Film Snail

When Worlds Collide
When Worlds Collide

6.3

When Worlds Collide

G·1951·83m

Summary

When a group of astronomers calculate a star is on a course to slam into Earth, a few days before, it's accompanying planet will first pass close enough to the Earth to cause havoc on land and sea. They set about building a rocket so a few selected individuals can escape to the planet.

Crew

Director

Rudolph Maté

Novel

Philip Wylie

Novel

Edwin Balmer

Screenplay

Sydney Boehm

Reviews

John Chard

John Chard

July 1, 2019

5

"Suggest we fly to another world"

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with other amateur reviewers on line that stress you have to put yourself back to 1951 to appreciate the film more, it still doesn't take away from the fact that the film is one of the poorer offerings from the disaster/sci-fi genre of years gone by.

The methodical build up of characters is fine for adding weight to the final reel, the effects are solid for the time, and the ending has an element of heart tugging hope to it, but the film still remains a drawn out laborious watch.

No amount of shouting about lack of budget and the time frame of its birth can't detract that the film over relies on heavy dialogue to keep the viewer interested. This is all well and good if the pay off is handsome in the extreme, which sadly isn't the case on this occasion.

I have taken myself back to 1951, and for that reason alone I give it the average rating of 5/10, while I certainly have no hesitation in recommending this to genre fans for at least one watch. It deserves to be looked at, and it deserves respect of course, but that doesn't mean it's particularly above average either.

Media

Status:

Released

Original Language:

English

Budget:

$936,000.00

Revenue:

$1,600,000.00

Keywords

new york city
based on novel or book
space travel
meteor
rocket
end of the world
disaster
armageddon
doomsday
flood
tidal wave
destruction of earth