It's Meteor Monday Redo with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Here's a wild 'n' weird French-Italian sci-fi doomsday production from 1958, director of photography was the great horror director Mario (CALTIKI) Bava, his last name is spelled "Baja" in the English dub credits.
Eegah!! sent over a grainy lil' soundclip (much like the stills) from the beginning of the flick,
sooooo, you can push the big red
'GO' button there next to the Snark Missile,
NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for...
THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED!
As far as I know, the Alpha Video print I used is the only one available..
The story's about some European scientists that discover a large group of meteors in space hurtling on a collison course with Earth, and if they hit, the planet will be destroyed!!!.. I like most fifties sci-fi because of the interesting ideas, miniatures, futuristic architecture, space hardware and the like.
Not sure what's going on here, but,
it don't look good!
It's just a shot of an instrument panel, that's all...
When the citizens figure out it's pretty much the end of the world, they go freakin' berserk!
The meteors demolish the Moon, causing this scientist to lose his mind! When these kinds of things happen in horror movies, I like to imagine a coo coo clock going off to accompany it.
Destruction of the Moon causes vast earthquakes on Earth, part of the science lab gets totally destroyed as mom tries to comfort the kid!
The insane scientist tries to prevent the others from commanding the launch of thousands of missiles from around the world to combat the oncoming meteors, but, he gets electrically fried instead!
Three.. two.. one! The missiles make it to their target and end up saving the day!..
Hurrah!!
The head scientist takes a big slug o' relief!
The star of this movie, Paul Hubschmid, under the screen name "Paul Christian," was the star of Ray Harryhausen's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. In his autobiography, Ray states he felt "Christian" was a fine actor who inexplicably never "made it" in the movies. Ray hadn't bothered to check the IMDb. Hubschmid was a Major Movie Star in Germany, making over 70 movies, and honored for his "Services to German Cinema."
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