When Worlds Collide (1951)

[Dave]

When Worlds Collide (1951) 82 Minutes.

http://uk.imdb.com/Title?0044207#comment

Another planet is found to be rushing towards Earth, but before impact a few people are able to escape on a spaceship via a lottery. Seventy minutes of inept talk followed by a (for its time) spectacular climax. In 50 years time we will laugh at 'Armageddon' and 'Deep Impact' the same way.

 

[ray gower]

Strikes me, we already laugh at Deep Impact and Armageddon and the celluloid hasn't had time to yellow with age yet!

Watched a recent rerun of this and to be honest it stands up well, as a story, in comparison to its younger siblings.

There is some classic B over acting occuring, but by and large there is more tension. And the punch up between respectable scientists for a place on the ship sums up mankind to a fault.

You can't ignore the final score either:-

Earth 0: Asteroid 1

No planetry happy ending here

 

[J-Sun]

Watched this last night. I can enjoy Flash Gordon special effects and I can enjoy Star Wars special effects. These somehow won an Oscar but just hit me wrong. Too near Flash Gordon without the charm. "Well, look at those miniatures get busted up. Hey, that's a pretty ugly painting standing in for a background." I also found the idea that the most important issue involved in the world ending was whether the vacuity would get the girl from the eunuch to be pretty pitiful. I know it's a Hollywood movie and that has to be there but it was almost the whole movie (aside from smashing models). *** non-surprising spoilers *** And, while other ships are mentioned, the impression is that this one ship is it and thank god we got rid of all the poor, uneducated, non-Christian, non-white, etc. folks. *** end non-surprising spoilers *** Also, the science was ridiculous even for the time and, again, the being a Hollywood movie. Other than having the lovely and talented Barbara Rush, it was inferior to Destination Moon in every way I can think of (including special effects) - and that came out a year earlier. It's also much more similar to War of the Worlds (which at least has the advantage of coming out a couple years later) but is also inferior to that.

That said, it's just ~80 minutes and isn't too painful in too many places to get through once. During the movie, the worst stuff is quickly replaced with new stuff so the pain doesn't linger and there's always the hope the movie will do something cool or say something important. It's only when it was over that I had to quit trying to make excuses and resign myself to the fact that it's a significant disappointment. I guess this is one "classic" where "you had to be there".

 

[JunkMonkey]

I watched it for the first time a couple of years ago and thought it stood up pretty well. (Mind you, I had watched Yor, the Hunter from the Future the night before so my critical faculties might have been slightly compromised.) 1951 was a good year for Biblically sub(or not so sub)-texted movies in that the overtly Christian The Day the Earth Stood Still came out the same year.

As for the special effects, When Worlds Collide won by default. Nothing else was nominated.

 

[J-Sun]

I watched it for the first time a couple of years ago and thought it stood up pretty well. (Mind you, I had watched Yor, the Hunter from the Future the night before so my critical faculties might have been slightly compromised.)

1951 was a good year for Biblically sub(or not so sub)-texted movies in that the overtly Christian The Day the Earth Stood Still came out the same year.

Yeah, calligraphied pages about Noah being flicked through as a sort of preface was definitely not so sub.

As for the special effects, When Worlds Collide won by default. Nothing else was nominated.

Ah. Now it all makes sense.

Well, then again, it still doesn't. The Day the Earth Stood Still isn't quite as cataclysmic, but has better effects and, as you remind me, came out the same year. (Better story, characters, acting, and everything else, as well.)

 

[steve12553]

Picked this up recently and found out my copy was a region 2 DVD. My daughter told me that for a limit number of times the drive in a computer could be changed to a different region. I watched it for the first time in many years and was pretty impressed with the film as a whole considering it's age. The special effects were very good for 1951. The rocket didn't bounce and tetter on strings or a stick. The flames of the exhaust pushed out from force rather than up from gravity. Nice attension to detail. Well worth my eight bucks.

 

[Metryq]

Picked this up recently and found out my copy was a region 2 DVD. My daughter told me that for a limit number of times the drive in a computer could be changed to a different region.

One can typically change the region five times. So be careful not to "lock yourself out." I'm not sure how the system works, but I think it is "hardwired" into the firmware of the DVD drive, although accessed by the OS (operating system). Under some of the older versions of Mac OS X, the region comparator appeared to be part of the DVD Player app and not the OS. If one bypassed DVD Player (by shutting off the auto-launch in the System Preferences) and used an alternative player, like VLC (VideoLAN Client), one could watch discs from any region without "switching" the setting on the disc drive.

The comparator now appears to be part of the OS itself, as the VLC trick no longer works.

Since the disc will mount, one could also use Handbrake or MakeMKV. I understand why region encoding was invented. But personally I think it's an over-the-top and unnecessarily anal "protection" feature.

(I've encountered foreign discs where the packaging claims the disc is Region 0, or "region-free," only to have the player tell me otherwise. Sillyness.)

I've been moving away from optical media for a long time. When Worlds Collide happens to be available in a file-based format on iTunes, and perhaps other places. Not every movie has been converted, so don't toss the DVD players yet. In fact, not everything has made it to DVD, either.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I'm still hanging on to my Betamax player.

I can't remember quite how I did it but I tweaked the DVD drive in my PC into thinking it was a region 0 machine. Like I have done for just about every DVD player I have ever owned. I have never had any trouble playing DVDs from any region in any machine I have done this too.

 

[Metryq]

There are many ways of bypassing the region coding for DVD drives in a computer—from new firmware to system extensions. It's been a long while since I went looking for such hacks because Handbrake or MakeMKV fill my needs better.

While there are some hacks of this type for "set-top" DVD players, they are only half the battle. Differing "world standards" (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) might trip one up. In other words, one still needs a multi-standard monitor, or a device to run a conversion. Since DVD drives in computers already have that "conversion" covered, the computer drives are easier to modify.

Now that video has gone digital in most places, the only thing that still rubs my fur the wrong way is interlacing. Once upon a time it was a solution to slower electronics, but it is a curse to visual effects artists.

 

[clovis-man]

Getting back to the movie:

One could do worse than to read the two novels on which the film was based:

When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer. Published in 1932 and 1933, they are surprisingly readable for their age.

And most importantly, you get to see what the refugees from Earth have to contend with after the last scene in the movie.