I was a bit of a bookworm growing up. Oh sure I played outside and excelled at sports and was an all around active lad who spent hours outside on any average day, but I loved me some books. You see, I was the kind of 8 year old boy who found the idea of reading an Encyclopedia to be just as exciting and fun as watching your average Transformers episode. But since we didn’t have cable I spent far more time reading then I did watching the heroic Autobots defeating the evil Decepticons.
It didn’t take me long to discover I loved science, all shapes and sizes of science. I started reading books on homemade experiments one could try. I took computer classes and self-taught myself BASIC so I could write my own computer games. I used my microscope and a neighbors stagnant pond as an excuse to introduce myself to the wonderful universe populated with paramecium and amoebas. My mother even tells a tale of my exploits during a family vacation to The Smithsonian. It seems I happened to explain to my older sister why a Blue Whale was also a baleen whale. I was six years old at the time of this incident.
So I feel quit comfortable in saying I was a science nerd several years before I inevitably became a comic book nerd, and this was a good solid decade before I began to show the first flashes of becoming a film nerd. And since science has played such a large role in my life I tend to get a little protective of it when people/media/Republicans abuse, mistreat or manipulate it for their own means. Too often science isn’t shown in a very popular light in Pop Culture, and it seems in this particular country that the average person has become rather distrusting of science. Which sucks.
Over the years I’ve come to really appreciate any films that treat science in an honest and respectful manner. Sure I can laugh at and enjoy the massive amounts of films built around wholly unrealistic or impossible scientific principles as major plot points, but it is a rare treat when a film attempts to deliver a sophisticated scientific viewpoint that is actually based in reality. Suffice it to say, when I watched The Day the Earth Caught Fire I was quietly confidant that it wouldn’t be such a film.
But I must admit I had heard that The Day the Earth Caught Fire was not your typical science fiction disaster film, and it actually is viewed with a great deal of respect as a work of speculative fiction. The film strays from the 1950′s science fiction styled giant crab monsters and other monstrous atrocities and instead chooses for a newsroom style drama centered around investigative journalism.
The film initially focuses on Peter Stenning (Edward Judd), a former star reporter for the Daily Express who is struggling with depression and alcoholism due to his recent divorce, who is given the minor task of following up a tip on sunspot activity and its relation to the recent flooding occurring in England. But while researching this relative puff piece he discovers that the men he is interviewing are acting remarkably defensive about a relatively insignificant interview. From this seemingly innocuous event Stenning starts to dig deeper into just how this strange sunspot activity might be tied to the recent nuclear testing by the United States and the Soviet Union and the polar caps.
Short on thrills but heavy on fast, sharp dialogue and drama The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a bit of an enigma. It is a deliberately paced film that spends much of the first two acts ushering the viewers through a slow trickle of facts as the reporters struggle to figure out just what the story is they have laying before them. It keeps its politics safely semi-concealed in the background, and chooses instead to focus on the characters trying to solve the factual riddle. Stenning is a particularly well developed and fascinating character, as at the start of the film he is wallowing in grain alcohol and lamenting how his ex-wife is choosing to raise their son with a nanny and sending him to prep schools. He had lost his way and was preparing to leave his job before they could fire him, but the discovery of an important story helps him snap out of his seemingly inescapable funk. And once his passion for a story returns he soon begins to pursue other aspects of life as well, turning his characters into an amalgamation of Sam Spade and Ash Williams, Stenning is one heck of a character.
Not to be outdone, Leo McKern (The Prisoner) does an outstanding job as Bill Maguire, the Bernstein to Stenning’s Woodward. Maguire is the type of man who protects Stenning by turning in stories under Stenning’s name when Stenning’s boozing prevents him from contributing. And while Stenning is the charismatic investigator, Maguire is the one who sits behind the desk and keeps putting the pieces together and provides the shocking conclusion on the disastrous effects of simultaneous nuclear detonation. Janet Munro (Swiss Family Robinson) also does an excellent job as the Stenning’s initial lead but who develops into a romantic foil who helps Stenning rediscover himself. She also has the distinct pleasure of delivering the best line in the film (“Come and get it, idiot.”) in a perfectly matter of fact delivery that is positively priceless.
But the true genius of the film is in the fantastic direction by Val Guest. Long known for his serious and grounded films, Guest put Hammer films on the horror map with The Quartermass Xperiment and Quartermass 2. And while Guest was known to thrive on low budget science fiction films, he really outdoes himself with The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Using long takes and layered dialogue, later to be co-opted by the great Robert Altman, Guest has produced a fascinating film that transcends its minuscule budget to reveal a powerful drama that just so happens to revolve around a fantastic plot point.
Remarkably, and in spite of any of my initial beliefs, The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a great little genre film, primarily due to its mixing of genres far before it became a popular thing to do. But the film does have its issues. The third act tends to get overly dramatic during the riots that almost seem added simply to have at least one action set piece. And thanks to some studio intervention, the original cliffhanger ending was tweaked to add a subtle hint of a resolution that, unfortunately, weakens the film far more then would expect. But these faults are not great enough to take away from what is otherwise an impressive film. A film that is far greater then the sum of its perceived insignificant parts.
