Day the World Ended

Day the World Ended (1955)

ATTACKED... by a creature from hell!

After a nuclear attack, an unlikely group of survivors, including a geologist, a crook and his moll, and a prospector, find temporary shelter in the remote-valley home of a survivalist and his beautiful daughter, but soon have to deal with the spread of radioactivity - and its effects on animal life, including humans.

Date of release
1955-12-01
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (75)
Runtime
1h 19m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction
Director
Roger Corman

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $200K

Day the World Ended is a 1955 American independently made black-and-white post-apocalyptic science fiction film, produced and directed by Roger Corman, that stars Richard Denning, Lori Nelson, Adele Jergens, Paul Birch and Mike Connors. Chet Huntley of NBC, later of The Huntley-Brinkley Report, served as the film's narrator. It was released by American Releasing Corporation on December 8, 1955 as a double feature with The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues.

Production

Day the World Ended was announced in November 1954 as one of the initial releases of the newly formed American Releasing Corporation (ARC). It would be the second film made for ARC by Golden State Productions, after Apache Woman. James H. Nicholson of ARC came up with the title, then commissioned Lou Rusoff (Sam Arkoff's brother-in-law) to write a script. Alex Gordon later recalled:

To be on the safe side, Nicholson wanted Roger Corman to produce and direct. But he did throw me a bone as executive producer for Golden State Productions, because I was doing an awful lot on that picture. Not only did I get virtually the entire cast, except for Paul Birch, Jonathan Haze and Paul Dubov— Corman's regulars — but I also did any number of other things, down to being their office boy [laughs] and everything else! I figured I should ge…

Filming started on September 8, 1955, and lasted ten days, with a budget of $96,234.49.

Day the World Ended was the fourth feature directed by Corman, and his first in the science fiction/horror genre. Gordon said Corman tended not to direct actors at this stage of the career. "Lori Nelson particularly needed help [from a director]; she was used to getting it at Universal", said Gordon. "One day she was kind of saying, 'Gee, Roger won't tell me anything.

Effects creator Blaisdell made the monster costume from foam rubber, with claws from a magic shop, and toenails carved from white pine. Blaisdell himself played the role of the mutant. He purposely designed the costume to be very cramped inside, so that only a small man like himself could fit inside of it.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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