company: Columbia Pictures
and Clover Productions
year: 1957
runtime: 64′
country: United States
director: Fred F. Sears
cast: Kathryn Grant, William Leslie,
Tristram Coffin, Raymond Greenleaf,
Charles Evans, Frank J. Scannell,
Marshall Reed, Fred Coby
writers: Jack Nutteford
and Luci Ward
cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline
music: Ross DiMaggio (musical director)
not on home video in the USA
Plot: A newly discovered mineral element that expands and explodes when it is exposed to nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere threatenes to destroy the world.
Prolific producer Sam Katzman’s excursion into the science fiction genre was limited, encompassing only a handful of the nearly 250 pictures he financed between 1933 and 1973. His assembly-line approach to film production produced a few genre gems – the early Ray Harryhausen / Charles H. Schneer collaborations It Came From Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and the underrated sci-fi horror The Werewolf. Most, however, were little more than lean programmers that relied more on memorable titles and fanciful ad art than content to draw in the necessary business.
1957’s The Night the World Exploded, half of a Columbia double bill featuring the Wtf-Film creature favorite The Giant Claw (another product of Kazman’s Clover Productions directed by Night’s own Fred F. Sears), will never be remembered as a classic. But with no video release and only the rarest of representation on modern television, Night is probably lucky to be remembered at all. Those who grew up on the television late shows of the 60s and 70s (perhaps even more recently, though I never chanced upon it as a kid myself) will recall Night as the picture in which Earth is threatened by exploding rocks pulled from Carlsbad Caverns.
The Night the World Exploded runs along standard contemporary genre lines: Young scientist David Conway (William Leslie, Hellcats of the Navy) invents a new magical device (a quartz tube “pressurometer” in this case) just in time to predict a major earthquake in Los Angeles. While the city pieces itself together Conway comes to a startling revelation – immense pressure is building in the Earth’s crust, and the first earthquake is only a warning of more severe disasters to come. The cause of the pressure reveals itself to be the new Element 112, an explosive mineral that earthquakes worldwide are threatening to expose with cataclysmic results. From the moment Element 112 is discovered the race is on to find a means of averting a seemingly inevitable apocalypse.
The story may be prototypical sci-fi hokum, but The Night the World Exploded at least manages to toss an interesting idea into its recipe for worldwide carnage. Like Kronos the same year, Night makes something of an argument for the conservation of natural resources. The incendiary Element 112 is an entirely natural phenomena, benign in its usual 
environment. It’s the pesky meddling of mankind, gung-ho in their coal mining and oil drilling, that have weakened sections of the Earth’s crust enough to allow the Element to expose itself. The film is careful to point out that it’s not all our fault (natural erosion at the Carlsbad Caverns has exposed the Element as well, for instance), but the message is clear all the same. ”It’s almost as though the Earth were striking back at us for the way we’ve robbed her of her natural resources,” Laura ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (Kathryn Grant, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) says early on. Erosion be damned, Mother Nature is pissed and all of her stock footage wrath is upon us. It’s a sentiment that places Night among the very earliest of the ecological disaster films and, in that single sense, well ahead of its time.
Predictably, a solution to the Element 112 crisis is reached before the situation become too catastrophic. Conway discovers that the Element is reverted to a harmless inert state when submerged in water, leading to a poverty row public works project in which library footage from World War II works to flood the areas where the mineral menace has been exposed. The special effects are of the usual Katzman quality, and new shots are commissioned only when vast libraries of stock shots or earlier bits from old serials were deemed insufficient. The most impressive moment occurs rather early, when the opening title explodes off the screen – there must have been a few dollars of the budget to spare come time for the titles to be printed.
Dramatically The Night the World Exploded fluctuates between being boringly typical and unintentionally hilarious. Romantic triangles are normal for pictures of all genres, but I’ve never seen one handled in quite the way it is here. Scientists Conway and Hutchinson are obviously fond of each other, but Hutchinson intends to marry another man as Conway is too involved in his work. Night leaves little doubt of which man will get the girl, as Hutch’s intended husband never appears in the film! We learn his name (Bryant) and of Hutch’s involvement with him, but the character himself never once materializes. By the time the sun rises over a newly-salvaged world he has been forgotten all together. Otherwise things are pretty standard issue, with lots of meetings between scientific types and government officials to pad the brief running time.
At just under 64 minutes in length, The Night the World Exploded doesn’t overstay its welcome, and underrated director Fred F. Sears keeps things moving at a reasonable clip while providing narration as well. Writers Jack Natteford and Luci Ward were seasoned professionals approaching the end of their lengthy careers, just the kind of people Katzman was fond of hiring. Their work is never as lively as that of the blacklisted Bernard Gordon (who worked for Katzman credited by the name Raymond T. Marcus), but it gets the job done. Cinematographer Benjamin H. Kline (Before I Hang) keeps everything nicely framed, not that the open matte video masters floating around show it, while music director Ross DiMaggio fills the soundtrack with familiar library cues.
No one will ever mistake The Night the World Exploded for good film making, but there’s a comfort food appeal to it for those of us who grew up on old Columbia programmers. I certainly enjoyed it. The studio got more than their money’s worth out of these Katzman productions, re-issuing them in double and triple bill weekend matinees well into the 60s. It’s a pity more aren’t readily available on DVD, though Sony’s recent collections of deep catalog titles are promising to say the least. For now Night is a rarity, though it is out there (even without resorting to bootleggers). I say see it.
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