Us poor suckers on planet Earth don't need special glasses to view the sun in this film......cause we've been knocked off our axis by simultaneous Russian and U.S. H-Bomb blasts at the two Poles......putting us up close and personal with Big Sol itself and on putting Earth on the cosmic griddle like a sunny side up egg.......
So much to love about this movie......its depiction of the the world's end as seen through the blisteringly fast, chaotic world of a major London newspaper.....(this is one of cinema's all time great journalism movies, featuring a real life executive editor giving the reporters their marching orders).....the expert use, by co-writer and director Val Guest, of black-and-white and widescreen, giving the film both the scope of a spectacle and a
newsreel documentary feel....
On top of all that, the brilliant British treasure Leo McKern, spewing out a steady stream of rapid fire sardonic one liners, his delivery rivaled only by James Cagney in Billy Wilder's "One, Two, Three" (which we promise to cover in an upcoming post. And we almost tear up every time we watch a film with the achingly adorable, gone too soon Janet Munro......(not to mention, if you don't blink, a very young Michael Caine as a policeman...)
Befitting a apocalyptic movie, Val Guest pumps up the dread (and catastrophic climate change) as the story moves from disbelieving naysayers to street riots to the world hunkering down as we all wait for doom or salvation......(in the form of two more Polar H-Bombs, set off to try to get our axis in gear, so to speak.....)
Top notch all the way, an easy rating for the BQ, with 5 white-hot, broiling stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS........and you won't even have to wait in line at your local library for special glasses to watch the sun.......
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