Anyone planning on seeing the new apocalyptic adventure 2012 should catch director Val Guest’s excellent 1961 end of the world drama, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, to see how far we have come since the advent of CGI.
Set in a frantic London newsroom (actually the real-life Daily Express), the film has a group of journos discovering that recent unexplained climatic disasters and constantly rising temperature are the results of atomic testing. Bomb tests by the US and the USSR have knocked the Earth off its axis and now it’s hurtling towards the Sun.
There’s more talk than action (not quite what we are used to with today’s SFX-laden adventures), but the cast is great. Rumpole’s Leo McKern plays the science editor, Edward Judd is an alcoholic reporter, and Janet Munro is the secretary who spills the beans on the testing.
As the world waits for its likely end, teens enjoy riots in the streets and when more bombs are exploded to try to reverse the damage, two newspaper headlines are prepared: World Saved and World Doomed.
To be watched alongside other end of the world masterpieces like When Worlds Collide, Kiss Me Deadly, Crack in the World and Dr Strangelove.
Out on DVD now
Many of the ‘theories’ about 2012 are flawed. The theory of the a planet called ‘Niburu’ headings towards us for example, not only has no planet ever been discovered, the women who come up with this theory claims ‘aliens told her’, and originally said it would arrive in May 2003. The pole switch theory - even if the poles did switch, it would not effect us as a race and would cause no destruction. The theory of how ‘Jupiter Earth and the Sun will line up with the centre of our galaxy’ and we will die from a burst of gamma rays - is part true, Jupiter Earth and the sun will line up, as for dying, no. This is an event that happens every 28,000 years. The mayan long count calander ends its final cycle on the 21st of December, then it simply starts again on the 22nd of December. etc. Every theory is flawed.