THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE [1961 / 2014] [Blu-ray] [UK Release] The INCREDIBLE becomes Real! The IMPOSSIBLE becomes Fact! The UNBELIEVABLE becomes True!
‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ [1961] A film by director Val Guest. Newly remastered by the BFI National Archive and available on Blu-ray for the very first time, this is the definitive version of veteran filmmaker Val Guest [‘The Quatermass Xperiment’] of this classic British science fiction thriller. When the USA and Russia simultaneously test atomic bombs, the Earth is knocked off its axis and set on a collision course with the sun. As the planet inexorably heats up and society slowly breaks down, Peter Stenning [Edward Judd], a washed-up Daily Express reporter, breaks the story and sets about investigating the government cover-up.
This scorching vision of end-of-days of London and was made at a time when the nuclear threat of the Cold War loomed large. ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE [1961’ is an expertly crafted sci-fi film that boasts a BAFTA® Award winning screenplay, gritty characters and a vision of end-of-days London that really burns. Also starring Leo McKern [Rumpole of the Bailey] and Janet Munro, plus real life reporter Bernard Braden and one-time Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen.
FILM FACT No.1: Awards and Nominations: 1962 BAFTA Awards: Win: BAFTA Film Award for Best British Screenplay for Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz. 1963 Hugo Awards: Nominated: Best Dramatic Presentation for Val Guest (written/director) and Wolf Mankowitz (written).
FILM FACT No.2: The film was shot in London and South East England. Principal photography included Fleet Street (the Daily Express building), Battersea Park, the HM Treasury Building in Westminster and on Palace Pier, Brighton. They used matte painting to create images of abandoned cities and desolate landscapes. The production also featured the real Daily Express, even using the paper's own headquarters, the Daily Express Building in Fleet Street, London. The film was made in black and white but in some original prints, the opening and closing sequences are tinted orange-yellow to suggest the heat of the sun. It was shot with 35 mm anamorphic lenses using the French Dyaliscope process. Three years before ‘ZULU,’ a then-unknown Michael Caine played an uncredited police officer diverting traffic. The film concludes ambiguously with the sound of pealing church bells. The audience is left to decide whether this heralds a new beginning for mankind or its doom.
Cast: Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Edward Judd, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Gene Anderson, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen, Jane Aird (uncredited), Avril Angers (uncredited), John Barron (uncredited), Timothy Bateson (uncredited), Peter Blythe (uncredited), Wallace Bosco (uncredited), Robin Burns (uncredited), Peter Butterworth (uncredited), Michael Caine (uncredited), Norman Chappell (uncredited), Geoffrey Chater (uncredited), Harold Coyne (uncredited), Maxwell Craig (uncredited), George Curtis (uncredited), John Dearth (uncredited), Ian Ellis (uncredited), Peter Evans (uncredited), Pamela Green (uncredited), Verina Greenlaw (uncredited), Aidan Harrington (uncredited), Robin Hawdon (uncredited), Fred Johnson (uncredited), Gerry Judge (uncredited), Juba Kennerley (uncredited), Aileen Lewis (uncredited), Leonard Llewellyn (uncredited), Reginald Marsh (uncredited), Jim McManus (uncredited), Carmel McSharry (uncredited), George Merritt (uncredited), Charles Morgan (uncredited), Jim O'Brady (uncredited), Cecil Paul (uncredited), Lisa Peake (uncredited), Charles Price (uncredited), John Rae (uncredited), Edith Raye (uncredited), Bill Rayment (uncredited), Jeff Shane (uncredited), Jeff Silk (uncredited), Graham Skidmore (uncredited), Terence Soall (uncredited), Guy Standeven (uncredited), Marianne Stone (uncredited), John Tatum (uncredited), Austin Trevor (uncredited), Edward Underdown (uncredited), Joe Wadham (uncredited) and Terry Walsh (uncredited)
Director: Val Guest
Producers: F. Sherwin Green and Val Guest
Screenplay: Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz
Composer: Stanley Black (uncredited)
Cinematography: Harry Waxman, B.S.C. (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p (Black-and-White, with tinting)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audio: English: 1.0 LPCM Mono Audio
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English SDH
Running Time: 100 minutes
Region: Region B/2
Number of discs: 1
Studio: British Lion Films / BFI [British Film Institute]
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: Despite its come-on title, ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ is a very intelligent, disturbing piece of speculative fiction. Through the eyes of British reporter Peter Stenning [Edward Judd], we learn that both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have simultaneously set off nuclear explosions to test their efficiency. The twin blasts have caused the Earth to go off its axis. The result is a disastrous upheaval in the balance of nature; floods and fires being the principal plagues. With the end of the world staring everyone in the face, chaos reigns. The only hope lies in another massive nuclear explosion, which will hopefully rebalance the Earth. The film ends ambiguously, with viewers allowed to decide for themselves whether or not the world has been saved. In the original prints of ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ the opening and closing reels were tinted yellow, representing the scorching heat beating down on the frightened populace.
