brilliant actors, brilliant editing

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

While at first glance THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is a micro-budget potboiler, a pastiche of '50s US alien invasion movies with only a fraction of the money behind the production, it is in fact an interesting film, mainly due to the participation of director Terence Fisher, better known for his many classic Hammer Horror films. This is similar to the two films Fisher made in the following two years, ISLAND OF TERROR and NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT, as both deal with invasions and have characters trapped in a rural landscape. THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is obviously cheaper, shot in black and white, barely an hour long and with special effects that are even worse than those found in the other two films I mentioned.Still, it's an engaging film that never outstays its welcome. The opening, showing various disasters around the country – cars, trains and planes crash – is quite brilliant despite the obvious model work. From there on in, we're in familiar territory, but with a quintessentially British spin – our survivors hole up in a pub of all places! The script is far from talky, with the exchanges terse and the dialogue over fast. There are no long-winded explanations for the alien menace or reasons given for the walking robots and dead men.Instead, Fisher chooses to focus on the visual aspects of the movie, and he generates some tension with eerie shots of killer robots wandering around the village and bodies piled all over the place; having seen 28 WEEKS LATER only yesterday, I was surprised at how this film manages to convey the exact same type of creepy atmosphere. Later, there are some full-on zombie attacks, in which the bodies have weirdly-glowing eyes that reminded me of the possessed people in HORROR EXPRESS. One attack includes a great, tense moment with a woman hiding inside a closet as the zombie prowls outside – a clear influence on a similar scene in HALLOWEEN. Sure, the special effects are less than inspiring – the robots appearing as little more than DR WHO's Cybermen done on the cheap – and the supposedly explosive climax is anything but. But B-movie fans will lap this up with relish.The small cast is pretty good, especially the imported American star. This time around he's Willard Parker, a virtual unknown at the end of his career, but he does well. Parker is given sterling support by Dennis Price as a sinister villain and the buffoonish Thorley Walters in a typically typecast performance as a drunk. The females in the film are a little older than usual, in their 40s and 50s when this was shot, but they are nevertheless appealing. Fans looking for action will be disappointed, as will those expecting some originality in the production. Those wanting a harmless little British chiller in the same vein as 1966's INVASION – with which it would make a very good double bill – will find this a nice effort.

A tense and brooding British film about an alien invasion told from the limited perspective of several people of disparate backgrounds who come together in a small English village. The film begins creepily enough with people dropping dead, some at the controls of vehicles, others while waiting for trains or doing other mundane tasks. The characters postulate that it was a gas attack because the survivors who tell their backstories all were cut off from outside air--in a high-altitude aircraft, in an oxygen tent, squatting in a bomb shelter, etc. Some characters are vague about their backgrounds, but none more so than Taggert. He carries a gun, dresses nattily, is highly secretive, and can pick a lock in seven seconds. Some might guess him a hood, but I'm thinking government agent, perhaps MI5. The wholesale death that may encompass all England, perhaps the world, is a prelude to an invasion. Who's behind it? That's a question left to conjecture, both by the characters and the audience. It's a vagueness that, to me, works within the context of the story. This film has some connections unnoticed by IMDb, primarily "The Poison Belt," a Professor Challenger story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which the world succumbs to a gas zone through which it passes. The second connection is to another Professor Challenger story, "The Earth Screams," echoed in the film title. The theme is also carried in the film "Target Earth" in which several people awaken in a deserted city and are hunted by mechanical invaders. Connections aside, the film is engaging on its own merits and uses its limited budget to good effect. A great example of mid-century B- film science fiction, a last effort to appeal to an adult British audience before film studios realized the age of the average movie-goer was dropping, and dropping quickly.

Might have been a more accurate title. I've really never understood in these British horror and sci-fi film when all these fantastic things are happening and everyone is so calm about it.The characters being way too calm with the near genocide of the human race aside, this actually is a fairly effective film. The setup is that there is some kind of gas attack and everyone just falls over and dies, save a few characters who happen to be in hermetically sealed situations. So there's a rather effective opening sequence where vehicles crash and people drop dead.The culprits are robots in space suits working for an unseen power. And that's kind of the beauty of the story, you don't know why and it isn't important. The way the characters interact is.Terrance Fisher directed this, and he was one of those directors who could do a lot with a very little, as we would see with many of his Hammer films. He is able to make the hokiest monsters this side of Doctor Who look threatening with music, pacing, camera work and actor reactions. Big budget directors have done far less with far more.

Best Title Ever Saw this film last night and it goes down as a classic noir horror.During the early 60s the Brits make a bunch of truly great horror films which all featured an American hero and great black and white photography. 'These Are the Damned,' 'Bunny Lake Is Missing' just to name a few.'The Earth Dies Screaming' follows a rather typical end of the world zombie horror film. All over England people instantly drop dead. On the quite earth the few survivors start linking up and all realize they survived due to their isolation from the general air during the presumed gas attack.Is the gas attack, natural, foreign, or alien? Are the survivors generally innocent bystanders as they claim or is one of them a spy? To make matters worse the survivors soon encounter killer bullet proof robots in space suits. Even worse and scarier than the robots themselves are their victims whom come back as zombies.At only 60 minutes the film moves at a much faster pace than other quiet earth films. And the scenes are very intense and terrifying. They really do a great job of keeping you on the edge of your seat by their presentation. The zombies may just look like dumb sleep walkers but in the proper presentation they come across as truly terrorizing.Great musical score and photography.