Watch The Day the Sky Exploded For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This is significant as Italy's first science-fiction movie – two years after its first horror outing, Riccardo Freda's I VAMPIRI (1956); what connects these two films is the multi-faceted involvement behind the cameras of the late great Mario Bava. In fact, the latter was officially the film's cinematographer (curiously credited as Baja on the English titles!) but, as was his fashion, he helped out without credit in the special effects department and the direction as well – a fact also mentioned in Tim Lucas' Audio Commentary for the subsequently deleted Dark Sky DVD of Bava's KILL, BABY…KILL! (1966) and whose hearing prompted me to acquire this film sooner rather than later! Interestingly, the film's original Italian title LA MORTE VIENE DALLO SPAZIO translates to DEATH COMES FROM OUTER SPACE; this was picked up and slightly altered a few years later by another Spaghetti sci-fi entry i.e. Antonio Margheriti's LA MORTE VIENE DAL PIANETA AYTIN aka THE SNOW DEVILS (1967); besides, the film's English title was probably inspired by another contemporary sci-fi cheapie i.e. Fred F. Sears' THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED (1957)! The film under review emerges as a reasonably enjoyable and above-average entry but, probably stemming from a very limited budget, is bogged down by a talky script and much stock footage of rocket launchings and people rushing into underground shelters. The cast is also somewhat undernourished but does include Paul (Fritz Lang's Indian EPIC diptych [1958-59]) Hubschmid, Ivo (Bava's BLACK Sunday [1960]) Garrani and Giacomo (KILL, BABY…KILL!) Rossi Stuart essaying stock-types of lock-jawed astronaut, self-sacrificing professor and no-nonsense technician respectively. Equally predictable are the characters of the proud Russian expert, the astronaut's lonesome wife, the brainy female scientist, her lothario colleague and the crazed skeptic who reaches breaking-point as Armageddon looms. Nevertheless, despite – or, perhaps, because of – the lack of any really spectacular sequences (the rain of meteorites ostensibly about to annihilate mankind never pose that much of a threat since they are themselves destroyed just as they are entering the Earth's orbit!), one finds himself being charmed just the same by all these overly-familiar elements. Almost needless to say, hot on the heels of this movie came the Riccardo Freda/Mario Bava melange of sci-fi and monster movie – CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959) – which was an altogether livelier effort...

The movie isn't half bad as long as you don't get distracted by the lips not matching the words, and as long as you accept it as a Spaghetti Sci-Fi movie (like a Spaghetti western, except in outer space). It is par for the time, the late fifties, when sci-fi in black&white wasn't supposed to be Oscar material. I like the Russian character the most. On another aspect, the English dubbing is interesting. The voice of the astronaut, McLaren, is sooooo familiar. Can anyone figure out who it is? I've heard the voice many times, as you probably have. But just can't come up with the name. It will probably come to me in the middle of the night. I just hope I remember to write it down. I wish there was a way to make a contest out of this.

On the surface, this little End-of-the-World number doesn't seem to have much to offer a viewer accustomed to modern science fiction films with budgets that are bigger by several orders of magnitude and state of the art computer and modeling graphics to sell the story. There seem to be a grand total of maybe 5 actual sets built for the movie.Most of the action is carried by stock footage scenes which are in turn linked by endless chunks of expository dialog.Most of the "live" scenes that carry the action involve people shouting into microphones or typing furiously on the "calculators". The characters are pure cardboard and character development is strictly by rote.And the whole thing is filmed in black and white.On the other hand, if you view this 'naively', as if you hadn't already seen "Meteor", "Deep Impact", or "Armaggeddeon", it's possible to appreciate the abrupt change of the movie's story arc from "exciting space adventure" to "End of the World Suspense Thriller", as the seemingly happy escape of the astronaut from his malfunctioning "atomic rocket" leads to unexpected consequences. If you think about it, that was a pretty creative conception for the time. The Eurocentric aspect of the production also gives the movie a somewhat unusual feel, even if the romantic lead is supposed to be "American" (actually, he was Swiss!) Most of the actors are pretty good at fleshing out their cardboard characters (with one or two exceptions - for instance the little boy obviously had no idea of what he was doing).The direction is workmanlike, and much of the live cinematography is really pretty good - moody lighting, stark chiaroscuro outlines, good compositions, etc.And the editors do a much better job of integrating the stock footage into the movie than many other examples of the genre (say, the original "Invasion USA") - the movie doesn't feel nearly as disconnected and airless as it might have in less skillful hands. "The Day..." suffers a bit from a less-than-stellar dubbing into English - there are bits of awkward dialog and tin-eared readings that cost this movie at least one star in my judgment. But I've heard far worse, and the problems here aren't enough to ruin the movie watching.I saw this movie as part of the "Nightmare Worlds" 50 movie compilation, and I would say it is easily the best of the 10 movies I've found time to watch so far.

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.