Nice effects though.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I am a sucker for the post-apolitical, last people of earth types of films and Day the World Ended (1955) is one of them. This one I find really good. It's suspenseful, eerie, claustrophobic, intense and just an all around good sci-fi horror film. I really enjoy this one.There are 7 people who believes they maybe the last people on earth. 2 women and 5 men are alone in the world - one of them has half mutated after the atomic explosion that left them trying to survive in the contaminated climate. What they don't know is the fact there is a complete mutant - a monster hunting them down. Will they all survive?The movie mainly focus on the 7 characters: how they are surviving, how it's effecting their physical and mental health, their relationships with one another and their unawareness of the mutant monster lurking about makes the film more intense.We don't see the mutant monster until the end of the film and that is fine by me... it's the character interactions and their survival that makes this film worth watching.I'll plug two good films in the vein of this film: 'The Last Woman on Earth' and 'The Last Man on Earth'.9/10

A pretty decent Roger Corman offering about a group of people who find themselves amid a mountain range that is full of lead after a nuclear holocaust. They include a survivalist and his daughter, a young man knowledgeable in science (handsome Richard Denning), a gangster (played by Mike Connors) and his stripper girlfriend, an old prospector and his donkey, and a poor guy who was caught in the radiation. The dynamics are interesting as food and water run low and they become aware that there are some frightening creatures massing over the rim. It's hard to work together when Connors is constantly on the lookout for a gun he can get his hands on. He also has designs on the young daughter and becomes impatient with his girlfriend. There is some poorly developed science here but, of course, we have to have monsters. Corman doesn't disappoint. Not a bad movie.

Truth is, few of the films from Roger Corman's early days of directing schlock movies for a dime are 'good' in the usual sense of the word. In fact, most (if not all) of them are cheap exploitation quickies shot for next to nothing so they could do nothing but make a profit in drive-in theaters screaming for content to cater to teenage love birds more interested in each other in the dark than in the goings-on present on the big screen in front of them. Flicks like The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), Swamp Women (1956) and It Conquered the World (1956) nowadays are interesting only to geeks revelling in bad taste or film students exploring the fringes of acceptable study material. Still, the occasional sort-of decent film can be found among Corman's early work for those with enough patience and the stomach for digesting campy creature features from the Fifties. Day the World Ended I count among these very few.Stories about man's inability to coexist in peace with his fellows, even when such cooperation would be to both parties' mutual advantage in the struggle for basic survival, have often resulted in fascinating pieces of audiovisual excitement studying the human condition and continue to do so to this day even when you thought little more could be added to the subject, except for different, usually interchangeable threats. You think people watch popular shows like The Walking Dead only for the excessive gore and neat-o zombie make-up? Think again: they watch it for the gripping human drama involved in living together under extreme circumstances. Corman applied the same formula to this post-apocalyptic tale of tragedy almost sixty years ago, as he tells the story of a small band of survivors who seek refuge in the same remote mountain location when the bombs finally fall, a typical fear of the Fifties where such an occurrence never seemed so unlikely. Among those that would live are a survivalist, his pretty daughter, a geologist, a loudmouth crook, his slutty girlfriend and a man with a terrible secret. Of course tension quickly mounts between these disparate people over the usual things, like who's in charge, who rations the food and who ends up dating the daughter. Most of the film consists of people arguing, but fortunately the movie only lasts 79 minutes and the man with a secret mutates into a horrifying monster (read: guy in a silly suit) to spice things up a bit. Corman proves quite adept in suspensefully paving the way for the creature's first appearance between all the petty bickering. And even though you know the actual monster isn't gonna succeed in living up to this buildup to his rampage, if you know and accept what type of movie you're watching before you start, you might be able to get a kick out of this film regardless of the total lack of production values, even if only for laughs (who ever said Corman made serious movies anyway?). Aficionados of Fifties' Sci-Fi films will also be grateful to see Richard Denning star as the handsome scientist and noble man of action, as the actor is almost a staple of the science fiction films of this era, starring in genre pieces like the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and less well remembered pictures like The Black Scorpion (1957) and Target Earth (1954).The dystopian themes of Day the World Ended, effectively underscoring that man is his own worst enemy (hardly a novel notion in 1955 to begin with), have since been addressed in other films and television ad infinitum (compare various episodes of the different Twilight Zone series, as well as recent films like The Divide and The Mist for example) yet continue to fascinate and appeal to people, who cannot help but wonder if this was really what it came down to when the world went to hell. Corman crafts a fairly entertaining film out of the subject matter, which remains one of his best, though that is hardly saying something. Though I wouldn't exactly recommend this type of film to anyone, I can honestly say that if you ever fell the need to go sit and watch an obvious cash grab B-movie from a master in creating such fare the likes of Corman, it might as well be this one. You could do far worse and really, really waste your time.

Ostensibly Roger Corman's first shot at a sci-fi movie, this low-budget effort is interesting for being more of a drama than a genre picture, even with a horned, three-eyed mutant stalking the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. These survivors gather in a home in the countryside, where they do their best to get along, except for one slimy individual (Mike Connors) who wants to rule the roost. Richard Denning is the clean-cut leading man and Lori Nelson is his love interest. The great Paul Birch plays the homeowner and Nelson's dad. Adele Jergens plays Connors' stripper girlfriend and Raymond Hatton is an old-time miner, complete with a burro in tow. Not much actually happens, but the interaction among this ragtag group keeps up the interest. The ending is yet another Adam and Eve variation, a very popular theme in early sci-fi flicks and TV shows like"The Twilight Zone." The cast is definitely a notch or two above the usual casts of sci-fi and horror films of the period.