With cover-ups and global destruction, that is revealed by Fleet Street's finest hacks. Now digitally restored version of 1961's ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ featuring the actual Daily Express building at the time of the film, and with an editor and a fictionalised top reporter, is set to thrill once more. This is all-time great London film; ‘‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ and sets the stage for the end of the world in real-life locations around the capital. While Val Guest’s film may have concerned nuclear testing knocking the Earth off its axis and causing the planet’s climate zones to become displaced, cue tropical storms in London and the River Thames drying up. Director Val Guest was nevertheless determined to present ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ in as realistic a style as possible. “I tried very hard to make it as ‘documentary’ as possible. I wanted it to be so authentic,” he later declared.
Val Guest began his film career in the 1930s writing scripts for the great Will Hay, and made his last film as writer-director reworking one of them as ‘The Boys in Blue’ [1982]. In between, he was a prolific journeyman, a handful of whose genre films are worthy of revival, most notably the Hammer Films production, and of course ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ which achieve a certain authenticity through being shot in striking black-and-white CinemaScope on location in respectively Manchester, London and Bath.
‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ is one of British cinema’s liveliest nuclear angst pictures, which unfolds in flashback from a world filmed through a golden filter to suggest it’s about to ignite. This terminal crisis results from our planet being put out of kilter by simultaneous H-bomb tests on both sides of the iron curtain. The film is both an engaging period piece, because it views the grim news from the Fleet Street office of the Daily Express, where the hacks bash away at manual typewriters, and is very topical and ahead of its time, because it anticipates global warming.
Although ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ was released in 1961, the story was first conceived by director Val Guest in 1954, two years after Britain detonated its first nuclear device. He wrote an initial screenplay, which, in spite of Val Guest's established reputation thanks to films such as ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’ [1955] and ‘The Abominable Snowman’ [1957], and was rejected by several studios before finally being accepted by British Lion.
This BAFTA® Award winning film, is an apocalyptic science fiction film showing the world overheating and society thrown into turmoil is about to be released. But this is no modern commentary on global warming and war. ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ a pioneering production and scathing indictment on Cold War posturing, has been rescued from the archives and digitally restored for public release.
The script casts journalists from the Daily Express are in a battle to save the earth after the United States and the Soviet Union detonate nuclear explosions that knock the earth off its axis and onto a trajectory towards the sun. "This is more than a great sci-fi film, it is an historical document," says James Blackford of the British Film Institute. "It is a classic that remains relevant today because of increasingly ferocious weather conditions and global unrest. The Daily Express is absolutely essential to the film. There is a vivid depiction of journalism of that era. Full of dynamism and buzz."
Scenes were filmed in the newsroom of the Daily Express's art deco building in Fleet Street and a replica of the office was built at the Shepperton Studios. It was a golden age for newspapers with 16 million copies sold daily and the Daily Express leading the pack with a 4.3 million circulation and the film touched a global nerve. Even President John F. Kennedy ordered a copy of the film ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’and the President screened it to 200 foreign correspondents at The White House.
