So much average

As Good As It Gets

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Fun Roger Corman flick about a small group of people who survived a nuclear war only to be in danger from a monster. The survivors are a geologist (Richard Denning), a guy with a Moe Howard haircut who suffered radiation burns (Paul Dubov), a hotheaded hoodlum (Mike Connors) and his stripper girlfriend (Adele Jergens), an old prospector (Raymond Hatton), and a father (Paul Birch) and his daughter (Lori Nelson). They spend most of the movie hanging around Birch's house talking, fighting, and lusting after Nelson, but it's not as boring as it sounds. The characters are pretty one-note but the actors are able to keep them interesting enough. The monster is courtesy of Paul Blaisdell. It's a pretty kooky-looking creature. This is a low budget movie so don't expect much from the effects or production values. But there's a charm to it, as with many of Corman's early films, that I find hard to resist.

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.

The Day the World Ended looks super cheap, but it is actually a watchable movie. It all begins with a nuclear holocaust. As poisonous radiation blankets the earth, only a few pockets are able to sustain normal life. The film is about one such pocket located somewhere in a mountainous desert probably in or near California.A father and his daughter are hunkering down in their remote house, fully prepared to survive the nuclear winter. Five survivors straggle down from the nuclear fog-bound hills and make it to the house. There are seven people in the house, but only enough supplies for three (the father and daughter were expecting her fiancée to join them).At this point, the movie becomes a great little character study. The small time hood and the hero, Rick (Richard Denning), compete for the affection of the daughter, Louise (Lori Nelson). An ex-stripper tries to hang onto her man while the father tries to keep everyone in line. The dying guy, surprisingly, does not die, but begins to have strange longings for the nuclear fog and strong cravings for raw meat. An old prospector and his mule round out the cast. The father can't get anyone on the radio, so these folks might be all alone in the world, trapped in a small house, surrounded by poisonous fog.The sets are by far the worst part of the movie. The house looks like a Palm Springs vacation home rented out for the weekend. It just does not look like the father and daughter live here (for a guy who was planning to survive a nuclear war you'd think he would at least remember to trick out his house!). The decor is dull, which is bad because we spend most of the movie looking at it. Oh and the curtains! All the windows are curtained. The characters spend lots of time peering out of the curtains (but we never see what they are looking at), and they enter and leave through curtained doors too. It just looks really cheap.If some of the scenes took place in another room, especially one with survival gear, the film might have been much more interesting. I felt like I needed to see what a 50s survival bunker (or storeroom) might have looked like. After all, it was not unheard of for people to have converted basements or backyard bunkers during this time period. Unfortunately the movie was too cheap to show something that really needed to be shown.The most interesting plot dynamic involves Louise. She has been hoping for her fiancée to arrive at the house, but he does not. Her father urges her to forget about him (and marry Rick within the week and get busy repopulating the earth). But she is not ready. At odd times Louise hears a strange psychic piping noise that seems like a voice calling her (no one else hears it) and she feels she is being watched.It's not too long before the household realizes there is a monster on the prowl outside. And the father and Rick start coming up with theories of humans and animals mutating into monsters due to radiation. I don't think the monster looks any worse than most cheap monster-suits of this genre. At least the monster is somewhat mysterious. The monster uses its psychic piping noise to lure Louise out of the house. Will she be taken by the monster into the poisonous fog? Will the monster let her go? Can Rick kill the monster and save the girl with an army surplus M-1 rifle? Whatever happened to the fiancée? The theme of the movie is survival, but with an emphasis on letting go of the past, letting go of the dead, and finding love and reasons to live in the midst of catastrophe. The only survivors in the movie are those able to let go and embrace a new future as the poisonous nuclear fog dissipates.

I was 9 years old when I saw this movie. I was being "babysat" by a friend of our family while my parents were out of town and he took me to see this. Afterward, when I had gone to bed, he went outside, and scratched on the window of my room, I looked and he flashed a flash light under his face and he had some sort of masking tape and tree bushes on his face...Jeezeus Keehriest! He scared the crap out of me. So, this film always stuck in my mind.I loved the music...very, very creepy and well timed. The monster, though stupid by modern standards, was all the rage in it's day.I remember the screams in the theater when it was first seen full view.The story was rather frightening for the era, too. We all were thinking quite a lot about nuclear war happening to us right at home. People were really building bomb shelters int heir backyards...or had "escape kits" pre-loaded in their station wagons. Yes. It really was that bad.I believe this film would be well worth re-watching, although, I have only seen it once again since I saw it on the big screen and the second showing it seemed a bit less spooky to me. But, the acting was good, the story was practical though of a totally unimaginable theme, and the monster, though rather "over the top", and a bit corny, was scary enough when combined with the well timed and creepy music.I definitely would watch it again, just for the memories.