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Year: 1951 Production: Paramount Director: Rudolph Mate Starring: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, John Hoyt, Larry Keating Screenwriter: Sydney Bohm Based on When Worlds Collide (1933) by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer 83 minutes; Color
When Worlds Collide, which helped spark the 1950s sf-movie boom, was George Pal's second sf production, made after his Destination Moon (1950). Two wandering planets are approaching Earth; US scientists calculate (though a disbelieving world, led by philistine UK scientists, rejects their conclusions) that the first will pass close by, creating tidal waves and earthquakes, and the second will annihilate Earth by direct impact; only the construction of a space ark (like Noah's) will save a handful of survivors. The spacecraft (launched on an upward slanting railway line) carries 40 people to one of the two planets, Zyra, which is habitable. A rountine love interest, and melodrama about who gets on the ark and who does not, leaves the single-minded thrust of the film surprisingly undamaged; it continues to grip. A low budget meant that the first near-miss sequence was montaged largely (and effectively) from stock shots - though the liners famously afloat in city streets in two brief shots are new; Earth's final death is over in an eye-blink, and the new planet is obviously a bright green painting (by Chesley Bonestell). The religious subtext - Earth wiped out for its sins, and new Adams and Eves in a new Eden - is presented with no great moral conviction. |
| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |