The Day the Earth Caught Fire: Britain’s 1961 Apocalypse
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
Release Date: 08/31/2025
Dr. Strangelove: Cold War Comedy & 1964 USA
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. In 1958 the Peter George novel Red Alert was published about the dangers of nuclear war. A few years later when Stanley Kubrick was looking to make a (serious) film about the topic he was recommended the book. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was the resulting film. The film takes aim at...
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Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
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Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
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X-Ray Eyes: Roger Corman’s 1963 Psychedelic Sci-Fi
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. Roger Corman produced hundreds of films in his lifetime and directed dozens. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is a colourful, psychedelic, 1960s extravaganza with aspirations of transcendence. If you wanted to join in, you can watch the film X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes from 1963 first. DVDs of the film are available, but it is also...
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The Manchurian Candidate 1962: Politics, Power & Paranoia
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. In 1959 at the cusp of a new and exciting decade Richard Condon wrote a book that is largely described as a political thriller. And it is a political thriller. But it also fits neatly into my concept of science fiction. To learn more about what is and isn’t science fiction you can head to the heady days of the first episode where the topic...
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Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
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Panic in Year Zero: Nuclear Apocalypse & the Nuclear Family
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a month you can get ad free version of the show. There is a trigger warning for discussion of rape in this episode. I have marked the beginning of that part of the discussion with a beep and the discussion lasts for four minutes and four seconds after the beep if you wanted to skip past it. Last week we told you “” but this week we focus in on the panic. ...
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Don't Panic: The Hitchhiker's Guide Phenomenon
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
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La Jetée: French New Wave's 1962 Sci-Fi Classic
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! A quick note that I shall be at the London Film Festival on October the 16th giving a whistlestop tour of sci-fi cinema. It is a free event but you have to reserve tickets so if you happen to be in London and wanted to attend . Translation for the beginning of the podcast: “Later, he knew he had seen a man die. And sometime after came the destruction of Paris.” You can follow the podcast on social media on , and . If you would like to be a patron of the podcast you can join Patreon and for £3 or $3 a...
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The Day the Earth Caught Fire: Britain’s 1961 Apocalypse
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever*
As always there are spoilers ahead! If you’d like to join in on more conversations and keep up to date on what I’m working on you can follow me on social media: , and . After last episode’s UK village setting we stay in the country but head to London for a newsroom apocalyptic drama. We have more hints that we are heading into the 60s with a surly hero and a sultry ex-Disney heroine. The Day the Earth Caught Fire was finally released in 1961 after eight years of director Val Guest trying to get the film made. Perhaps the mid-50s Britian wasn’t...
info_outlineAs always there are spoilers ahead!
If you’d like to join in on more conversations and keep up to date on what I’m working on you can follow me on social media: Threads, Instagram and Bluesky.
After last episode’s UK village setting we stay in the country but head to London for a newsroom apocalyptic drama. We have more hints that we are heading into the 60s with a surly hero and a sultry ex-Disney heroine.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire was finally released in 1961 after eight years of director Val Guest trying to get the film made. Perhaps the mid-50s Britian wasn’t ready for this story although it would be interesting to see what kind of differences there would have been. (Val Guest was busy making The Quatermass Xperiment during that time!)
I welcome back two excellent guests to teach us more about this film.
Jay Telotte is Professor Emeritus of film and media studies at Georgia Tech. He has written/edited numerous books and articles about science fiction film including the 2023 book Selling Science Fiction Cinema.
Glyn Morgan is Head of Collections and Principal Curator at the Science Museum in London and a science fiction scholar.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:17 1961: Anxiety, British Free Cinema & Angry Young Men
07:28 The CND and memories of the war
08:05 The highs and lows of Cli-Fi
13:16 The beginning of the end
15:47 Val Guest
18:43 Snappy dialogue or too much talk?
22:25 The newsroom
27:40 Arthur Christiansen
30:06 The surlier hero
34:47 Janet Munroe
37:05 Disney & breaking out of type
41:06 One foot firmly in the 60s
42:09 Ambiguous and alternate endings
46:39 Legacy
51:57 Recommendations
NEXT EPISODE!
Next week we will be talking about the beautiful, half hour long, science fiction art film La Jetée (1962) that 12 Monkeys was based on. You can find the film on Apple, Amazon and also on YouTube but the version with English subtitles is not great quality.