Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Admirable film.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

What movie did you guys watch? Quick rule of thumb, if the movie starts out with a deadly serious-voiced narrator and he continues to appear throughout the flick in order to tell the audience what's going on because there's no way in hell that they'd be able to follow it without him....you're not watching a classic, unless what you're talking about is a classic piece of crap! Another clue that a movie is a big waste of time and money is if it requires tons of stock footage just to drag the time out so it can qualify as a feature length presentation. The only padding trick this pile of dreck lacks is a visit to a nightclub where an attractive lady eats up another 5 minutes belting out a peppy show tune. Dreadfully under-budgeted and saddled with lackluster direction, the movie features brief clips of some poorly conceived and executed "special" effects sandwiched between long, drawn-out episodes of "drama" that would have been laughably bad on a daytime soap opera. The acting comes in two flavors: deadpan and overblown. Maybe the reason that all the sci-fi geeks like this flick is because it features an appearance of that beloved science fiction stereotype; the scientist that wants the deaths to continue in the vain hope that they can communicate with the alien menace!! What fun! Near as I can figure the moral of this movie is that all the selfish women out there should stop bitching that their scientist husbands and boyfriends are too busy working 7 days a week building lots of nukes to be by their side for the birth of their child or marry them! C'mon ladies! The ending is unintentionally hilarious as our scientist hero drives a rod of deadly plutonium through the panicked streets of New York City in order to deliver it in time to their new super duper Job rocket, the only rocket able to get close enough to the alien missle to blow it up. One would get the impression that the transportation of dangerous radioactive material through am major metropolitan area is routine. Believe me, it's not. It has never been allowed, ever. Now, mind you, they have already established that helicopters are transporting all the eggheads out of NYC in order to protect their brilliant skulls, but nobody thinks to fly the plutonium to its destination. Ludicrous. So, wouldn't you know that while our hero speeds along the highway with his deadly cargo he runs smack dab into that other beloved stereotype of 50's movies; the gang of hot rod delinquents, complete with greased back hair and switch blade knives. The gang steals the jeep and the box containing the deadly rod. When the hero catches up with the jeep the box is open and the gang has vanished. Exposing himself to lethal doses of radiation our hero drives to his destination and manages to arm the Job just before he gives up the ghost. I was wishing that everybody involved with this bore-fest could have been stuffed into the jeep with him! Avoid this one unless you need a cure for insomnia.

I remember seeing this a few times as a kid during those Saturday afternoon monster movie shows. I have to say that THIS one always stuck with me. Not that it's that good or well made - it's NOT - but the premise. Blazing death coming at you at 4K mph? How could you run? How could you shelter? Basically you couldn't. THAT is the brilliance of this film - it creeps you out.Part of what sets this gem apart is that unlike most "happy happy joy joy" American films of the time, this one shows people who don't stand a chance actually dying. Kids, women, people in shelters - there's no last minute helo rescue or a sudden rainstorm that saves families cowering in alleyways... they're doomed and they stay doomed.Well worth a watch - and compared to a LOT of films of that era, this one is actually interesting and different.Keep an eye out: when the nervous scientist's pregnant wife is taking shelter in her bldg's basement, there's an angry bald guy complaining... every person in the room with me watching had the same reaction: "hey, that's the bald guy from the basement in Night of the Living Dead!" One thing - you would NOT want to be standing near Robert Loggia when a lot of heat builds up. Not going to say his acting is wooden, but if you look REALLY hard, in the background is a bunch of Amish guys chasing him so they can build a barn out of him. The man's a deciduous forest worth of wood.Of course this film would've been PRIME for Mystery Science Theater 3000... but then, every film ever made would be better getting riffed by Mike and the Bots. Perhaps Rifftrax can take care of this glaring omission!

