Skiffy Flix: When Worlds Collide

Next of up my intermittent revisiting of 1950s science fiction movies is this one, one of the more popular and well-regarded of its era. It was produced by George Pal, who also did Destination Moon the previous year, and his touch is evident in the high-end production values, i.e. special effects, which won an Academy Award.

This is the movie in which people escape the Earth, as it’s threatened by destruction from a passing star, using a spaceship that launches on a big ramp, as in this photo, which I’m going to link from IMDb:

It resembles Destination Moon somewhat in its story line concerning scientists, their discoveries, and the engineers and entrepreneurs who put ambitious plans into place.

Gist

An approaching star and its planet foretell the imminent destruction of Earth. After some debate, a rocket ship is built to carry a select crew of refugees to the new planet, in hopes of survival there. Its mission succeeds.

Take

It’s ambitious for its time, with big special effects and a big cast, but like virtually all the other movies of its time is undermined by scientific and technical implausibilities.

Summary

• The film begins with a typical for its time allusion to Biblical verities. This was the ’50s. Genesis, and the story of Noah.
• And then a narrator intones about stars and the solar system.
• The story begins at an observatory at Mount Kenna in South Africa, where an amazing discovery has been made. A courier, Randall, is brought in to take a satchel of data to the United States. (Handcuffed to his wrist, for security. No internet in those days.)
• Randall arrives at Cosmos Observatory, where he’s met by Professor Hendron’s daughter and taken to the professor’s office. There is subtalk about doomsday. The data from South Africa is put through a D.A., “differential analyzer,” seen as a big clickety-clackety machine, for several hours to confirm the results.
• These results confirm that a star “a dozen times the size of the Earth” (which is nonsense; stars are millions of times the size of a planet), and the star’s one planet, are on a path to intercept the Earth, and destroy it, within a few months. The star and planet are arbitrarily named Bellus and Zyra.
• A conference at the UN spells this out: the planet Zyra will pass on July 24th, at 1p.m. (as if this precision makes any difference at all), causing much disruption to Earth, and then the star Bellus will actually hit the Earth on August 12th. (You’d think a star would actually fry a planet long before it “hit.”) The Americans propose a ship to move at least some people to Zyra, “with God’s help.” Others in the assembly flatly disagree with those conclusions (there is no display or discussion of evidence here, merely assertions) or simply disbelieve that flying to other planets is possible.
• Throughout the film there are scenes in which characters flirt with relationships and wonder who should marry whom. Joyce appeals to her father: should she marry Tony now, even though she likes David Randall better? And so on. By the end, of course, there is a happy ending for at least one couple.
• A wealthy entrepreneur, Stanton (played by the familiar John Hoyt, familiar at least as the doctor in the original Star Trek pilot), agrees to fund the project of building the rocket ship to Zyra — but he wants to be able to choose exactly who goes. The ship can only carry 40 or 50 people. His request is rejected, but he agrees to fund the project anyway.
• There are scenes of candidate men, and women (in separate rooms), briefed on the expedition, and shown drawings of the proposed ship, and told how the mission will involve the ship proceeding “out of the gravitational pull of Earth” until it reaches the gravitational pull of Zyra. And how the final crew will be determined by lot.
• Soon the candidates are driven up to the mountain top in old busses, and we see the ship under construction, and the big slide. They arrive, carrying ’50s style suitcases, and settle into bunkers. There’s a brief scene of ladies scanning books, from the Bible (of course) to books on anatomy and whatnot. There is also livestock: chickens and goats and so on, ready to board.
• Stanton visits, bringing rifles, warning about the law of the jungle, and how ordinary people, jealous of being left behind, are bound to attack.
• The president gives an inspirational speech, warning the people of Earth to evacuate coastal zones that will suffer the most damage. We see scenes of people evacuating on planes; then scenes of empty cities.
• The first date arrives: July 24th. 1pm. People in the UN wait. Nothing happens. Ah ha, the skeptics say, you’re all crackpots. (Haven’t the astronomers been tracking the approach of the planet…??) And then, a minute or so later, they feel rumbles, and shakes. And then follows a montage of big special effects: volcanoes blowing, bridges falling, fires burning, icebergs cleaving, tidal waves washing, landslides burying, rivers washing out cities.
• On the mountaintop, the shaking threatens to break the ship apart. I-beams are brought in to shore up its foundations. A crane falls and kills someone. Calls come in with frantic requests for supplies, everywhere.
• A sequence of non-special effects, involving a small helicopter, show two of our men finding a tiny island, where they drop supplies, and then a sunken house, where a little boy is clinging to the roof. They rescue him, and his dog.
• The lottery scene occurs: all the candidates draw tokens, then numbers are read out to identify those who will go on the flight. Consequences ensue.
• Ten days out, the star Bellus is visible in the sky. Plans for the launch are behind schedule. There is an argument about the ship being overweight. Stanton insists on going; his servant Ferris pulls a gun on him, and Stanton shoots Ferris. Wind whips up outside as the crew boards the ship.
• Then, finally, the left-behinds storm the ship, with guns, just as the ship begins to move. Stanton is left behind.
• The star hits.
• The ship launches, and is on course. “In a minute we’ll feel the pull of the new planet.” As it approaches Zyra, the ship, firing all engines and low on fuel, turns 180 degrees to slow down, then 180 agrees to land like a plane. We see the ship descending through clouds, we see rugged mountains, and we see the ship glide in and land on a frozen sea.
• The ship stops. “We’re here!” Lets get outside; open the doors! Any concern about the air? Not at all; it’s the best air they’ve ever breathed. They stand outside and look out, at a curiously cartoonish landscape of green meadows and lakes and mountains.
• As others emerge, they see the boy’s dog has had puppies. A choir sounds, and a Bible-like card comes up about how their “first day had begun.”

Comments

• All the talk about being “out of the gravitational pull of Earth” and whatnot are nonsense, but those impressions where very common at the time, and perhaps still are. A spaceship is never out of the gravitational pull of any planet, or star, anywhere, ever. The issue is whether the ship’s course needs to account more for a nearby planet more than one farther away, and at what point this transition takes place. The same is true for a trip from the Earth to the Moon. On board a ship, you would never feel the “pull” of one planet over another.
• When people evacuate the cities, where exactly did they go? Millions of people camping out in the mountains? (Awaiting their deaths?)
• The most glaring omission in this film is that we never *see* the passing planet Zyra. We see lots of havoc on Earth, but if Zyra is passing this close, it should be as visible at least as the Moon is in Earth’s sky. Yet the film never bothers to show it, or have anyone on Earth look up into the sky at it.
• Also, no one among the people who hope to reach this new planet ever wonders where this new planet will *go*. Away from our sun; out into interstellar space? Perhaps the assumption is that it will stay tightly bonded with its star Bellus, after it passes through our solar system — though any experience with close encounters of stars or planets would suggest this unlikely. Rather, the planet and sun would likely be ripped apart by their close encounter with the Earth, the planet hurtling its own way out into space. No one thinks about this.
• The most glaring presumption is that this new planet will be enough like Earth to support human life. The air is fine; the landscapes are beautiful. There’s no recognition about how unlikely this is. On the contrary — the film defers such issues to the religious invocations, which draw parallels between Noah’s story and this story. So it was all God-ordained? And all the billions who lost their lives on the destroyed Earth were just out of luck, the same way all those who died in the Flood were? Well, this is what appealed to audience of movie sci-fi in the 1950s.