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A rancher and his daughter are holed up in their house following an atomic war.
Five other survivors show up and problems ensue involving a fight over his
daughter and over a mutant that is on the loose. 1956, 79 minutes
This Roger Corman end of the world shocker (trust me when I tell you that there
were some shocking moments in this one) was incredibly, filmed in nine days. I
say that that was incredible because while watching it, I was thinking that
they should have been able to do it in about a third of the time. Roger uses a
similar gimmick as other apocalypse movies of the time such as the classic This Is Not A Test. That is to say, he uses his lack of a budget as a storyline
element. Even though you would expect the end of the world to involve deserted
cities, mass destruction, and gangs of Italian bikers, Rog has reduced it all
down to seven people out in the wilderness, all staying at one guy's house.
Nothing
like keeping expenses down by having one set and filming in out in the wilds of
southern California. This Is Not A Test used a handful of people trapped at a mountain pass during an atomic
war to good effect, attempting to show the
tension and the fear of not knowing what was happening down in the cities to
fairly good effect. (Except for when that serial killer was wrestling that
chicken, but the endtimes are going to make people do crazy stuff, right?)
Corman is famous for his low budget shenanigans and sometimes it works out okay
and sometimes you've got a guy in an awful-looking mutant monkey suit writhing
around in a rain storm while low level cast members from Creature From The Black Lagoon movies look on quizzically as if to say, "maybe this whole acting
thing just isn't going to work out for me". Surprisingly enough though it does
work out for a certain Mike Connors in this movie. The future Mannix is in deep
cover in this as Touch Connors and he plays a heel named Tony who spends most
his post-apocalypse existence fighting with the other guys in the house over
some guns and trying to force himself onto Rick's gal Louise, even though he
has his own blonde hussy named Ruby in tow. Hey, if you can think of some better
life choices once the Big One hits, let me know.  The narrator (glad to see someone will still have a job once the button is
pushed) sets up the fact that the world has been destroyed and begins rambling
about something called TD Day, which I thought was some kind of salute to Tony
Dorsett but actually stood for Total Destruction Day or something. (You've got
that marked on your calendar don't you? I always thought us government
employees needed a holiday between President's Day and Memorial Day so I'm
hoping that this TD Day thing is scheduled for mid April.) I'm not sure why we
need these narrators to explain what's going on. Wouldn't it be more effective
to have us figure things out as they unfold? If the only way your story is
going to
make any sense is to have a guy explaining the set-up to us before it happens,
then your story isn't probably going to make sense. In this case, I think the
narrator merely explained that everything had been wiped out but seven actors
who are willing to work for scale in an effort to get their big break. I'm
thinking that I probably could have figured out the concept of the movie
without this guy yapping at me, what with the opening shots that panned across
bombed out buildings and such. The fact that the movie itself is entitled Day
The World Ended is also a pretty good indicator of where we're headed with this
thing. Well, once we actually get past the introductions, the faux-important
text that scrolls across the screen announcing that the movie begins with the
end (and yes the movie ends with the words "The Beginning" just to make sure
that every end of the world movie cliche is covered) we start gathering our
little troupe of survivors that will be playing out Roger's strange hybrid of
domestic drama and atomic freaks.  There's no rhyme or reason as to why any of these people are milling around out
there except that we need to have a love interest, a bad guy, a good guy, some
cannon fodder, and a radioactive guy. All these people wandering
around decide to take shelter at Maddison's house. Maddison is an older guy who
has one of these sweet blonde country girl daughters that is most likely going
to be menaced by both the mutants roaming in her backyard and the gangster-like
Tony who shows up at her house with older, harder, and much less desirable
blonde Ruby. Maddison doesn't want to let anyone into his house because he's
got everything worked out. In fact, he's spent the last ten years planning for
this day and has everything set up so that he, his daughter Louise, and her
boyfriend can survive an atomic war. Boyfriend never materializes, but it
becomes apparent that he is the mutant in the bad monster suit that is
constantly peeping Louise when she's trying to bath in the local swimming hole.
