Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Leofwine_draca While at first glance THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is a micro-budget potboiler, a pastiche of '50s US alien invasion movies with only a fraction of the money behind the production, it is in fact an interesting film, mainly due to the participation of director Terence Fisher, better known for his many classic Hammer Horror films. This is similar to the two films Fisher made in the following two years, ISLAND OF TERROR and NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT, as both deal with invasions and have characters trapped in a rural landscape. THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is obviously cheaper, shot in black and white, barely an hour long and with special effects that are even worse than those found in the other two films I mentioned.Still, it's an engaging film that never outstays its welcome. The opening, showing various disasters around the country – cars, trains and planes crash – is quite brilliant despite the obvious model work. From there on in, we're in familiar territory, but with a quintessentially British spin – our survivors hole up in a pub of all places! The script is far from talky, with the exchanges terse and the dialogue over fast. There are no long-winded explanations for the alien menace or reasons given for the walking robots and dead men.Instead, Fisher chooses to focus on the visual aspects of the movie, and he generates some tension with eerie shots of killer robots wandering around the village and bodies piled all over the place; having seen 28 WEEKS LATER only yesterday, I was surprised at how this film manages to convey the exact same type of creepy atmosphere. Later, there are some full-on zombie attacks, in which the bodies have weirdly-glowing eyes that reminded me of the possessed people in HORROR EXPRESS. One attack includes a great, tense moment with a woman hiding inside a closet as the zombie prowls outside – a clear influence on a similar scene in HALLOWEEN. Sure, the special effects are less than inspiring – the robots appearing as little more than DR WHO's Cybermen done on the cheap – and the supposedly explosive climax is anything but. But B-movie fans will lap this up with relish.The small cast is pretty good, especially the imported American star. This time around he's Willard Parker, a virtual unknown at the end of his career, but he does well. Parker is given sterling support by Dennis Price as a sinister villain and the buffoonish Thorley Walters in a typically typecast performance as a drunk. The females in the film are a little older than usual, in their 40s and 50s when this was shot, but they are nevertheless appealing. Fans looking for action will be disappointed, as will those expecting some originality in the production. Those wanting a harmless little British chiller in the same vein as 1966's INVASION – with which it would make a very good double bill – will find this a nice effort.

mark.waltz There's really little to laugh with or at in this ridiculous science fiction film that opens with a promising start as briefly seen extras all of a sudden die suddenly without no apparent reason. Survivors gather together to try and figure out what has been going on, only to be confronted by what appear to be astronauts but definitely are not. Then, when one of the survivors suddenly is killed (after being tapped on the shoulder by one of the supposed aliens), she returns from the dead with ping-pong ball eyes (like a demonic Little Orphan Annie), as do other monsters walking towards the other survivors like Tor Johnson did in "Plan Nine From Outer Space". It doesn't matter that the writer leaves out tons of details and leaves the plot entirely open, it's simply that the film is excessively dull and pointless, much better done in the same year's "The Last Man on Earth" which was the source of "The Omega Man" and "I am Survivor".

MartinHafer This black & white British sci-fi looks an awful lot like another 1960s British sci-fi film when it begins. Like "Village of the Damned", it begins in a village where suddenly and inexplicably everyone collapses to the ground. However, unlike "Village of the Damned", the people are all dead AND it appears to extend all over the planet! Who is responsible is unknown at first, but when a tiny group of survivors come together it becomes obvious that whatever killed everyone was air-borne. Each survivor had been lucky enough to be away from the air--one in a high-altitude jet, another in an oxygen tent, etc..Soon, the source of all this death is apparent--there are some robot-like aliens walking about the planet. And, when the survivors see them kill one of them, they shoot at the creatures repeatedly--with no effect! In fact, the alien thingies seem completely indifferent to this. What's weirder is that later, the woman they killed comes back to life as a white-eyed zombie!! Soon other white-eyed zombies appear and this does not bode well! Can these folk somehow survive and manage to repel this ruthless invasion? So is this apocalyptic sci-fi drama worth seeing? Well, if you are a fan of sci-fi, then definitely. The movie is amazingly low-key and subtle in its approach--a nice change from the usually loud and in-your-face style of most sci-fi. The only problem is the ending. While not terrible, it did seem to leave too many dangling threads and was far from certain. Still, well done and interesting...and also a lot like "Target Earth" (1954). In fact, both together would make a dandy double-feature.

ferbs54 That admittedly great title is something of a misnomer. In 1965's "The Earth Dies Screaming," our good planet doesn't quite expire with a scream, a bang or even a T.S. Eliot whimper; rather, it is simply put to a quiet death by an alien gas attack. In the film, we meet what appears to be the last seven people left alive, who converge in a quaint village in what we must infer is northern England. There is an American jet pilot (played by Willard Parker, a likable, rugged actor in the Forrest Tucker mode), an attractive, middle-aged woman (Virginia Field, Parker's real-life wife), a weasly cad (the always impeccable Dennis Price), a drunken older couple and a pregnant young couple. This septet has its hands full avoiding the lumbering, helmeted robots that the aliens have sent down, as well as the blank-eyed, reanimated corpses of the once-living! The film features moody B&W photography, typically taut and suspenseful direction by Hammer Studios legend Terence Fisher (although the film in question here is a product of Shepperton), and several gripping sequences. In one, the newly zombified Violet (of the older couple) makes a very jolting nighttime appearance; in another, attractive Peggy plays cat and mouse in a house filled with buzzing robots and the empty-orbed undead. Unfortunately, "The Earth Dies Screaming," with a running time of only 62 minutes, is a bit on the skimpy side, with an inadequately fleshed-out script. We never DO find out the mysterious motivations of Dennis Price's character, or even learn anything about the alien invaders (or even get to SEE them!). Far from overstaying its welcome, the film ends way too suddenly, and will leave most viewers thinking, "WTF? That's it?" Still, what IS on the screen is pretty much dynamite!