The high-stakes hell of 'When Worlds Collide'

George Pal gave us a glimpse of the apocalypse.

"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov (1956)

The end of the world. Like it or not, it will happen someday—perhaps tomorrow, perhaps ten thousand years from now. But how? 

"I have a plan!"

I recently rewatched Stanley Kubrick's "nightmare comedy" Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which the human race blunders its way into a thermonuclear war that dooms the entire planet. The film's sinister title character (Peter Sellers), an ex-Nazi scientist now working for the US government, outlines an outrageous scheme for preserving "a nucleus of human specimens." It involves relocating a few specially-chosen humans, including top government and military leaders, to mineshafts "thousands of feet deep." There, the survivors could breed "prodigiously" while they wait for the surface world to become habitable again.

Even if Strangelove's perverse plan could work, it's way too late to implement it. By the time he proposes this solution to the sitting American president (also played by Sellers), the human race has about five minutes left to live. If we were serious about Project: Mineshaft, we should have started on it years ago. But we didn't. And so, the human race (presumably) dies out at the end of the movie.

The characters in the classic sci-fi movie When Worlds Collide (1951) are also prepping for the end of the world, but they've gone about it somewhat more sensibly. Emphasis on somewhat. An eminent scientist named Dr. Cole Herndon (Larry Keating of Mr. Ed fame) has determined that a "rogue star" called Bellus and a planet called Zyra are on a collision course with Earth. After a series of catastrophic tidal waves and earthquakes, our world will be totally destroyed by them in eight months. Herndon's "Hail Mary" contingency plan is to put a few humans on a rocket ship, a la Noah's Ark, and take them to Zyra to restart the human race from scratch.

They'll never listen, Jor-El.

Like Jor-El from Action Comics, Herndon is unable to convince the world's top leaders that his findings are correct. The delegates at the UN do not believe in his end-of-the-world theory... at least not at first. But a few private citizens are convinced Herndon is correct, including an incredibly bitter millionaire named Sydney Stanton (John Hoyt), who agrees to finance the project in exchange for being allowed to board the escape rocket when the time comes.

All that I've just described to you takes about half an hour. The remaining 52 minutes of When Worlds Collide are about what Herndon and the people around him do with the eight months they have remaining. About 600 people—mostly men but some women and children—converge at a remote site where the giant rocket is being frantically constructed. This includes Herndon and Stanton, always at odds, plus Herndon's pretty daughter Joyce (Barbara Rush) and brash, womanizing pilot David Randall (Richard Derr). Only 40 of these fine folks can be allowed aboard the ship, so naturally there's a lot of controversy about who rides and who dies. Meanwhile, Joyce is at the center of a love triangle. She is smitten with David at first sight, but she's engaged to dull but reliable scientist Dr. Anthony Drake (Peter Hanson). What's a girl to do?

In case you haven't seen When Worlds Collide, I will not divulge what happens in the movie's eventful third act, except to say that the main conflicts are resolved, one way or another, and it all ends with a reassuring quote from the Bible. I will also say that a sequel called After Worlds Collide was planned but did not materialize. There have not been any direct remakes or reboots either, but the plot of this movie did remind me of  a segment called "Life's a Glitch, Then You Die" from the Halloween 1999 episode of The Simpsons. In their version, there are two escape rockets: one that will take the world's "best and brightest" to Mars and another that will take annoying, B-list celebrities (plus Homer and Bart) to the sun. I'm not sure if the makers of The Simpsons have ever acknowledged When Worlds Collide as an influence on that episode.

Derr and Rush.

Like many of my generation, I first learned of When Worlds Collide through The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). That film famously starts with a song called "Science Fiction, Double Feature" that namechecks a lot of classic science-fiction and horror films. Presumably, these are the movies that influenced the story we are about to see. One line of the song goes: "And when worlds collide, said George Pal to his bride, I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills." (Or "some joints and some pills," as mischievous fans contend.) 

While the other movies listed in "Science Fiction" are evoked through the names of actors (Fay Wray, Michael Rennie) or characters (Flash Gordon, Dr. X), When Worlds Collide is the only one referenced through its producer. George Pal (1908-1980) was a prominent, Austrian-born filmmaker of the 1950s and '60s most closely associated with stop-motion animation and science-fiction extravaganzas. The fact that he is mentioned in "Science Fiction" is significant, because it suggests that George Pal had a reputation of his own back then. Like Cecil B. DeMille or Walt Disney, his name meant something to viewers. If you went to see a movie with George's name on the poster, you would expect to see something spectacular and new. Did When Worlds Collide live up to their expectations and give them "some terrible thrills"? I don't know.

Despite my obsession with all things Rocky Horror in the 1990s, I didn't get around to watching When Worlds Collide until just this past weekend, when it was shown as part of B-Movie Maniacs. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't the rather dry, preachy, self-serious film I got. Until the last few minutes, the story takes place entirely on Earth. There are no aliens, robots, monsters, or laser guns in sight. The movie is very light on action and very heavy on tense meetings and planning sessions. Once Herndon secures the financing from Stanton, the movie rarely strays from the site where the giant rocket is being built. The characters wear drab-looking uniforms (designed by Edith Head!) and live in cheerless, prison-like dormitories.

Reviews of When Worlds Collide tend to focus on two main issues: the accuracy of the science and the quality of the special effects. Neither topic interests me a great deal. I'm willing to acknowledge that the movie's science is far-fetched and that its logic is not always airtight, but this story is meant as entertainment. It's not a term paper. Compared to many other science-fiction movies of the 1950s, When Worlds Collide is remarkably level-headed and realistic. As for the special effects, they mostly amount to a few models and matte paintings—passable for the era but unremarkable. I've seen better and worse in other movies.

Perhaps the real reason that "Science Fiction, Double Feature" mentions producer George Pal instead of any of the actors in When Worlds Collide is simply that the people onscreen aren't very memorable or compelling. Richard Derr and Barbara Rush are giving capable performances, but I can't say I was terribly invested in what happened to them or the people around them. I'm glad I finally saw this movie after all these decades, but maybe I was better off assuming that When Worlds Collide was another '50s sci-fi flick about "a man in a silver suit battling a monster."