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The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

Director(s) Val Guest
Producer(s) Val Guest
Top Genres Drama, Romance, Science Fiction
More Films Directed by Val Guest More Films from 1961 More Films from the 1960s Top Classic Movies of the 1960s

The Day the Earth Caught Fire Overview:

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) was a Drama - Science Fiction Film directed by Val Guest and produced by Val Guest.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire BlogHub Articles:

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

By Barry P. on Sep 2, 2019 From Cinematic Catharsis

(1961) Directed by Val Guest; Written by Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest; Starring: Edward Judd, Janet Munro, Leo McKern, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden and Arthur Christiansen; Available on Blu-ray (Region B) and DVD (Region 2) Rating: ****½ “When I had written the original treat... Read full article

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)

By Beatrice on Apr 25, 2017 From Flickers in Time

The Day the Earth Caught Fire Directed by Val Guest Written by Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest 1961/UK Melina Productions/Pax Films First viewing/Amazon Instant This interesting sci-fi film shows there is more than one way to achieve climate change. The US and USSR acidentally engage in powerful H... Read full article

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The Day the Earth Caught Fire Quotes:

Bill Maguire: No woman's irreplaceable, no matter how much you love her. There will be somebody else sooner or later. London's full of somebody else's.
Bill Maguire: [reading a newswire] There's a chap in Leeds says he can extract water from the atmosphere. Oh, as you were, he's been certified.
[Bill asks Peter what is bothering him]
Bill Maguire: It's the kid, isn't it?
Peter Stenning: You ought to see the way they're bringing him up, Bill. It'll be the right prep school next. And then the right boarding school. And by the time they finish with him, he'll be a right bowler-hatted, who's-for-tennis, toffee-nosed gent, but he won't be MY son.
Bill Maguire: Oh, I don't know. That bad blood of yours is bound to come out.
Bill Maguire: They've shifted the tilt of the earth. The stupid, crazy, irresponsible bastards! They've finally done it.
Bill Maguire: [Maguire is on the phone to the editor after a pile of letters about nuclear tests is dumped on his desk] What am I supposed to do with these protest letters?
[pause]
Bill Maguire: Thank you very much but there are seventeen hundred of them.
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The Day the Earth Caught Fire Facts
The scenes of the "Met Office" were filmed both outside and inside the Ministry of Defence Main Building in Whitehall. This access was remarkable. Those interiors were little changed until refurbishment of MOD after 2000.
Editor James Needs used stock footage from Hammer's The Quatermass Xperiment, also directed by Val Guest of a fire truck racing through the night past the patrol station in Bray.
In an early scene Jeannie is struggling with a Roneo stencil duplicator, saying it is "over-inking". The Roneo company threatened to sue the producers for the potential damage to the reputation of their products.
As the earth heats up Bill McGuire asks for information on the melting point of "everything from steel to my glass eye". Leo McKern did in fact have a glass eye.
The realistic newspaper footage was shot in the Fleet Street offices of Express Newspapers and gives a vivid picture of the "old" London Fleet Street industry (most British newspapers have now moved out of this area, which was famous as a press centre). "Express" editor Arthur Christiansen plays himself in the film.
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