The script, with its crackling dialogue, was devised by director Val Guest and with also screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz who used the Daily Express to provide a documentary edge to their nightmarish vision. They even hired legendary Daily Express editor Arthur Christiansen, who had recently retired after 24 years in the hot seat, to play the fictional Editor boss Jeff Jefferson. "He was a big public figure and the Daily Express is central to the plot," adds James Blackford, producer for the Blu-ray versions. The journalists are the heroes. Intelligent and fast-thinking guys who keep the film moving at an incredible pace."
Their fictional task is to investigate weather phenomena, such as flooding in the Sahara Desert, unseasonable blizzards in New York and temperatures so high in England that the River Thames is reduced to rivulets flanked by cracked mud flats. Drink-ravaged reporter Peter Stenning, played by Edward Judd, is struggling with a bitter divorce and ebbing career when he begins a romance with a secretary at the government's meteorological centre and discovers a cover-up.
Working with tough science correspondent Bill Maguire [Leo McKern] he sobers up and digs deep to learn that the superpowers had unwittingly set off simultaneous nuclear explosions at the North and South Poles to spark global warming and chaos. The Express journalists are plunged into a hectic quest for a solution as Great Britain succumbs to a terrifying drought and riots rage over water shortages.
‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’was a critical success but slipped into the archives and was gathering dust as a 35mm film print until the BFI launched a programme to bring classic British films to the public. A team of 15 experts worked for four months to create a digital version from the original, passing it through a solvent to fill in scratches and replacing missing or damaged frames. "It involved a lot of care and the great joy is that we have brought it back to life for a new generation to see," said Kieron Webb, the BFI [British Film Institute] film conservation manager. "The production was really clever, blending stock photographs with background artwork so the heat mists rising over the Thames looked realistic. It was shot in black and white with the start and end given an orange tinge to represent the heat.
THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE MUSIC TRACK LIST
Light Cavalry Overture (uncredited) (Written by Franz von Suppé)
CAMPTOWN RACES (uncredited) (Composed by Stephen Foster)
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Blu-ray Image Quality – This brand new 4K transfer by the BFI National Archive and looks totally brilliant. The most notable difference from the older inferior 480i DVD release is the reddish-orange-ness of the DVD presentation, compared to the burnt-yellow of the new 1080p Blu-ray transfer presentation. The tint of the opening and ending shots were originally shot in Black-and-White and later tinted with the restorers finding the original gels. The 1080p HD presentation and is now a much more realistic authentic look like the original theatrical release, and now looking totally brilliant even more, in showing more depth with a crisper appearance with more layered contrast. It appears to show a shade more information in the frame at the top than the single-layered, original Region 2 PAL DVD of 2009. The restoration has produced a very clean image, dual-layered with a maxed out bitrate that looks far superior in-motion than previous digital offerings. There are optional English SDH subtitles, in a white font. Please Note: Playback Region B/2: This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Learn more about Blu-ray region specifications.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – The audio is transferred via a 1.0 linear PCM channel, flat, mono track. It is also benefitting from the composer Stanley Black's brilliant music score throughout the film which is often a very intense score balanced nicely between resigned emptiness and catastrophic drama. The brief Beatnik music was composed by Monty Norman!
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Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Brand New 4K transfer by the BFI National Archive
Audio Commentary with Val Guest and Ted Newsom: This is originally from the USA Anchor Bay 2001 DVD release and it is still of great value today. Ted Newsom makes a good interviewer and Val Guest a knowledgeable and interesting raconteur. There are a few odd things in it. Both men spend a great deal of time discussing the most fleeting of mirrored appearances of Janet Munro's right breast. Yes, it's in the context of censorship and how it works differently in the UK than in the USA. Ted Newsom says, "And that is as naked as she's going to get," with a faint whiff of disappointment. Ted Newson often asks Val Guest to explain certain terms, terms that anyone from the UK would know so it's obvious that this is an American effort and bravo for making it. On a few occasions Val Guest insists that certain scenes were shot on location but outside Battersea Park, it's very obvious that it's a set. There are small giveaway black lines around some of the extras as they wait in a water line, the give-away for a process shot with a shot with the background added optically later on. It's a good, solid commentary with a few eyebrow raises and despite the inevitable repetition; but despite this, it is a really fascinating audio commentary.
