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Doomed Discussiethon: The Day the
Sky Exploded
The Day the Sky Exploded The plot: While on a space mission, scientist John McLaren (played by Paul Hubschmid), becomes disoriented and loses his nuclear powered engine. When he crash lands back on Earth, McLaren recovers quickly but is informed by his colleagues that his nuclear engine has exploded and is sending a cluster of deadly meteors hurtling towards the planet. Woops! Now it is up to McLaren and the scientific community to come up with a plan to stop the impending disaster which most likely will exterminate all life on Earth.
Richard: Since Nafa won the coin toss, I’m going to start the ball rolling on our first ever Doomed Discussiethon. After an abrupt start, The Day the Sky Exploded gets crazy dull for the first half. Mario Bava’s amazing camerawork helps things along but I was actually astonished by just how slow this beast takes to get cooking. Entertainment value in the early scenes depends entirely on bad dubbing, a mountain of pseudo-science, and lots of bleeps and blips from the nameless machines in the control room.
Nafa: Unfortunately, I did not watch this film in one sitting, so the amount of drag seemed to be in real time. Had I not known it was Mario Baja…erm…Bava doing the camera magic I still would have found it the most interesting bit. In a way the film felt sort of Tarantino-esque in the sense that the dull guff was just the tide going out before a fantastical, anarchic crescendo rushing back at once. I’m not sure if it was due to dubbing or what, but they repeated a whole bunch of lines for added (lack of) emphasis. There are two important parts to the beginning of this film—spinning newspaper headlines and the astroduder’s son’s beautiful speaking voice.
Richard: Oh yeah, I cheated on this one too. After the first 30 minutes or so, I had to pause the film and take a short nap. The generic newspapermen were hilarious to me for some reason. They were standing out in front of the place waiting for a story to break. Losers. Like they didn’t know that an American (played by a Swede) was going to get picked to fly the spaceship. USA! USA! Oh wait, McLaren is a wuss and totally blows the mission. Knowing that my son’s voice sounds like he has just driven a nail through his scrotum would make me fail in space too. Nafa, you know about space stuff, do rockets really go 28,000 kilometers per hour?
Nafa:
Well, the third stage, or S-IVB sequence, of the Saturn V (which was the
rocket model that propelled the Apollo program to the moon) did reach a top
velocity of just over 40,000 km/h (or about 11 km/s) in order to reach the
Apollo spacecraft a velocity close to the Earth’s escape velocity. The speed
that you quoted is closer to that of the S-II sequence , or second stage,
and would only burn for about 6 minutes to bring it close to orbital
velocity, but really not enough to break total gravitational
pull—essentially, it would fall back to Earth at that speed due mostly to
lack of fuel to propel the craft farther. Mind you, a working Saturn V
rocket was not put into use until 9 years after this film, so in that case
the rockets that were commonly dealt with at this time were little more than
V-2 modifications—the blunt-body heat shields weren’t even invented until
1958. As for the Soviet Vostok or Luna being an option, there were so many
failures covered up and secretive work by the Kremlin that such a broadcast
and open launch would be unfeasible. Back to speed comparisons, the modern
Space Shuttle does reach a top speed right around 28,000 km/h, but that’s
for the orbiter and not the external tank/solid rocket propulsion system
that is required to get the craft into orbit. So, to answer your question,
yes, rockets can go 28,000 km/h but not due to thrust and fuel but to the
lack of resistance in space.
Richard: On snap, I just
got schooled on spaceflight! Speaking of rockets launching, how about that
romance between scientist and smooth motherfucker Peter and fellow scientist
and cool beyatch Katie? Okay, it’s not really all that great but I did go to
sleep right after Geiger the dog refused to drink champaign. I woke up about
40 minutes later and caught this quote: “So we’ve launched a missile into
outer space loaded full of potential death.”
