ChicDragon
It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Casey Duggan
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Lachlan Coulson
This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
ctomvelu1
Leave it to the Italians to copy American and British sci-fi quickies back in the 1950s. Only, the Italians manage to do so very badly. An off-course rocket launched from Cape Shark (!) apparently dislodges an asteroid from its path, and which begins to hurtle toward the Earth. Scientists around the world try to figure a way to stop it before it hits. We are treated to endless stock footage of forest fires, burning buildings, animals stampeding, missiles and rockets being launched and crowds running in panic as the massive rock closes in on our planet. My favorite footage were the crowd scenes. No matter where in the world they took place, the sound man used the same 10-second loop of some bizarre crowd noise, almost like that of a circus audience going wild, and which includes an abbreviated scream or shout that sounds like a macaw or parrot shrieking. I came to look forward to those crowd running wild segments and that repeated sound effect to keep from falling asleep. The acting isn't all that bad, and the leading man, a foreign-born Gordon "Tarzan" Scott lookalike, is actually pretty good. About half the movie is composed of stock footage, so be prepared. Only two or three babes in the entire movie, and none is worth writing home about -- which is really sad, considering this was an Italian job from 1958, smack dab in the era of pointy bras and Gina Lollabrigida. I guess the Italians saved the real cuties for their sand and sandal epics of that period.
joebergeron
The actor voicing McLaren in the American version is Shane Rimmer, who also provided the voice of Thunderbird 1 pilot Scott Tracy. I win the contest!To me, the oddest thing about this movie is McLaren's demeanor during the space flight. He looks like death warmed over, like he really really wants to go home right NOW, like he might vomit at any moment, and like he can barely bring himself to speak. Or admit that he feels like hell.This movie is not bad enough to be a source of amusement for that reason alone. It makes a serious attempt to tell a story, and is more coherent and intelligent than some recent similar films which commanded budgets hundreds of times larger.
junk-monkey
This public domain movie available for legal download www.Archive.org has little to recommend it. A very cheaply made, two set movie that consists almost entirely of stock footage and a bunch of scientists shoving bits of paper at each other while peering into a radar screen.A wild-eyed news reporter who doesn't seem to know where the camera is wildly info-dumps the news to us that the world's first circum Lunar flight is about to take off. Scientists pass pieces of paper to each other and peer at radar screens. Soon the flight runs into difficulties, the pilot jettisons the atomic rocket and returns to Earth. A strange blip is discovered on the radar. More paper is scribbled on and passed to and fro before they make the discovery that the rocket has blown up in a bunch of asteroids, annoying them so much they glued themselves together "with magnetic attraction" and are heading towards Earth. That took a very boring 30 minutes of screen time to set up. The next 30 minutes are spent watching the scientists pass even more bits of paper to each other before they conclude the asteroids are going to bump into the moon on the way in so the world may be saved without them actually having to do anything. Everyone sits around looking at radar screens (or out the window with binoculars) and sweating as the (Yawn!) tension mounts. With only about 22 minutes of screen time remaining, the asteroids miss the moon and keep on towards Earth. Oh Bum! At which point our nominal hero has the genius idea of blowing the asteroids up with nuclear missiles. The pace of paper passing heats up to fever pitch. The stock footage comes at us faster and faster. Refugees!. TV transmission masts! Jet planes taking off! Jet planes landing! More transmission masts! "London reports temperatures are increasing all over the world. Fires are breaking out everywhere!" says one scientist between calculations. We are then shown a long montage of things burning down all over the world. The pace of calculations speeds up to fever pitch as for some unexplained reason the scientist at the moon launching base are the only people in the world who can do the maths to aim the world's ICBMs - though, given the fact they managed to get the calculation about the asteroids whacking into the moon wrong, I can't say that I would have had a lot of faith in them myself. The cooling system breaks down making their room sized electronic flashy-lighty, adder-upper machine go wrong. And don't you just know it, there's a doom saying loony with a gun who gets in their way when they try to fix it.Finally the last piece of paper is scribbled on and the nuclear powers (which bizarrely seem to include Norway and Scotland) are ready to fire. Everyone says a prayer. Dear glorious and humungeous God, please let this be the last montage of the movie. All the missiles are fired in a long montage of every piece of missile launching footage available to the editors, including the ubiquitous shots of V2s taking off (V2 didn't have the capability to get above the atmosphere) and several shots of anti-aircraft missiles with an even shorter range.Kaboom! The asteroids are blown to itty-bitty bits which are "dispersed into space". Our leads go and watch the sun rise.EndThere are a couple of sub-plots too thin to be worth bothering with. Ice maiden scientist girlie melts into arms of handsome hunk. Mrs astronaut realises she her place is beside her man. Both involve some hugging.
vtcavuoto
I think one of the most disappointing things in this film is the role of John McLaren.It's the same actor(Paul Hubschmid, who is sometimes billed as Paul Christian) from "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms". For one thing, it's not even his voice in the dubbing! He seems emotionless 95% of the time. Other character development is only so-so.I did get a kick out of all the old machinery. The plot was OK but not original. The movie seemed to just plod along without much in the way of action. The cinematography was very good(from Italy's Mario Bava).I expected much more from this movie but the fact that I only paid $5.00 for it makes it a little better for me to tolerate. I wish this movie was as good as I anticipated.
