The Earth Dies Screaming

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 would call "the earth dies screaming" rural sci-fi since everything happens in an English village or in the country.And short weight too,cause the running time barely exceeds one hour.It's a low budget effort but so was "invasion of the body snatchers" .Terence Fisher's work is not in its league,by a long shot ,but its ET robots (icily impersonal)are all the more impressive since we know absolutely nothing about them.Add a good cast ,with Dennis Price as the stand out. Combining robots with living dead in ordinary places in daylight was perhaps not a very good idea on the paper,but it relatively works.Not the kind of movie you feel like watching again,but you can have a look.

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.

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.

The first few minutes of "The Earth Dies Screaming" are very promising. There is an eerie silence showing how most of humanity has been wiped out, right at the beginning. (It also helps that the movie was shot in black and white - I find apocalypse movies that have been shot in black and white more effective than those shot in color.) As the characters are introduced, they are promised to be a colorful bunch.

But after this promising beginning, the movie starts to fall apart. We never learn why the invaders attacked Earth, nor do we learn much about them. In fact, the robots are treated very casually at times by the characters! In fact, the movie feels too casual elsewhere; although this is a '60s movie, it feels more like one of those innocent '50s sci-fi movies; there is a dated feel to this movie. The ending feels unfinished; since the movie runs only about an hour, surely they could have come up with a more concrete ending had they extended things.

It's not a TERRIBLE movie, but it's disappointing - you'll see the wasted potential.