Special Feature: John Kelly New Filmed Documentary: Hot Off the Press: Revisiting The Day the Earth Caught Fire [2014] [1080p] [1.78:1] [32:20] This is a newly-created documentary with contributions from Kim Newman, Marcus Hearn and BFI Archive curators John Oliver and Jo Botting. This was also very nice to see Kim Newman who really knows his stuff. It's also really enlightening to see some of the mechanics necessary to rescue these fragile prints. I'm a big fan of what goes behind in recuing past celluloid films and it still astonishes me how much detail could be captured on a conventional film. In fact I'd like to see a much fuller documentary on the actual restoration process itself. This is really very interesting and not to be missed. Narrated by Philip Kelly. Produced and Directed by John Kelly. Music by Paul Smith.
Special Feature: An Interview with Leo McKern with Paul Venezis [2001] [480i] [1.37:1] [10:00] Sadly at the time of filming this interview, Leo McKern, he was not looking in the best of health, but despite this, Leo McKern recounts his memories both discrete and indiscrete, and revisits the film’s original Fleet Street locations, of his five-weeks on shooting ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE.’ It's an entertaining romp through a professional actor's memory and there doesn't seem to be too much wrong with his version of events talking about the actual experience of shooting the film ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE.’ One fascinating fact we are informed about is that Leo McKern could read his lines in the make-up chair on the day's filming and be word perfect and his co-players' lines and something the other actors hated him for. Directed by Paul Vanezis.
Special Feature: The Day the Earth Caught Fire: An Audio Appreciation by Graeme Hobbs [Audio only] [2014] [1080p] [1.78:1] [9:00] Here we have a good but sadly short special feature making a few points that is not covered by the main documentary. We get a plethora of core number of facts trotted out about any subject, any film, and any film star and tended to be repeated quite a lot, so when we get some new information facts usually presented from that reviewer's perspective, it is much more interesting. This audio appreciation of ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ by the journalist and critic Graeme Hobbs, and was originally produced for Moviemail UK, and appears here in a newly recorded form.
Original Theatrical Trailer [1961] [1080p] [1.78:1] [2:38] Here we get a lot of voice overs of re-wording of certain words by the censors, but despite this, this is a very solid trailer of its time. This has been newly transferred in High definition from original film elements held at Pinewood Studios.
TV Spots [1961] [1080p] [1.78:1] [1:00] [0:23] [0:10] [0:22] The film announcer informs us that this is "The most provocative film in years!" and sounded like it was recorded in an echo chamber. Some of the TV spots are tinted and some have editorial slip ups and there is a frame or two of the next shot at an edit stage which clearly does not belong there. This has been newly transferred in High definition from original film elements held at Pinewood Studios.
Radio Spots [1961] [1080p] [1.78:1] [1:00] [0:30] [0:30] [0:20] Here with the audio adverts, they declare "See The Day The Earth Caught Fire!" "What would you do if you only had four months to live?" It is a very genuine British style type of advert of its time, but curiously effective radio advertisement for the film as well.
Special Feature: Stills and Collections Gallery [2014] [1080p] [1.78:1] [7:00] This newly edited gallery presents in Black-and-White and Colour original production stills, press materials and other ephemera relating to the film ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ and drawn from the BFI [British Film Institute] own archival holdings and also Marcus Hearn’s private collection.
Special Feature: The Guardian Lecture: Val Guest and Yolande Dolan interviewed by David Meeker [1998] [480i] [1.37:1] [63:00] This newly edited on-stage interview with Val Guest and his wife, actress Yolande Dolan, and was filmed at the National Film Theatre in London on the 6th July, 1998. The interview spans much of Val Guest’s career, from his early comedies at the Gainsborough Studios, through to his later work at Hammer Films productions. Over the course of the interview excerpts are shown from Val Guest’s films, such as ‘Oh Mr. Porter!’ [1937]; ‘Mister Drake’s Duck’ [1951] and ‘Expresso Bongo’ [1959].
