WHEN WORLDS
COLLIDE

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE - 1951 USA Release: Nov. 15, 1951 Paramount Rating: USA: N/A

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE begins with a lot of biblical nonsense.

Now perhaps you read that and you are totally down with the bible.

Nonsense indeed!

But in this movie, they graft the biblical passage from Noah of God's displeasure with man's wickedness. Only instead of the flood, God sends a solar system to wipe out the earth.

This is the nonsense that begins WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, complete with a heavenly chorus while it is read to you.

Blech!

Anywho, then the movie begins.

Dr. Emory Bronson (Hayden Rourke: PROJECT MOONBASE, THE NIGHT WALKER, THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN, - he's Dr. Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie!) of the Mount Kenna observatory1 in South Africa has made a grave discovery. One so crushing that he wants his calculations independently confirmed. He doesn't want to be right. He hopes he's made a huge mistake.

Dr. Bronson needs a no-nonsense pilot who will deliver packages without asking questions. But time is of the essence so what he gets is David Randall (Richard Derr: LIGHTS OUT [TV], TERROR IS A MAN, THE DROWNING POOL). When we first see David, is packed tight as sardines with a lovely female passenger. The two make-out as he flies the aircraft. It's strongly implied that they somehow joined the mile-high club in such close quarters, and wasted two hours of Dr. Bronson's time after landing.

David finally gets to the observatory where he's given his job and half his money up-front. Dr. Bronson strongly implies that money may be worthless soon.

David is flying to the U.S., handcuffed to a locked box that he must deliver to the famous astronomer, Dr. Cole Hendron of the Cosmos Observatory in New York. A telegram from a newspaper is offering him (in today's money), over $50,000 to reveal what is in the locked box. As an aside, the stewardess is ready to abandon her job and throw herself into his lap, damn the witnesses.

Apparently David is an irresistible stud muffin, though you wouldn't know it to look at or listen to him.

As David waits in customs, a man approaches him. Verifying David through his passport, they breeze him through customs and into a waiting car where he sits right up against Joyce Hendron (Barbara Rush: IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, STRATEGY OF TERROR, THE EYES OF CHARLES SAND, MOON OF THE WOLF, WEB OF DECEIT), Dr. Hendron's daughter. She takes a mild shine to him and, thinking David is in on the secret, unnerves him with her conversation when she says that if what's in his case is correct, she doesn't have the courage to face the end of the world.

When they arrive at the observatory, David meets Joyce's fiance, Dr. Tony Drake (Peter Hanson: SCIENCE FICTION THEATER [TV 1955-1957], DRAGONFLY). So now you know where all that's going.

David plays it coy like he and Dr. Bronson have no secrets from each other, so Dr. Cole Hendron (Larry Keating) let's him in on the secret. He opens the lock box and hands the research papers to his daughter for analysis through their version of a computer. The DA (Differential Analyzer) machine is analog and reminiscent of a complicated game of Foosball. Together with his associate, Dr. Frye (Stephen Chase: THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN, GREEN EYES, THE SPIDER RETURNS, THE BLOB [1958]), Hendron goes over the photographic plates in detail.

Unfortunately, Dr. Bronson's research is not in error. In 8 months, the world will end.

How it will end is so preposterous that it calls for a

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
Unlike the 1933 novel, where two worlds really do collide, we have an entire alien solar system zipping through our solar system and headed for earth. Dr. Hendron describes how the "rogue" star Bellus, which is 3 billion miles away, is traveling toward us at at about a million miles every two weeks and will enter our solar system in six months.

WRONG!

Why Wrong? Wouldn't you like to know?

Damn Straight, you would!

Continued at THE SCIENCE MOMENT/When Worlds Collide.

At a UN conference, things go badly for Dr. Bronson, Hendron, and Frye when they announce their predictions of the oncoming solar system of Zyra and its Gigantic star, Bellus. They already knew that their colleagues ridiculed their findings, but at the UN meeting World leaders impugn their research, laugh at their concept of saving a few humans in rocketship "Noah's arks", and fellow astronomers go so far as to call them "Crackpots".

A talk to Congress fares no better.

Among Hendron's inner circle are two mega-wealthy industrialists who fully believe their guy and are willing to give whatever it takes to make this Rocketship lifeboat for humanity a reality. Unfortunately they only have eight months and their combined money and resources won't quite get them there.

