Ever wonder what kind of movies Ed Wood might have made if he had hired a continuity expert? The special effects would not have been any better; the acting would not have been any less wooden; the scripts would not have been any more engaging; the films would only have been a little less klutzy. But it turns out that they would have been every bit as laughably bad—perhaps even more so.

I base this assertion on one of the most wretched strands of celluloid to have survived into the third millennium: The Day the World Ended. Even though it lacks the kitsch-coveted distinction of having been directed by Ed Wood, this film is bad on a level that has seldom been seen since the Adam West Batman series was canceled. To say that it is so bad it’s funny is to miss the point entirely. This film is so bad that it is nothing short of inspired. I laughed harder at Tim Burton’s Ed Wood than I ever laughed at anything by Wood himself, and had decided that I really preferred films that tried to be funny to those that succeeded in being bad. But I laughed harder at The Day the World Ended than I ever imagined laughing at Ed Wood—much harder. Don’t cheat yourself by wasting your time on mediocre camp or misbegotten kitsch. This is the real deal, the genuine mother lode of the risibly awful.

The film begins with a nuclear holocaust, a disaster from which our seven absurd characters are protected by their location in a valley between mountains filled with lead ore. We have a crazy prospector who has spent his entire life searching for gold, only to discover it in a post-apocalyptic world. We also have a lonely farmer and his daughter, though the farmer turns out to be a former sea captain who settled on this particular iron-shielded location for his farm because of what he learned first hand about the dangers of radiation in his naval days, when he transported some animals that had been mutated by the H-Bomb. Then there are a couple of city slickers who happened to be passing through the valley at the moment the rest of humanity was wiped out: Tony (a cheap hood) and Ruby (his stripper girlfriend). There is also a geologist, Rick, who gives our sea captain ample opportunity to talk at great length about the mutated animals. Last is a man named Radick, who was exposed to radiation before making his way into the safety of the valley. The viewer can tell that he has been exposed to radiation because his face is covered with glitter and long strands of dried glue—a cue that will be used throughout the film to indicate the early stages of radiation poisoning.

After painstakingly turning the knob on his short wave radio for at least two seconds, the former sea captain determines that the rest of humanity has been destroyed and that it is his responsibility to be hospitable to the four strangers who have stumbled into his valley. But in a speech that is very little short of hostile, he explains that his guests will be grateful for what food he gives them and respect his word as law. He then pats the holster on his hip significantly, which prompts Tony (a cardboard cut-out of a crook) to observe, “Just you make sure you hold onto that pistol, pops.”

“I intend to,” says the captain. And he bobs his head with an imperiousness that is sure to remind the viewer of Charlton Heston. As it happens, however, he is not the only Charlton Heston in the film. Rick (the geologist) is also a ringer for Heston, which gives the many conversations between Rick and the captain the eerie quality of sounding as if a single deluded survivor of the nuclear holocaust is simply sputtering to himself.

No sooner has the announcement of the virtual extinction of humanity been made than we plunge into the many little psychodramas of our individual characters. Apparently Tony, who has only ever known the sleazy women of the city (an interesting characterization), is smitten by the pastoral innocence of the captain’s daughter. At least that is the reading of his girlfriend Ruby, who seems to have a vested interest in categorizing herself as one of those sleazy urban women.

Ruby’s habits as a stripper die hard, so she makes a point of turning on the record player and moving her hips in a way that is supposed to be suggestive (though the only thing it suggests is a profound lack of appreciation for rhythm on Ruby’s part). She keeps finding excuses to weave erotically around the main room of the captain’s house, but never seems to offend anyone by doing so. Even the country girl seems to like watching her, which is meant to add some kind of sapphic tension to the scene in which the two women go bathing in a pool that is fed by springs from the mountains. The water's source in the mountains explains, to the director’s satisfaction at least, why it is uncontaminated.

Rick is the only one who shares the captain’s fascination with Geiger counters and other such equipment. The two of them have great fun wandering around the countryside and monitoring the radioactive levels of everything in the valley and postponing a conversation about what the captain learned concerning mutation. The captain’s favorite topic of conversation is who should be shot and why. He thinks that Radick has to be killed because the mutative process has already set in, but is prevented from killing him again and again by Rick, who suggests that there is much to be learned by studying Radick.

Meanwhile the prospector (whose credentials include all the necessary components: backward speech patterns, abundant facial hair, and a mule no less) has taken to distilling his own liquor and bemoaning his fate. The fact that gold is no longer valuable is not at all meaningful to him in the face of his recent discovery of a very rich vein. He keeps threatening to leave the safety of the valley in order to return to his lode, but doesn’t do so until the plot loses all use for him.

Then there’s the problem of the food shortage. The captain had not stockpiled sufficient provisions for four intruders, which prompts Tony to grumble about receiving fewer and fewer rations. His idea is to steal the gun while the captain is sleeping and to execute everyone but the farm girl so as to be able to make the provisions last three months (by which time the radiation will have cleared because he says so). Fortunately (I suppose), he is prevented from securing the gun by the ever-vigilant Rick, who beats him up good and proper and apparently considers the matter settled, since no one else seems to mind leaving him at large in the house and continuing to share food with him. (They also don’t seem to mind his repeated attempts to sexually assault the farm girl, but perhaps that is because the real threat to her innocence comes from a mutated beast that stalks her tirelessly.)

