Val Guest's (1911-2006)

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

(1961)

Val Guest directed this memorable science fiction film from the UK. Guest was active as a director from the forties through the eighties, but is best known for his science fiction films. He directed Hammer's film versions of Nigel Kneale's first three television serials, The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass 2, and The Abominable Snowman. Though made with a low budget, The Day the Earth Caught Fire has always been noted as an especially literate and well-acted treatment of a serious issue.

It was filmed in Dyaliscope, a French widescreen process. The film’s realistic, unsensational, and unromaticized presentation of the British news media was noteworthy. It remains a valuable historical document for that reason alone, as technological change and the removal of the news bureaus from Fleet Street to the Docklands would change London’s media beyond recognition.

The film opens with London Express newspaper reporter Peter Stenning (Edward Judd) walking through a deserted street to his office to write an article covering an obviously but as-yet-unrevealed apocalyptic event. The air is so hot he finds his rubber typewriter roller is melting. He reflects on the days leading up to the disaster, when his alcoholism had already derailed his career and destroyed his marriage. He chafed at demeaning assignments, though those were the only ones his editor (Arthur Christianson) felt comfortable assigning him, and some of his articles had been ghost written for him by his loyal colleague and best friend Bill McGuire (Leo McKern).

Stenning is sent to get background from the British Meteorological Office on freak weather, an assignment he finds particularly demeaning. He discovers, however, that the cause of the strange weather is that US and USSR unwittingly detonated large nuclear devices on opposite sides of the globe. Stenning covers a disarmament demonstration, a very routine and undemanding assignment, and photographs an unscheduled solar eclipse. After a few more days of freakish weather, the government reveals that the nuclear tests have shifted the earth on its axis of rotation, creating new climate zones. On a trip to the Met Office, Stenning meets Jennie Craig (Janet Munro). The two are initially in conflict but eventually fall in love.

Stenning’s response to the emergency is to foreswear drinking and concentrate on his profession, proving he can still be a great reporter. The series of extreme meteorological events culminates in an official announcement from the government that the earth's orbit has also changed, and it is now spiraling inward toward the sun. Heavy fog results from mixing cold air and warm water, grounding aviation. Then the increased heat lowers sea levels, the Thames dries up, and massive wildfires spread. When Jennie is confined for releasing sensitive information that the Express uses to inform the public, Stenning champions her cause.

The government institutes emergency water rationing. Public swimming pools are closed, but public showers are provided. London is evacuated and society begins to collapse. Jazz composer Monty Norman, who wrote James Bond's theme, composed the beatnik music for the nihilistic youth gangs, who waste water and wear embarrassingly dated swimwear. Epidemics of typhus and cholera break out, aggravated by the black market in contraband water of questionable quality.

Scientists concoct a scheme to reverse the inward spiraling of earth's orbit by detonating a series of hydrogen bombs in Siberian Russia. As the film ends, it remains unclear whether the plan has succeeded.