End of the World

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• USA • 1977 • 88m •

• Directed by: John Hayes. • Starring: Christopher Lee, Sue Lyon, Kirk Scott, Dean Jagger, Lew Ayres, Macdonald Carey, Liz Ross, Jon Van Ness, Kathe Cunha, Mary Daugherty, Evelyn Lipton, Jane Wilbur, Pat Wylie. • Music by: Andrew Belling.

Dr.Andrew Boran is picking up strange signals from outer space that seem to predict natural disasters. When he and his wife decide to investigate, they find themselves held captive in a convent that's been infiltrated by aliens with plans to destroy the world. As alien leader Zindar explains, the earth is a hotbed of disease that cannot be permitted to continue polluting the galaxy.

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1:21

Review:

"What are we going to do now?" the beautiful Sue Lyon asks her stupid husband. "The only thing we can do: go it alone." Well, of course; whenever faced with alien invaders far more powerful than you, the best thing – and the "only" thing – to do is to "go it alone". Ever consider reporting your findings to your superiors, to CIA – to the KGB, for that matter? Of course not – when one is an imbecile one "goes it alone". Here we have a moron with actual SCIENTIFIC evidence that aliens are among us, but he decides to fight them on his own. Well, not quite: he's got his equally ineffectual wife to help him defeat them. And then he wonders why his plan fails and the Earth ends up exploding like a cheap tennis-ball-sized prop! Duh.

I also have a bone to pick with this whole "cloning" business. Lee and his nuns are supposed to be clones – and yet one of the nuns briefly shows a lizard-like alien limb. Perhaps the writer of EOTW is confused about the admittedly INCREDIBLY complex term "to clone". It's very likely he thinks that cloning is the process of dressing up as another person – in which case any masked ball would automatically become a clone ball and every Halloween has millions of young clones seeking sweets. These aliens aren't clones; they're merely disguised as humans. That's all. Besides, if they're such adept cloners, then why didn't they simply clone the guards at the science institute? That would certainly be a much more efficient and easier way to attain those whateveritistheywerelookingfors. No, the story isn't particularly well thought out.

"Earth is poisoning the universe with its disease, so it must be destroyed". This is the kind of dialogue we've come to love and expect from Ed Wood's movies. In fact, he couldn't have written it any "better" himself. Funnier yet, only 5 minutes after informing the humans that Earth will be annihilated, "cloned" alien Lee tells the dumb scientist and his lovely wife "it's a pity that you cannot come with us, because on our planet your talents are used to build, not to destroy": this, coming from an alien who had just helped orchestrate the destruction of an entire planet, and for no logical reason than some cockamamie vague B-movie pseudo-science theory about "disease spreading throughout the universe". What, like Ed's solarbonite?

Made in 1978, but plays out like a low-budget 1957 flick. This is dumb B-movie fare. And slow as hell. Almost nothing happens in the first half-hour. This plot could have been easily compressed into a 23-minute episode of "The Twilight Zone". A very weak episode, I might add, because this much bad logic is rare in that show.

To give you an idea how cheesy EOTW is, the last scene has Earth blowing up like a firecracker. Ed Wood could not have done it better than that.

Review by Fedor Petrovic (fedor8) from the Internet Movie Database.

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