I want to transition by observing that bad filmmaking doesn’t get any better than the mutated beast, but I’m pleased to say that it does. It gets worlds better, though the beast is a pretty good start. The director takes his time in introducing the beast. At first we see only his footprints, which he stamps into the ground with a precision that clearly outlines the gaps between the toes. The footprints are huge and apparently very frightening to Rick and the captain, who decide that the best thing to do with any information that they discover in their rambles through the valley is to conceal it from everyone else. Then we get our first glimpse of the creature—one of its hands. Imagine a brown mitten with a few press-on nails stuck to it. But then, why imagine it when seeing it is so much fun?

I wish I had an extensive enough pejorative vocabulary to convey how very far from frightening, how extremely shy of shocking, and how intensely innocuous the beast turns out to be when he is finally revealed to us. He is nothing more than a man in an ill-conceived Halloween costume. His mask is supposed to suggest that he has been mutated into having a third eye. Instead, the mask suggests only that he is wearing a mask. But the truly comical component of his ensemble is an extra set of arms. The extra arms are tiny—either fetal or withered—and sprout from the beast's shoulders almost like a pair of biological epaulets. As the creature moves, the extra arms jiggle helplessly and the mask tends to ride back on the actor’s face. It’s sidesplittingly funny, but not as funny as the film gets.

The comedic zenith of the film has to be the series of sketches that the captain produces to show the geologist what kinds of mutations await those creatures that survive their initial exposure to radiation. The sketches are so amusing that they could easily have been done by James Thurber, only I think that they’re not supposed to be amusing. They’re supposed to be terrifying. The first sketch is of a rat (or something) with extra long teeth (or something) protruding from its mouth (or something). Then there is some kind of a monkey creature with antlers. It’s such a hilarious drawing that I was honestly unable to make out the third sketch because I couldn’t focus on the screen through the tears—the honest to goodness tears—of laughter that were pouring down my face.

Although the sketches were what pushed me over the edge (or at least what had me rolling on the floor), the set up had been perfect. The way that the captain and the geologist pussyfooted around the subject of mutated creatures was so clumsily expository and repetitive that the sketches were simply the icing on the cake. And the captain’s assertion that the geologist was going to think he was crazy (just like everyone else) proved to be his second most reliable catchphrase in the film.

The captain’s best recurring line, however, is his insistence on shooting someone, anyone. First he wants to shoot Radick, then the beast, then his own daughter (if she can’t be saved from the beast), and then Tony. When, at the end, he finally has an opportunity to shoot Tony to keep him from taking over the valley, we are glad to see that he was eventually able to shoot someone. But he dies shortly thereafter, having exposed himself to a lethal quantity of radiation in his effort to prevent the prospector from wandering back to his gold mine. The prospector died while chiseling away at some exposed rock that was supposed to be gold ore, but bore an astonishing resemblance to Styrofoam. Tony had already killed Ruby after she prevented him from raping the farm girl at knifepoint. Ruby had gone a little bit nuts, though. Since she couldn’t get anyone to take any interest in her stripping routines, she kept claiming to perceive signs of mutation in herself and went from man to man saying, “Look at my skin! Look at my skin!”

Since the captain had the authority to marry couples in an emergency, I assume that he was able to wed his daughter to the geologist before he died (though I don’t remember seeing an official sort of ceremony). But whether it has been formalized or not, the young couple’s relationship is cemented when Rick attempts to save the farm girl from the mutant beast that has been “stalking her, calling to her” throughout the film. The beast is able to kill Radick with three steel claws that are just one of the many assets of mutation. Another asset appears to be invulnerability to rifle shells fired at point blank range. But the farm girl’s innocence leads her to take refuge from the beast in the pure water of the uncontaminated pool. (Why the beast has taken her to the edge of the pool, since he fears the water, remains something of a mystery.) Rick joins her in the pool until the heavens pour down water that is uncontaminated by radiation (even though the obligatory three-month period hasn’t passed). The uncontaminated water is poisonous to the mutated beast (and to all like him, we are assured). So now that everyone else in the valley is dead, Rick and the farm girl determine, by painstakingly twisting the knob on the short wave radio for a few seconds, that there are other people who survived the holocaust as well. They decide to seek them out.

The world is all before them. Hand in hand they pick their solitary way.

I tried to go to sleep as soon as the film ended, but stayed awake for the next couple of hours giggling uncontrollably. I generally find that I lack the patience that it takes to enjoy bad movies. “Yes,” I say, “I can see how very bad it is. It will probably stay this bad all the way to the end. Would you mind if we fast forward to the next really bad part?” But this was a gem of badness, the kind of awful movie that I’m honestly glad I had the chance to see from beginning to end. Despite their impressive cult followings, Plan Nine from Outer Space and Reefer Madness can’t hold a candle to this one. It’s an absolute must-see.

You’ll thank me.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up to Age 4
Special Effects: Well at least you can't see the strings