About the Movie
Simultaneous American and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests knock the Earth off its axis and out of its orbit — and the planet begins drifting toward the sun. In a Fleet Street newsroom, washed-up reporter Peter Stenning, science editor Bill Maguire and telephonist Jeannie Craig piece the truth together from strange weather reports, official evasions and a world slowly cooking: fogs, floods, unseasonal heat, then drought and rationed water as London bakes. Director Val Guest tells the apocalypse through deadlines and press conferences rather than spectacle.
Shot in black and white with searing orange-tinted opening and closing sequences, the film stars Edward Judd, Janet Munro and Leo McKern as the editor who has to decide what a newspaper owes its readers when the story is the end of the world. The special effects are modest; the writing is not. Guest and Wolf Mankowitz won a BAFTA for a screenplay that treats climate catastrophe as a news story, a cover-up and a human drama all at once.
Why This Movie Matters to Sci-Fi
This is one of the founding films of climate-disaster science fiction — made in 1961, decades before the genre had a name, and startlingly modern in its mechanics: weapons tests destabilise the planet, governments manage the message, scientists argue with politicians, and ordinary people queue for water. Its ambiguous final frames, with two newspaper front pages prepared — one announcing salvation, one doom — refuse the easy reassurance most 1950s disaster films offered. British sci-fi rarely gets more intelligent, or more unsettling, than this.
Where to Watch
The film is not sold or streamed free on YouTube. Watch the official BFI trailer on YouTube. The full film streams free on Kanopy (US, with a library card) and on BFI Player in the UK.