That's where a third billionaire, the wheelchair bound Sydney Stanton (played by former stand-up comic and perennial bad guy, John Hoyt: TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, THE BLACK CASTLE, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, THE GLASS CAGE, THE TIME TRAVELERS, THE OUTER LIMITS [TV], TWO ON A GUILLOTINE, FLESH GORDON) enters the picture.

If the scientists want his money then he gets to be on that rocketship. Sydney is the Hollywood archetype of an evil American capitalist confined to a wheelchair (It's A Wonderful Life, all the way through to The Big Lebowski, with lots of stops before, through, and since. Hollywood Evil capitalists are often wealthy and crippled, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, see? Nyah! See?).

What's more, if they want his money, Sydney also wants guarantees, see?

"No guarantees," Hendron and Frye tell him. Everything is theoretical at best and there's no time for further study. Zyra is our only hope as there are no other planets to choose from.

Backing down, Stanton then smiles evilly and says that only he gets to choose who will be the 40 on the rocket.

Hendron stands his ground and tells Stanton that this is not a cruise ship and that it will need engineers, agriculturists, seeds, and animals, not tourists.

Forced to back down again, Stanton tries to negotiate for choosing half the passengers. Hendron cuts to the chase. "Your money buys you a ticket on this ship. Nothing more." After all, Hendron and Frye are choosing for the good of humanity. Only those who stand the best chance of pioneering an alien planet and reproducing humanity deserve a place on the ship. Every ounce of weight is in opposition to how much fuel the rocket will need to use.

Frustrated but having no other options, Stanton tells them they will have their money.

The 1933 novel, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE is available to read online for free at
BooksVooks.

The rest of the movie plays out like an old 1950s newsreel with human drama coming from the love triangle of David, Joyce, and Tony;
the cloy second act addition of the two - too young to die, we HAVE to let them onboard! - young lovers: Julie Cummings (Rachel Ames: SCIENCE FICTION THEATER [TV 1955 -1957) and Eddie Garson (James Congdon: THE 4D MAN, GARDEN OF DEATH, SOMEWHERE TOMORROW);
plus the schmaltzy third act addition of a - too young to die, we HAVE to let him onboard! - little boy;
and HIS last minute Oh, Bloody Hell! addition of finding a stray dog on the premises. We HAVE to let the dog on the ship!

Whatever confluence of events that happened to Producer George Pal that changed his budget from what he expected to what Paramount finally released, director Rudolph Maté didn't let him down. With what must have seemed like diminishing resources with every day, and in post production with nearly a year involved in special effects, having to make do with less and less, Rudy turned in the best picture that he or possibly anyone could make under such circumstances.

I say this because there are moments when the SFX is outstanding (it won an Oscar for Best Special Effects) and when it is an embarrassing obvious painting. You'll know when you see it.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE was not the hit that George Pal had hoped for. The fact that, even in 1951, the Horrors of what Socialist NAZIS visited upon humanity in the concentration camps were fully revealed to a, largely stunned world, in 1946. The knowledge that Communist USSR, via Stalin, had committed multiple genocides of "undesirables" (numbering in the multi-millions) since the 1930s, gave Eleanor Roosevelt the cache to push the humanitarian 19th Century concept of America as a "Melting pot" to all who would listen, earning herself an admiration that would endure long after her death and outshine her president husband. Yet this movie shows the good guy humanitarians rescuing only white people. There's not even so much as a single racial Token.

We've gotta get these white folks to safety!

Perhaps I'm reading too much into its performance in its era, but there's no disregarding its legacy or the fact that the hero is a white red-head from South Africa when that nation was only a few years into its brutal Apartheid period, and the world audience back then largely knew that.

This is one of the movies Richard Pryor would decry (along with LOGAN'S RUN) for white people having no black people in the future.

In short, it hasn't aged well and that's when I usually add at the end, This movie is Ripe for Remake.

However, if you are a fan of movies like Michael Bay's ARMAGEDDON or Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown's DEEP IMPACT, know that the producers of those movies all admit that they were heavily influenced by producer George Pal's WHEN WORLD'S COLLIDE. So it's already remade at least twice.

3 Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

GET SOME CLOTHES ON
25 Years Spreading the Love of Horror Thriller! T-Shirt by FeoAmante	Feo Amante is not Cute T-Shirt by FeoAmante

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY (Sub-Section: ALIENS STARTED IT!)
ALTERED MOVIE REVIEW	ATTACK THE BLOCK MOVIE REVIEW	THE OBJECTIVE MOVIE REVIEW

Return to Movies