When Worlds Collide
A Paramount Picture 1951 / Prod. George Pal / Dir. Rudolph Mate
Blu-ray: Paramount $22.49
Highly entertaining science-fiction doomsday picture, Paramount and George Pal's follow-up to the early space-age favorite Destination Moon.
Two rogue planets are heading towards earth, and while the United Nations, mass media, and people in general all expect to be okay, a small team of crackpot scientists remains convinced that while the first planet, Zyra, will indeed miss us, the second, Bellus, will land somewhere between Patterson New Jersey and Nanjing China, and take everything in between with it. The solution, we’re advised, is to build a space ark and relocate what humanity can fit onboard (plus – get this – pairs of animals, two by two) to Zyra. Old, cranky wheelchair-bound zillionaire John Hoyt will foot the bill if he can go; Richard Derr, Larry Keating, Barbara Rush, Hayden Rorke and Alden Chase are various pilots and/or scientists making use of the roughly 8 months left to earthkind to get that ship built and get the heck outta here.
When I was a kid, this was my favorite sci-fi movie, I really liked the interaction between the characters, some of whom knew they were going to die, and the race to complete the ship was exciting. Most of all, it’s really a kid’s movie, with silly science that even at my tender age I recognized as hokum. Planet Zyra is depicted with ridiculous watercolor paintings, adding to the other-worldliness of it all (they were supposed to be finished mattes, but the budget ran out). Seeing it now, I still liked it a lot, but looked past the barely-tolerable romance side streets the movie occasionally blunders down. I remember reading the book by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer years ago (naturally, since I enjoyed the movie so much) and not liking it nearly as much as I liked the movie. The book I got out of the library was a big volume that had the sequel, After Worlds Collide, too, but Mr. Pal didn't film it and I didn’t read it.
One of the positives for the film is the cast, not much in the way of familiar faces (with a few exceptions). I don’t know that I’ve seen Richard Derr, the pilot who hangs around once he meets a pretty girl working on the project, in anything else; he’s not the memorable type, though. Barbara Rush is pretty and a good actress; I know her from It Came from Outer Space and Robin and the 7 Hoods. And of course John Hoyt was all over TV and the movies in those day; other than this film, my favorite of his sinister roles is Attack of the Puppet People. Reliable Chesley Bonestell designed the graphics and the wonderful space ship, which launches from what appears to be a rollercoaster track through a gully. Great stuff.
George Pal’s science-fiction movies tended to be big, colorful, easy to understand, rather simple morality tales mixed with plenty of action and a dash of what purported to be actual science as understood at that time, and this is a prime example. A Blu-ray of When Worlds Collide was included as a bonus with the 4K UHD of Pal’s War of the Worlds a couple of years ago, and now it’s issued as a stand-alone disc, lacking much bonus material, sadly, but still a must-own for movie matinee lovers and science fiction fans.
I suppose that War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Forbidden Planet are the "big" color sci-fi movies of the '50s, but this, to me, is the most entertaining of all of 'em. Funny, I'd just watched Disney's Snow White with its "storybook" opening, and this opens the same way, only with a Bible. See, we told you it was a morality tale. It’s also, probably, the the only film in which Sam Drucker of Hooterville pulls a gun on anybody, and that’s all we are going to say about THAT.
Highest recommendation - a science-fiction family favorite!
"Predicting the end of the world is an annual crackpot event in our society."
