Tremendous movie! All the characters had a realistic big city edge and were hip(by 1961 standards). Very smart characters. The story was riveting and unforgettable. Good special effects. A home run by Val Guest and crew!
What do we get today? Poor character development, inane plots, and CGI out the ying-yang, IMHO!
It's not just film, when I go down to the local library the Science Fiction section is full of garish trash... and yet some of the best speculative novels ever written are SF.
I've had it for ages on a file and only got around to watching it tonight. I saw it once, more than thirty years ago - probably on the box, in the early 70s. It was well worth the wait to see it again. Sure, the effects were a bit cheesy compared to today's, but some of them were quite well done. The storyline was total cock, of course, but had me gripped for a while. All the crap old cars and the old tech printing presses were fascinating, too. Odd, how so many things about the London of the time looked so familiar, yet so alien. One thing that made me laugh, was the opening credits contained a line: "Beatnik music by Monty Norman".
Couldn't agree more. If only `The Day After Tomorrow' had had the same quality of acting and script.
Apart from that movie's jaw-dropping CGI, sweeping camera pans and evocative music and soundtrack, `The Day The Earth Caught Fire' is superior in every way. These days I only watch TDAT for its special-effects.