365+ movies in 365 Days: Day 120 - Summer's End Film Festival: The Day The Earth Caught Fire

Here is a film about global warming that was made before anyone knew what the term meant.

Unlike other movies about atomic bombs being tested this one isn't about giant monsters that run amok killing people. Instead the movie takes the premise that the U.S. and the Soviet Union coincidentally test two nuclear weapons on the same day on opposite ends of the globe. The force of the two huge explosions cause an 11 degree shift in the earth's axis and pushes it into a new orbit. One that is bringing it closer to the sun.

The movie is told as an old fashion investigative newspaper story. It starts off with unusual summer weather stories. Torrential rains, then an unending heat wave, sunspot activity and strange ground mist that blankets most of Europe.

Lead reporter Peter Stennings, played by Edward Judd and science writer Bill Maguire, played by Leo McKern, start putting the story together with the help of Jeannine Craig, a female phone operator, played by Janet Munro, who works inside the British Science Ministry.

The film is a low budget "B" picture shot on location in London. Cinematographer Harry Waxman uses excellent matte paintings to simulate the extreme weather occurrences. The film opens and closes with the city tinted in an orange glow to show the extreme heat that is building as the earth moves closer to the sun, then the film is told in flash back to 90 days earlier an details how the events begun.

The script is tight and the film is both extremely realistic and suspenseful. It is one of the best nuclear holocaust movies ever made.

At the Movie House rating ***1/2 stars