Asian, Native American characters as well as requisite 3rd world citizens on the ship to Zyra.
🎯 Bullseye
I don't think they had a lot of money for costumes, they must have told everyone to just wear their best stuff when they came in for their scenes.