The Day the World Ended

The Day the World Ended is frequently described as the film that marks Roger Corman’s first foray into the  sci-fi/horror/monster genres for which he is best remembered as a filmmaker. This isn’t quite accurate, as Corman had previously producedThe Monster from the Ocean Floor and The Beast with a Million Eyes, but it was the first such movie Corman directed himself, and the first of his films to be released under the banner of the newly re-christened American International Pictures. It also makes for an admirable introduction to Corman’s catalogue from the 50’s, showcasing most of the characteristics for which Corman would become famous. Foremost among those characteristics, of course, is Corman’s legendary budgetary stinginess, which is in full effect here, as what might be the last seven humans on Earth square off against the aftermath of nuclear war, each other, and what one previous reviewer called “one of Roger Corman’s cheaper monster suits.”

As the opening title card makes such a big point of telling us, The Day the World Ended begins with The End. In this case, The End is a nuclear war. The details of the war-- how it started, who was involved, its overall course-- never come up. Rather, in what is surely the movie’s most realistic facet, the very fact that the war happened renders any discussion of it irrelevant. All that matters now, and all that the film will concern itself with, is the struggle of those few survivors to remain survivors. There are seven - Jim Maddison (Paul Birch) is a retired navy captain whose military career sensitized him to the dangers of nuclear war, to the extent that, after he retired, he moved to a remote location in the mountains of California, and built a low, sturdy house in a valley ringed by lead-ore-bearing hills. He then stocked this house with sufficient provisions for himself, his daughter Louise (Lori Nelson), and Louise’s boyfriend to live on until such time as the radiation subsided enough for small-scale farming to have a chance of success. Maddison’s plans are disrupted, however, when Louise’s boyfriend fails to reach the house, and a steady stream of strangers succeeds. The first is a geologist named Rick (Richard Denning), who arrives at the Maddisons’ door carrying a man named Radek (Paul Dubov) who is suffering from a fairly serious case of radiation poisoning-- the latter man is so contaminated that his body registers half again the lethal level of radiation on Maddison’s Geiger counter. Rick and Radek are followed in short order by small-time hood Tony (Michael “Touch” Connors) and his stripper girlfriend Ruby (Adel Jergens), and later by an old gold prospector (who seems to have wandered into this movie from the Western they were shooting on the next lot over) named Pete (B-Western regular Raymond Hatton) and his burro Diablo.

The characters start fighting among themselves almost immediately. Tony naturally resents Maddison’s

presumptions of authority, and the fact that Louise is both very pretty and a good fifteen years younger than his somewhat faded piece of ass is not lost on him either. Thus Tony is a natural rival for both Maddison and Rick, who wears his position as the designated love-interest for Louise like a sandwich board from the word go. But it’s Maddison’s house, Maddison’s food, Maddison’s water, and Maddison’s medicine, and he doesn’t want the extra company anyway, so Tony had better sit down and shut up, if he knows what’s good for him.  Meanwhile, Radek’s condition, and the strange behavior that results from it, is starting to worry his companions. Not only does he not show any signs of dying any time soon, he also develops a pronounced aversion to the food in Maddison’s storeroom, and takes to feeding himself on the meat of wild animals he catches by night in the surrounding woods.

Eventually, it comes to our attention that Maddison and company aren’t alone in their valley, and that Radek isn’t the only one going hunting in the woods by night. As a matter of fact, Radek ends up failing prey to whatever it is one night himself. And as fate would have it, the heightened activity of our mystery monster coincides with a particularly serious outburst of extreme antisocial behavior from Tony. He tries to rape Louise at knife-point, and when Ruby stops him, he stabs her to death, and tosses her body off the nearest cliff. Meanwhile, the monster has killed Pete’s donkey and has begun trying to communicate psychically with Louise. Pete gets so depressed that he runs off and climbs over the valley’s protective ridge, dying of radiation poisoning almost instantly. Maddison gets a dose of radiation, too, when he tires, unsuccessfully, to save the old man, and he spends the rest of the film couch-ridden. And then at last, that cheap rubber monster finally makes its appearance onscreen, emerging from the brush to attack Louise.

The monster turns out to have one weakness, as is only appropriate for a monster in one of these movies: because it is adapted to life in a poisoned world, it can’t abide anything that isn’t contaminated with ionizing radiation. Fresh, clean rainwater, for instance.

Yes, most of the film is perfunctory & even a bit dull, but there is one scene where Corman utilizes the power of cinema, of imagery, in what I must determine as a conscious effort on his part, to its fullest potential. Bill Warren singles this scene out in his usually excellent analytical manner in his book, "Keep Watching the Skies." Towards the end, Denning's character fires a rifle at the mutant monster, which then begins to advance on him. Corman keeps the camera behind Denning's right shoulder as Denning continues to fire and the creature continues to advance. It's all a single, continuous shot. As Warren mentions, audience members were unnerved & startled by this scene; I can imagine them squirming in their seats and trying to back away as the creature continues to move forward, relentless, just annoyed by the bullets. This is an example of Corman at his best and there's nothing like this in the films of Wood or Gordon.

Maddison shoots Tony (who was lying in wait to kill Rick when he returned from his mission to rescue Louise from the mutant), Maddison’s radio picks up a transmission from somewhere out in the world, (it’s in Russian, but beggars can’t be choosers), and The Day the World Ended, which began with The End, ends with The Beginning.

Were it not for a few interesting ideas about the apocalypse and life thereafter, this film would have nothing going for it but that shitty monster (which, by the way, was both built and played by Corman’s favorite sfx guy, Paul Blaisdell, who was also responsible for the huge Venusian carrot in It Conquered the World). As for those interesting ideas, I’ve already mentioned, for example, the dismissive attitude the film takes toward the exact circumstances of the world’s end, and I was also impressed by Corman’s insight that post-apocalyptic life in the 1950’s would surely be informed in roughly equal measure by 20th-century science and the sort of theologically vague Protestantism that was an ever-present undercurrent in American life in those days. I just wish some of the 

neat ideas on display here had been explored in greater depth. The hordes of mutants beyond the mountains, fighting for superemacy.  The psychic mutant, for instance. It “talks,” but only to Louise, and it even calls to her “by name” on a couple of occasions. And after it dies in the rain, Louise says that she feels strangely sorry for it. Are we meant to infer that the mutant was really Louise’s missing boyfriend? I’d certainly like to think so, because that would be really cool, but the subject is given such short shrift by the script that it’s impossible to tell what the filmmakers were thinking. I agree that having something to think about after watching a movie like this is a rare enough occurrence that I probably shouldn’t complain, but I’d at least like to know for sure whether anybody involved in making The Day the World Ended meant for me to be thinking about this. Even so, it’s almost enough to counteract this movie’s plodding pace. Almost.  (1000 Misspent Hours)