Legendary B-movie pioneer Roger Corman made his sturdy directorial debut with this particularly prescient low-budget post-nuke end-of-the-world sci-fi survivalist item, a nifty little programmer which serves as an extremely basic, but still efficient exploitation cinema prototype for many similar features which followed in its influential wake.
A motley group of people -- a rugged, self-reliant scientist father (burly Paul Birch; the pernicious extraterrestrial in Corman's fantastic '57 knock-out "Not of This Earth") and his comely teenage daughter (the lovely Lori Nelson), a stalwart true blue heroic geologist (dashing Richard Denning), a vicious strictly looking out for himself mob hoodlum (a perfectly hateful turn by Michael "Touch" Connors) and his brazen dime-store floozy ex-stripper moll (superbly played to the bold'n'brassy hilt by bosomy blonde broad Adele Jergens), a sweet, boozy elderly gold prospector (amiably doddering Raymond Hatton) and his faithful burro companion, and a gradually going crazy scar-faced half-man, half-mutant fellow (a twitchy Jonathan Haze; the hilariously meek milquetoast protagonist in Corman's cheapskate black comedy horror gem "The Little Shop of Horrors") -- hole up in a remote mountainside bunker immediately after a nuclear war occurs. The eclectic bunch bicker and quarrel with one another over the ever-diminishing supply of limited resources while a huge, ugly, crusty-skinned mutant with telepathic powers, a carnivorous appetite for human flesh, three googly eyes, a gnarled head with horns on top, three-clawed fingers and toes, and a most unpleasant demeanor (50's monster movie make-up expert Paul Blaisdell in an outrageously funky and messed-up suit) stalks the surrounding woodland area with the intent of abducting the luscious, eminently nubile and thus desirable Lori.
Although by today's standards it comes across as really slow and talky, with very little action and a noted emphasis on the increasingly tense interplay between the desperate characters, "The Day the World Ended" all the same still makes for an engrossingly seedy and rough-edged nickel'n'dime doomsday romp. Corman's lean, no-frills straightforward direction treats Lou Rusoff's unusually thoughtful, literate and intelligent script like a tightly constructed acting ensemble piece, with the uniformly sound performances by the tiny, able cast creating a good deal of the film's grungy, cut-to-the-bone effective suspense and relentlessly bleak tone. Jock Feindel's grainy, unadorned black and white cinematography gives the flick a spare, cramped, uncomfortably claustrophobic look while Ronald Stein's eerie, understated, unobtrusive score makes especially unnerving use of the always spacey sounding theremin. The admittedly absurd-looking mutant beast detracts somewhat from the otherwise nicely maintained scruffy verisimilitude, but nonetheless makes for a very cool and suitably menacing monster. The film also deserves praise for its frank, level-headed depiction of how people would act in the event of such a cataclysmic disaster (some would rise nobly to the challenge while others would devolve into savage, greedy animals), the colorfully drawn characters, Corman's sharply observant, non-judgmental point of view, its atmospheric handling of the desolate, mist-shrouded forest location, and an ambiguously "happy" ending. Overall, this modest trend-setting outing rates as pretty solid, if scrappy two-cent fun.
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