The Earth Dies Screaming

I taped The Earth Dies Screaming when Channel 4 screened it some years ago, but, unfortunately I never saw the last five or 10 minutes as the tape ran out. It hasn't been on again since nor has it been released on VHS or DVD.

Aliens have invaded the UK and killer robots are reviving dead humans as zombies and the few survivors have to try and stop them.

The thing I remember most about this movie are the scenes of the robots slowly walking through the rural village. Very eerie.

The cast includes Willard Parker, Dennis Price, Virginia Field and Hammer and sci-fi regular Thorley Walters (Frankenstein Created Woman, The People That Time Forgot).

It would be nice to see The Earth Dies Screraming again, especially the ending. Come on Channel 4 or any other channel, let's have it on again.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

The lurid title is misleading, since a sleepy little village simply gets sleepier in this quickie retread of 'Village of the Damned' and 'The Day of the Triffids' which strikingly anticipates 'The Night of the Living Dead' with added robots.

Like Romero's later classic a small group of people take cover in a quiet rural area (here played by the village of Shere in Surrey) which provides an incongruously picturesque backdrop to an infestation of zombies; and like the later film is cleanly shot in black & white and with an atmospher scored by the celebrated composer Elizabeth Lutyens.

This is a great movie. I stumbled upon it in my quest to see all of the "1950's SciFi" movies. I was also drawn to it since the great Terence Fisher directed it.

The plot about a group of people trying to come to terms with an alien invasion has been done before and done since however for what ever reason this film just plays out fantastically well.

Certainly its no better or worse than many other films in the genre, but during the 60 odd minutes that it unspools it holds with rapt attention, something that many other supposedly better films fail to do.

I know that once seen it may fall from memory but while it may not remain foremost in your brain it will forever spring up when you see the title with a "Hey that was a really good film".

If you can see it, preferably late at night with all of the lights off.

Damn, you simply have got to love these glorious paranoiac Sci-Fi/horror productions of the 60's. Not only because they have the most appealing sounding titles in cinema, but also because they don't ever waste a single moment of playtime and come straight to the confronting point. "The Earth Dies Screaming" opens with a frightening series of disastrous accidents, like a train crash, multiple car crashes, a plane crash and ordinary people dropping dead in the streets. I know we have seen this before in other movies (like "Day of the Triffids" or "Village of the Damned"), but it remains thrilling to observe. Hundreds, thousands, millions of casualties and not a single word of dialog has even been spoken yet! I realize it's an often abused expression but … they really don't make movies like these anymore nowadays! On with the story, a small group of survivors painfully come to realize alien robots targeted the entire earth's population for extermination, and nearly succeeded as well. The menace of prowling aliens is constant and needless to say the stressful situation also causes conflicts and hatred between the few remaining survivors. The concept loses quite a bit of its fantastic impact once the enemy has been identified and declared invincible, but the escalating interactions between the protagonists sustain the tension more than enough to keep you close to the screen. The always-reliable director Terence Fisher adds even more flair to an already astonishing film and never once loses his grip on the subject matter. "The Earth Dies Screaming" isn't the most startling Sci-Fi slash Horror highlight of that period, but it's undoubtedly a masterful achievement and one of the films that helped to define a cinematic era.

I watched this movie late on cable and enjoyed every minute. It had all the ingredients of a classic B Movie. Aliens,Zombies,Quaint english village,Survivors of an environmental disaster,Hapless females,and dodgy acting. You have to love the old B Movies to really enjoy this film.