George Pal, the puppeteer turned moviemaker who created The War of the Worlds and Destination Moon, made a strangely terrific and dreadful film dealing with the destruction of Earth—When Worlds Collide. A pair of planets are on a collision course, and the film counts down the days and then hours and then minutes as an attempt is made to shift a sample of humanity to the second planet (which will miss Earth) and thus allow our evolution to continue.
    There’s some poor acting by the principal cast: no one even gave Richard Derr another role that I know of and wisely so, but Barbara Rush demonstrates that sort of reliability which would assure her fame, and old stager John Hoyt stands out as the villain of the piece, the man who puts up the money to fund the project on the condition that he goes, when despite his ‘generosity’, he is exceedingly unworthy.
    But that doesn’t matter—the special effects are outstanding for the time, and realistic in terms of scientific knowledge as it stood then. Perhaps it is the knowledge of how difficult it must have been to create that makes it appear so, but the scenes of destruction seem far more memorable than those created by modern digital effects.
    The film mounts genuine suspense as the planet looms larger each time it appears on screen, and other highlights are the flooding of New York by tidal wave, the panicky announcements on the loudspeakers as time runs out, and the interesting means by which the rocket is launched.
    Given that the world appeared to be full of monsters, criminals and commies, I was beginning to get the idea that the planet’s destruction might not come soon enough.