(Somehow the end of the world necessitates bathing outdoors among the mutants
instead of taking a shower inside the house that your dad has spent the last
decade preparing for just such an event. I can only imagine that it's because
the local swimming hole is immune to all the radiation because of all the
natural oils that the locals' bodies have deposited in it over the years.) It
also turns out that the mutants (okay there's really
only one mutant that's causing trouble and really, that's just an ex-boyfriend
kind of problem to be completely honest) are afraid of the water. Feel free to
cringe when the mutant is defeated by the big rain storm because the water was
pure and the mutant was designed to live in a world of contamination. Feel free
to gag as Rick and Louise wax poetic about how man created the mutant, but
God's pure rain destroyed him. Uh, it wasn't any man that created that mutant,
but
that unfaithful broad who ditched mutant-boyfriend as soon as he experienced
some personal troubles (you know - like turning into a mutant and eating
radioactive animals and people and stuff). If he was a monster, he had green
eyes and
his first name started with a "J".  Along with Tony, Ruby, Rick, and the two Maddisons, there's also old Pete and
his burrow and Rick's mutated brother Radek. What kind of sick joke is that for
God to play on us? The entire world destroyed, only seven survivors and one of
them is an old gold prospector and his smelly mule? I would complain about
Radek looking like Moe from the Three Stooges, but I just have to assume that
his haircut and vacant look were by-products of being irradiated. Remember how
Maddison planned all this for ten years? Was part of your plan to let a
radioactive dude into your bunker? (And by "bunker" I mean his house of course,
because his planning seemed to be merely building a store room, which I don't
even remember seeing and stocking it with enough food to last three people
three months. It took ten years to do that? What could you have gotten done if
you had twenty years? Gotten the magazines and newspapers stopped?) As far as
old Pete goes, he pretty much does what an old gold prospector named Old Pete
would be expected to do. He's always yammering about his stupid mule or goat or
whatever he was riding around on, making moonshine and eventually going up to
the top of the mountain into the radioactive haze after some gold. Another part
of Maddison's Ten Year Plan must have been to get himself infected with
radiation by going after Old Pete because that's exactly what he did! Old Pete
also whacked him on the head for his troubles. (Don't try to get between a
crazy old coot and his radioactive fool's gold!) So what else was part of the
big plan? How about watching even though you're holding a gun as Rick and
Mannix bust your place up fighting over your daughter. She pleads with him to
stop them, but he says that maybe Rick will teach Mannix a lesson and watches
as chairs are smashed over people's heads and couches are tipped over. Who knew
the apocalypse would turn into a really lame frat party? It wasn't all fun a games for these seven survivors though. There were some
hard times as well. Radek eventually died from his the atomic shower he took or
was eaten by Louise's ex-boyfriend-turned-monster (I can't remember -
Armageddon can get pretty hectic), Mannix stabs Ruby in the guts after she gets
in his face one too many times about how his penchant for trying to rape Louise
is ruining their relationship, Mannix tosses Ruby's corpse off a cliff, Mannix
gets all shot up by Maddison (Come on, was that really in the Ten Year Plan?),
Maddison finally succumbs to his run in with the fallout, and the mutant gets
done in by the rain, leaving Rick, Louise and I to think that even though the
odds are against it, we must start again and that this is only ... The
Beginning. (See, I told you they ended this movie like that!) A pitifully
stupid and fitfully funny movie that isn't fitfully funny enough to be truly
enjoyable, Day The World Ended is the kind of movie marked by scenes where
Maddison is explaining to Rick how he was part of some test where the H bomb
was dumped on a bunch of poor animals and turned them all mutie and then he
pulls out some sketches he did of them and all I was thinking as I saw the
crudely rendered things (they all had fangs and horns drawn on them to show us
their mutant-ness) was that they would go on your refrigerator if they were done
by your kid, but you would realize that your kid wasn't going to be the next
Picasso or even Thomas Kinkade (thank God!). Even though they used a narrator
to explain that the world ended, he was never used to explain the stuff that
either didn't make sense or wasn't interesting, like why could the mutant that
was running amok only speak in a dog whistle tone that only Louise could
understand or why the rain wasn't contaminated or why it destroyed the mutants
or why everyone put up with Mannix after he repeatedly tried to kill Rick and
Maddison and rape Louise, or why Mannix suddenly went out to help Old Pete look
for his missing ass like he was a nice guy after all! Throw in the lumpy
monster with three eyes and some horns , some babble about "atomic skin" and
Maddison's creepy entreaties to his daughter and Rick that they need to start
humping and
restart the human race and you can begin to understand why a great majority of
us will wish we were vaporized as soon as TD Day rolls around and not have to
try
and live in a world gone mad where monsters skulk the earth, against whom our
only defense are bottles of Aquafina.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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