Undeniably tense and frightening, an extremely low budget film that is a clever combination of fantastic Air Force and Civil Defense stock footage with effective, chilling special effects. This is quite an achievement of creativity overcoming limited resources.The movie is a sleeper. It is underrated and ignored. But you could bill this with Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Fail-Safe (1964), and screened with the right attitude it would fit in quite nicely as an example of a Primitive Art entry in the Doomsday genre. This is a heart pounding picture that pulsates with despair and a drumbeat of dread that is missing from most of it's fun and fanciful 1950's Sci-Fi/Horror cousins. This is a dead serious scenario that is creepy and its pseudo-documentary style will have you diving under your desk as the radiated missile makes it's way around the Earth destroying everything in its path.There is also an enormous amount of some rarely seen stock footage that has got to be of interest for military history buffs. It lends an eerie atmosphere of atomic paranoia that persisted in the early days of the cold war that dissipated somewhat after the Cuban Missile Crisis.On a lighter note. There is ONE scene that cannot be forgiven and is a minor flaw in this otherwise attention to detail scare-fest. It cannot be imagined that a Woman would go into labor and give childbirth without her or someone else removing her earrings. Maybe this was left in to give this otherwise incredibly intense movie some levity in a wink, wink, nod, nod kind of way that says this is just fiction. Let's give these filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. They deserve it for this fine effort.

Really it's a dreadful cheat of a film. Its 70-minute running time is very well padded with stock footage. The rest are non descript exteriors and drab interiors scenes. The plot exposition is very poorly rendered. They are all just perfunctory scenes sort of strung together. There is no attempt at drama in scene selection but rather drama is communicated by the intensity of the actors. Please don't ask.The plot concerns a rocket radiating a million degree heat orbiting earth five miles up threatening to destroy the earth. It's a real time menace that must be diverted if a custom built H-bomb can be fashioned and placed in an experimental rocket within an hour. Nothing very much here to report except for a mad speech by a scientist against the project because there might be some sort of life aboard and think of the scientific possibilities but this speech made by the obligatory idiot liberal was pretty much passé by then.What saves this film, somewhat uniquely, IS the stock footage. I've never seen a larger selection of fifties jet fighter aircraft in any other film. This is by no means a complete list but just some of the aircraft I managed to see. There's a brief interception by a pilot flying, in alternate shots, an F-89 Scorpion and an F-86. First to scramble interceptors is the Royal Canadian Air Force in Hawker Hunters and F-86 Sabre Jets (or Canadian built CF-13s) and even a pair of CF-100 Clunks.Then for some reason there are B-52s, B-47s and even B36s are seen taking off. More padding."These Canadian jets are moving at 1200 miles an hour". I don't think so since one of them appears to be a WW2 era Gloster Meteor, the rest F-80s. The Meteors press the attack and one turns into a late F-84F with a flight of early straight wing F-84s attacking in formation.There's a strange tandem cockpit version of the F-80 that doesn't seem to be the T-33 training type but some sort of interim all-weather interceptor variant with radar in the nose. These are scrambled in a snowstorm.An angled deck aircraft carrier is seen from about 500 meters. It launches F-8U Crusaders, F-11F Tigers, A-5 Vigilantes and A-3 Skywarriors. The Air Force scrambles F-86s and F-84s and more F-89s then you've ever seen in your life as well as F-100 Super Sabres and F-102 Delta Daggers.The F-100s press their attack with sooooo much padding. The F-89's unload their rockets in their wingtip pods in slo mo. The F-86s fire, an F-102 lets loose a Falcon, even some F-80s (F-94s?) with mid-wing rocket pods let loose. There is a very strange shot of a late model F-84 (prototype?) with a straight wing early model F-85 above it in a turn, obviously a manufacturer's (Republic Aviation) advertising film showing the differences between the old and the new improved models of the F-84 ThunderJet. How it strayed into here is anybodies guess.There is other great stock footage of Ottawa in the old days when the capital of Canada was a wide spot in the road and especially wonderful footage of New York City's Times Square during one of the Civil Defense Drills in the early 50s. I think we also have to deal with the notion that this was filmed in Canada with the possible exception of the auto chase seen late in the picture as the Pacific seems to be in the background. The use of a Jowett Jupiter is somewhat mind-boggling and there is a nice TR 3 to be seen also. Canada must have been cheap and it is rather gratuitously used a lot in the background.As far as the actual narrative of the film there is little to recommend it other than the mystery of just who Ellen Parker is giving the finger to at the end of the picture. And she most definitely is flipping someone off. Could it be, R as in Robert Loggia? The director who dies before this film was released? Her career as this was her last credit?Its like the newspaper the gift came wrapped in was more valuable than the gift.