Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Hitchcoc This dubbed Italian film is based on an interesting premise, but then it is so dull, it makes no difference. It begins with a nuclear powered ship sent up with an American in it. He has to abandon rocket somewhere, leaving the full payload up there. Wouldn't you know it, it gets itself hooked up with a grouping of asteroids that begin to head for the Earth. There is then about 45 minutes of hand wringing as they hope it won't hit them. They are hoping that the moon's gravitational pull will disperse the asteroids which are linked by a magnetic field. Newton is spinning like a lathe. A marriage almost breaks up. A couple of hot and bothered scientists can't keep their hands off each other, and eventually someone has to come up with a plan. Meanwhile the earth starts catching fire and tidal waves start, but no reason is given. There is no science here. Don't waste your time. Even as high camp, it doesn't cut the mustard.

ctomvelu1 Leave it to the Italians to copy American and British sci-fi quickies back in the 1950s. Only, the Italians manage to do so very badly. An off-course rocket launched from Cape Shark (!) apparently dislodges an asteroid from its path, and which begins to hurtle toward the Earth. Scientists around the world try to figure a way to stop it before it hits. We are treated to endless stock footage of forest fires, burning buildings, animals stampeding, missiles and rockets being launched and crowds running in panic as the massive rock closes in on our planet. My favorite footage were the crowd scenes. No matter where in the world they took place, the sound man used the same 10-second loop of some bizarre crowd noise, almost like that of a circus audience going wild, and which includes an abbreviated scream or shout that sounds like a macaw or parrot shrieking. I came to look forward to those crowd running wild segments and that repeated sound effect to keep from falling asleep. The acting isn't all that bad, and the leading man, a foreign-born Gordon "Tarzan" Scott lookalike, is actually pretty good. About half the movie is composed of stock footage, so be prepared. Only two or three babes in the entire movie, and none is worth writing home about -- which is really sad, considering this was an Italian job from 1958, smack dab in the era of pointy bras and Gina Lollabrigida. I guess the Italians saved the real cuties for their sand and sandal epics of that period.

Michael_Elliott Day the Sky Exploded, The (1957) * 1/2 (out of 4) Poor science fiction film about the first spaceship being sent to outer space where it accidentally sets off a missile, which sends debris back to Earth. This is yet another science fiction film that bites off more than it can chew. A lot of the films from this era worked on low budgets because they worked with what they had and didn't try doing to much. Then, there's this film, which tries to be a lot bigger than the budget will allow and this makes the film come off looking very cheap. It also leads to a lot of boring dialogue through the bad dubbing. The dubbing here is perhaps the worst I've ever heard but I doubt the film would play any better in its original language. Mario Bava did the cinematography.

junk-monkey This public domain movie available for legal download www.Archive.org has little to recommend it. A very cheaply made, two set movie that consists almost entirely of stock footage and a bunch of scientists shoving bits of paper at each other while peering into a radar screen.A wild-eyed news reporter who doesn't seem to know where the camera is wildly info-dumps the news to us that the world's first circum Lunar flight is about to take off. Scientists pass pieces of paper to each other and peer at radar screens. Soon the flight runs into difficulties, the pilot jettisons the atomic rocket and returns to Earth. A strange blip is discovered on the radar. More paper is scribbled on and passed to and fro before they make the discovery that the rocket has blown up in a bunch of asteroids, annoying them so much they glued themselves together "with magnetic attraction" and are heading towards Earth. That took a very boring 30 minutes of screen time to set up. The next 30 minutes are spent watching the scientists pass even more bits of paper to each other before they conclude the asteroids are going to bump into the moon on the way in so the world may be saved without them actually having to do anything. Everyone sits around looking at radar screens (or out the window with binoculars) and sweating as the (Yawn!) tension mounts. With only about 22 minutes of screen time remaining, the asteroids miss the moon and keep on towards Earth. Oh Bum! At which point our nominal hero has the genius idea of blowing the asteroids up with nuclear missiles. The pace of paper passing heats up to fever pitch. The stock footage comes at us faster and faster. Refugees!. TV transmission masts! Jet planes taking off! Jet planes landing! More transmission masts! "London reports temperatures are increasing all over the world. Fires are breaking out everywhere!" says one scientist between calculations. We are then shown a long montage of things burning down all over the world. The pace of calculations speeds up to fever pitch as for some unexplained reason the scientist at the moon launching base are the only people in the world who can do the maths to aim the world's ICBMs - though, given the fact they managed to get the calculation about the asteroids whacking into the moon wrong, I can't say that I would have had a lot of faith in them myself. The cooling system breaks down making their room sized electronic flashy-lighty, adder-upper machine go wrong. And don't you just know it, there's a doom saying loony with a gun who gets in their way when they try to fix it.Finally the last piece of paper is scribbled on and the nuclear powers (which bizarrely seem to include Norway and Scotland) are ready to fire. Everyone says a prayer. Dear glorious and humungeous God, please let this be the last montage of the movie. All the missiles are fired in a long montage of every piece of missile launching footage available to the editors, including the ubiquitous shots of V2s taking off (V2 didn't have the capability to get above the atmosphere) and several shots of anti-aircraft missiles with an even shorter range.Kaboom! The asteroids are blown to itty-bitty bits which are "dispersed into space". Our leads go and watch the sun rise.EndThere are a couple of sub-plots too thin to be worth bothering with. Ice maiden scientist girlie melts into arms of handsome hunk. Mrs astronaut realises she her place is beside her man. Both involve some hugging.