THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED (1958) by Paolo Heusch starring Paul Hubschmid & Eddie Arent. Talent may be a universal language but no-one on this film could speak a word of it. Even so, it makes a serious attempt to tell a story and, let's face it, it's more coherent and less laughable than recent disaster films with giant budgets hundreds of times larger. Despite that lack of funds, it actually looks quite lush in some scenes, including the primary control room and the huge underground tunnels housing the evacuees who inevitably run riot. There's a good reason for this - not the riot, I mean the photography. Mario Bava was to become known as the King of Italian Horror, and I devoted an entire chapter of my book THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN VAMPIRE to this master cinematographer. Till then, TOODLES!