Special Feature: Operation Hurricane [1952] [480i] [1.37:1] [33:00] This first documentary is of a trio of curious documentaries on nuclear films! ‘Operation Hurricane’ is an ideal companion piece to ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ in that it documents a real-world example of the type of foolhardy superpower-sanctioned nuclear testing that knocks the earth off its axis, like in the Val Guest’s classic sci-fi film. ‘Operation Hurricane’ serves as a rather jaw-dropping reminder that there was time not so long ago when it was seen as an “achievement of British science and industry” for the country’s finest minds and technicians to travel to some far-flung tropical island and wilfully obliterate and contaminate with nuclear force. Made nearly 10 years later, ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ reflects the Great British public’s growing axiety that those with their finger on the button could perhaps not be trusted with such an awesome responsibility. Narrated by Chester Wilmot. Directed by Ronald Stark. Music by John Addison. Cinematography by Bill Freeman and Teddy Catford.
Special Feature: The H-bomb [1956] [480i] [1.37:1] [21:00] This second documentary, shot in Black-and-White and sponsored by the Home office, is about exploring the work involved, and the research behind Britain's first atomic bomb tests. We are informed that a H-bomb is equivalent to 500 A-bombs, in other words it has the power of 10,000,000 tons of TNT and the aforementioned “10 megatons;” and the almost unimaginable scale of destruction is neatly condensed into diagrammatic form and the numbers are staggering and shocking, as was the decision to lay waste to the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. With this film you get to see and to also understand the horrific effects of these atom bomb devices and is helped along by the ominous drum beat. Directed by David Villiers.
Special Feature: The Hole in the Ground [1962] [480i] [1.37:1] [30:00] This final documentary is an information film in colour this time, supposedly to give a greater effects and the object is to issue warnings in the event of an enemy attack, and to issue fall-out warnings to areas likely to be affected. Made at the height of “cold war” paranoia, this drama-documentary shows the work of the UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation, who's duties included the issuing of public warnings of any nuclear missile strike and the subsequent fallout. Finally, as a convenient footnote, it might be worth mentioning that “Also Sprach Zarathustra [‘2001: A Space Odyssey’] was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel of the same title; one of two works in which Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” a statement that many might endorse if the incubus of nuclear conflagration ever came to pass. Narrated by Russell Napier. Directed by David Cobham.
Special Feature: Think Bike [1978] [480i] [1.37:1] [1:00] This was sponsored by the Central Office of Information. Think once . . . think twice . . . think bike! In this abrasive public-information filler, Edward Judd urges car drivers to watch out for motorbikes in a stern direct-to-camera address intercut with brutal crash recreations. Made 17 years after his big-screen break, with the film ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ when Edward Judd’s film career had perhaps not fulfilled its earlier promise. ‘Think Bike’ characterises the actor Edward Judd’s later more modest work, where he became a familiar face on British Television, and also as a successful voiceover artist in television advertisements.
BONUS: This is a Beautiful Fully illustrated 30 page booklet with extensive credits and newly commissioned essays from John Oliver and Marcus Hearn, plus a piece by John Gillett. This is solid work from the contributors at the BFI National Archive. John Oliver has written a good piece about ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ and the industry as a whole and has lots of interesting snippets of information. Film and TV historian, Marcus Hearn takes us through the tortuous years of his career and the work with Val Guest, as well as about the film ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE,’ but he also unfortunately reminds us that his biggest hit was ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner.’
Finally, ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ is a really cracking film, directed with real verve and flair by Val Guest and is written really superbly, giving us a very realistic and yet dramatic view of an impending doom of the planet Earth, while eschewing any sense of melodrama. With an adult relationship at its core and the background of a bustling newspaper on the story of all their lives, ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ is the best British science fiction film out there, and especially at the time of its release and the BFI [British Film Institute] have done us proud. ‘THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE’ is by no means a typical science-fiction film. It deals more with the emotional atmosphere of a potential-apocalypse scenario, rather than the nuts and bolts effect-based details. There is incredible atmosphere here and is an almost addictive film. It's fabulous to see the BFI [British Film Institute] bring this film out and is totally beautifully restored to the ultimate Blu-ray format in such a complete and equally wonderful package. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
