classicsoncall Review of The Night the World Exploded

The Night the World Exploded (1957)

"Once those lines began to jump, a million people face possible death."

[4/10 · 7 January 2023]

A little bit of thought to what's going on in the story would convince most that the plot was pretty illogical, but then again, logic was never a strong point for science fiction movies of the Forties and Fifties. If 'element 12' was so unstable, why did it take all this time (1957) for it to suddenly start expanding worldwide, causing earthquakes of mass destruction? I'll tell you why. Because the script writers needed the plot for another schlock sci-fi flick to serve on a double bill, in this case, "The Giant Claw", also directed by Fred Sears the same year. I didn't keep track specifically, but almost half the picture is taken up by stock footage, which if not included, would have reduced the run time to quite a bit less than the mere hour it actually did. What made my viewing of it today quite more enjoyable than it would have been ordinarily, was the humorous captioning that accompanied the dialog. I don't know if it was done on purpose or was the result of some ineffective translating equipment, but I had to commit some of the lines to writing so I could share them in this review. In no particular order, don't even try to make sense out of the following quotes in the story - "So we got the Hugo" - "Why stay with only with one postpone?" - and here's a beaut - "I'm the sling. All rock. Good." But my favorite, and this was either strangely prophetic, or someone's idea of goofing on a modern day audience - "Covid when you see a light train". I'm not making any of this up folks, you can check it out for yourself if you've got Amazon Prime where I caught this movie. In fact, if any of this was intentional, the person in charge of captioning was so enamored of the term that the word 'Covid' came up three separate times!