The Day the Earth Caught Fire: Britain's 1961 Apocalypse

As always there are spoilers ahead!

If you'd like to join in on more conversations and keep up to date on what I'm working on you can follow me on social media: Threads, Instagram and Bluesky.

After last episode's UK village setting we stay in the country but head to London for a newsroom apocalyptic drama. We have more hints that we are heading into the 60s with a surly hero and a sultry ex-Disney heroine.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire was finally released in 1961 after eight years of director Val Guest trying to get the film made. Perhaps the mid-50s Britian wasn't ready for this story although it would be interesting to see what kind of differences there would have been. (Val Guest was busy making The Quatermass Xperiment during that time!)

I welcome back two excellent guests to teach us more about this film.

Jay Telotte is Professor Emeritus of film and media studies at Georgia Tech. He has written/edited numerous books and articles about science fiction film including the 2023 book Selling Science Fiction Cinema.

Glyn Morgan is Head of Collections and Principal Curator at the Science Museum in London and a science fiction scholar.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

02:17 1961: Anxiety, British Free Cinema & Angry Young Men

07:28 The CND and memories of the war

08:05 The highs and lows of Cli-Fi

13:16 The beginning of the end

15:47 Val Guest

18:43 Snappy dialogue or too much talk?

22:25 The newsroom

27:40 Arthur Christiansen

30:06 The surlier hero

34:47 Janet Munroe

37:05 Disney & breaking out of type

41:06 One foot firmly in the 60s

42:09 Ambiguous and alternate endings

46:39 Legacy

51:57 Recommendations

NEXT EPISODE!

Next week we will be talking about the beautiful, half hour long, science fiction art film La Jetée (1962) that 12 Monkeys was based on. You can find the film on Apple, Amazon and also on YouTube but the version with English subtitles is not great quality.