Richard: Spicy hams! Maybe that’s why all those animals are stampeding. Yes, we finally, got some stock footage in there. Yeah, Mary McLaren (played by Fiorella Mari) is a dang jerk. The only way to get her and their dopey overall-wearin’ child separated from John was to have her act like a total jackass. Look here woman, in 5 days, them there nuculer meteorites is comin’ to rain hell fire. We McLarens gotta stick together!
Nafa: I was avoiding the topic of stock footage, but since you brought it up - frickin’ wow. Just wow. Ed Wood would have been proud. Someone had access to a lot of footage of animals running. That same trick was used recently (with the same impact - hilarity) in 2012: Doomsday. At least at this point the film started to get some momentum. But that momentum is rolling backwards.
Richard: You are a brave man, my friend. 2012: Doomsday (read Nafa’s review here) would have destroyed me. I don’t have the right stuff. Around the 57 minute mark in The Day the Sky Exploded, all shit breaks loose as Earth expresses its displeasure at being pelted with radioactive meteors. The rest of the movie is equal parts hilarious and gorgeous. The plan to stop our destruction: throw some nuclear missiles at the problem. I love how the Russians were way more prepared than the US with their number of nuclear weapons eclipsing ours. Nafa, are you ready to tell us about Dr. Randowsky, the scientist who goes completely apeshit when the going gets tough?
Nafa: DR. RANDOWSKY IS THE GREATEST CHARACTER IN ALL OF MOVIEDOM. NO, HE’S THE GREATEST CHARACTERS IN ALL OF MOVIEDOM. I believe that the best way to describe the good doctor is that he was portrayed by a Jack-In-The-Box ready to spring at any second, but instead of a Jack it was part Jacko, part Ivan Drago, and part Danny Zucko. He’s Renfield and Eminem all in one. He makes the term ‘bat-shit crazy’ seem clinical. This guy makes me seriously happy. OK, I haven’t really said anything about what he does, but that about covers it.
Richard: Why have I been repressing Jacko all these years? The only thing this film does wrong in terms of Randowsky was not having him freak out every 5 minutes to make the film more exciting. His best line: “This is the end for all of us. We’ll all be annihilated! The judgment is leopard butt!” Okay, last sentence is mine because I seriously had no fucking clue what the hell he said. The dude goes crazy and tries to sabotage the air conditioner which the scientists need to keep running in order to launch the missiles that will destroy the hot meteorites of death.
The last 25 minutes of the movie are a reward for anyone who didn’t give up the ghost during the first two-thirds. The visual effects (probably handled by Bava himself) are stellar and the film’s finale is quite tense and gorgeous to behold. When the people start panicking and heading for the shelters, the dubbing staff had to make a handful of voices sound like hundreds so there are some hilarious moments if you listen closely. The best is the audio loop of a woman screaming “AH!” and then a few seconds later: “My baby!” which the idiots play over and over again during these intense moments.
Nafa: The visual effects are pretty stunning, especially considering when the film was made, but it is also very much aided by Bava’s camera work. Also of note, in the original language version of the film, the rocket crashes into the sun causing solar meteors to hurtle towards Earth, rather than the rocket exploding and knocking asteroids out of their path and heading to us. Those whacky Italians! And can I just point out that the ending of this film was pretty much remade in the 1979 Sean Connery classic Meteor? I guess the premise of ‘Let’s launch all the rockets in the world at a rock in space so that no one will have any missiles left to fight with down here’ is not a new one. Of course, my money is on the Norwegians having kept a rocket or two and now being the military power of the world. Alle prakten å Norge!!!
Richard:
Well, I’d have to say I’m torn on
The Day the Sky Exploded.
If you can make it through the first hour of the film (not very likely), the
last bit is pretty awesome and there are definitely some laughs
(unintentional, I think) along the way. While shopping for this classic, be
sure to find the copy with the wildly un-politically correct cover art
depicting New York in flames. Check out the director’s other and much more
entertaining
Werewolf
in a Girls’ Dormitory. Nafa, any final words?
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