Review: "When Worlds Collide" (1951)
About.com Rating
The Story
Though he's in the dark about what he's carrying in his black satchel, courier pilot David Randall (Derr) knows it must be something ominous. First the astronomer who hires him to deliver it to Dr. Cole Hendron (Keating) starts muttering about how money soon won't mean anything.
Then he's met at the airport by Hendron's daughter, Joyce (Rush), who muses glumly that she hasn't the courage to face the end of the world.
His brow furrowed, Randall tags along as Hendron calmly confirms the data from the satchel. A rogue star, Bellus, will smash into the Earth in mere months. Only a handful of humans might survive, and only if they travel by rocket to Zyra, the mysterious planet orbiting Bellus.
Other astronomers ridicule Hendron's findings, scotching his plan for an international space ark. Undaunted, he turns to private investors, notably gnarled plutocrat Sydney Stanton (Hoyt). Though Stanton insists on taking over, he crumples under Hendron's offer: Your money for your life.
Hendron, Joyce and her fiance Tony Drake (Hanson) assemble a crack team to build and stock the ship. Randall is kept on, but he feels out of place among the specialists, especially since he loves the spoken-for Joyce. His rivalry with Drake leads him to give up his place on the rocket, which is limited to only 43 people; but Drake, realizing that Joyce truly loves Randall, tricks him into staying.
The rocket is completed just in time; Bellus fills the sky as those chosen by lot hurry on board. But in the final moment, the armed, panicky mob long predicted by Stanton materializes, endangering humanity's only chance of surviving the last day of planet Earth.
When rival suitors collide!
Scientists must find it a great comfort to know that the more eminent they become, the more beautiful their daughters will be. This device is as old as the hero-interloper: A beautiful princess furnishes an "in" for the hero, conflict with the inner circle, and romance. In science fiction there's an added rule: The daughter must be a princess of science and know what the father knows. This makes for a lot of brainy debutantes.
In When Worlds Collide, based on the novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, the raw emotions that any apocalypse must spawn are ignored. Unfortunately, the daughter device is sucked into the vacuum, turning what should have been an edgy thriller into a stale potpoiler. Joyce frets about which man to date as if her only worry were what to wear to the Mensa Cotillion, while doting dad, taking time out from his urgent efforts to save the world, coaxes young Randall to confront his feelings.
Apart from Stanton (who's made as repellent as possible), everyone is blandly wholesome and generally unmoved by the forthcoming holocaust--that is, until the mob jarringly appears at the end. Nonetheless it's welcome--the mob is the first foreshadowed suspense point that didn't quietly vanish into the swamp, never to resurface.
Striking visuals, banal story
What does work for this film is its look: the Oscar-nominated cinematography and Oscar-winning special effects. Produced by George Pal (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds), When Worlds Collide has a strikingly rich feel throughout. At least it's something when the spaceship and the menacing star have a resonance to them, even if the protagonists do not.
Screenwriter Sydney Boehm and director Rudolph Mate collaborated on four other films in the early '50s, including two Westerns and the film-noir crime drama Union Station. I wonder whether they and Pal had the same movie in mind when they started work on When Worlds Collide.
- When Worlds Collide
- Rated G
- Starring Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hanson, Larry Keating, John Hoyt
- Directed by Rudolph Mate
- 1951
- 81 Minutes
The Story
Though he's in the dark about what he's carrying in his black satchel, courier pilot David Randall (Derr) knows it must be something ominous. First the astronomer who hires him to deliver it to Dr. Cole Hendron (Keating) starts muttering about how money soon won't mean anything.
Then he's met at the airport by Hendron's daughter, Joyce (Rush), who muses glumly that she hasn't the courage to face the end of the world.
His brow furrowed, Randall tags along as Hendron calmly confirms the data from the satchel. A rogue star, Bellus, will smash into the Earth in mere months. Only a handful of humans might survive, and only if they travel by rocket to Zyra, the mysterious planet orbiting Bellus.
Other astronomers ridicule Hendron's findings, scotching his plan for an international space ark. Undaunted, he turns to private investors, notably gnarled plutocrat Sydney Stanton (Hoyt). Though Stanton insists on taking over, he crumples under Hendron's offer: Your money for your life.
Hendron, Joyce and her fiance Tony Drake (Hanson) assemble a crack team to build and stock the ship. Randall is kept on, but he feels out of place among the specialists, especially since he loves the spoken-for Joyce. His rivalry with Drake leads him to give up his place on the rocket, which is limited to only 43 people; but Drake, realizing that Joyce truly loves Randall, tricks him into staying.
The rocket is completed just in time; Bellus fills the sky as those chosen by lot hurry on board. But in the final moment, the armed, panicky mob long predicted by Stanton materializes, endangering humanity's only chance of surviving the last day of planet Earth.
When rival suitors collide!
Scientists must find it a great comfort to know that the more eminent they become, the more beautiful their daughters will be. This device is as old as the hero-interloper: A beautiful princess furnishes an "in" for the hero, conflict with the inner circle, and romance. In science fiction there's an added rule: The daughter must be a princess of science and know what the father knows. This makes for a lot of brainy debutantes.
In When Worlds Collide, based on the novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, the raw emotions that any apocalypse must spawn are ignored. Unfortunately, the daughter device is sucked into the vacuum, turning what should have been an edgy thriller into a stale potpoiler. Joyce frets about which man to date as if her only worry were what to wear to the Mensa Cotillion, while doting dad, taking time out from his urgent efforts to save the world, coaxes young Randall to confront his feelings.
Apart from Stanton (who's made as repellent as possible), everyone is blandly wholesome and generally unmoved by the forthcoming holocaust--that is, until the mob jarringly appears at the end. Nonetheless it's welcome--the mob is the first foreshadowed suspense point that didn't quietly vanish into the swamp, never to resurface.
Striking visuals, banal story
What does work for this film is its look: the Oscar-nominated cinematography and Oscar-winning special effects. Produced by George Pal (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds), When Worlds Collide has a strikingly rich feel throughout. At least it's something when the spaceship and the menacing star have a resonance to them, even if the protagonists do not.
Screenwriter Sydney Boehm and director Rudolph Mate collaborated on four other films in the early '50s, including two Westerns and the film-noir crime drama Union Station. I wonder whether they and Pal had the same movie in mind when they started work on When Worlds Collide.
