The session: "June is Corman! Corman is June!"
In memory of famed director (who died in May), Roger Corman, we view four films that he directed.
Week 1: Day the World Ended (1955)
Directed by Roger Corman
My Level of Prior Knowledge
I hadn't heard of this.
Plot:
After a nuclear war, seven people find themselves in a sheltered valley. They survived the war. Can they survive each other?
Reaction and Other Folderol:
This wasn't really what I was expecting. Because of Corman's reputation for putting together movies on a tight budget, I was expecting a trashy kind Plan 9 type of thing. But apparently Roger Corman was very different from Ed Wood. Despite the low budget and sometimes claustrophobic feel, this was a very good movie. And it was, dare I say it, surprisingly cerebral.
I did enjoy some cute touches that blurred that played with the distinction between beginning and ending. And the movie did a good job of teasing us early on by just showing a little bit of the main antagonistic monster (that is, the nonhuman one).
There was one element of the movie that I think was too subtle. There was a secondary plot involving that monster and one of the women. It was clear that the movie was trying to imply something. But it wasn't entirely clear what. I guessed correctly at part of it, but the rest eluded me. Keith explained afterwards, since none of us got it. And that was a loss, because that understanding would have turned an "oh, that's clever" moment at the end into a full-blown "Holy Shit!"
The characters were reasonably well developed, so the interaction was interesting to watch. And rooting for one person over another was pretty easy. But there were ways that the characterizations were inconsistent, which detracted from the overall movie.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that this reminded me of the terrible 1992 sitcom, Woops!. But that show sucked, so maybe I shouldn't mention it. Too late.
Ratings
Me: 8.75
Bob-O: 9.4
Ethan: 6
Joe: 10
Rich: 8
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