The Day the Sky Exploded

The Day the Sky Exploded is an Italian science fiction film originally released in 1958 and released in the U.S.A. in 1961.

The entire film can be viewed here, compliments of the Internet Archive:


It's interesting that the pilot of the space ship is by far the tallest man in the room. I'm impressed at the attempt at a realistic view of a first manned rocket trip into space. They take it slow. I also like the view that multinational cooperation will be the standard. And the smug Russians. I'm getting a kick out of them.

I hate that the pilot and his wife are named John and Mary. There's actually a "John!" "Mary!" scene across a view of crowd panic. Mary is an over-wrought sap. And in another romantic encounter a woman says, "Destiny sure plays odd tricks," right before The Kiss. Oh, please, spare me! Even as the gotcha moment it turns out to be, this is incredibly lame. The women are hyper-emotional, falling apart at the least provocation. I'd like to see this movie without the "romance novel" plot lines.

Weird Wild Realm closes its review with this:

The Day the Sky Exploded is plodding but drums up a bit of suspense & believability, just so long as you don't ask how 3,000 a-bombs happened to be on warhead rockets capable of reaching outer space on a moment's notice.

Million Monkey Theater has a fun review which ends this way:

I still think the Earth is doomed. And all those nuclear explosions in the upper atmosphere has got to coat the planet with enough radiation to kill off millions. But it's just a movie. To close, John and Mary walk outside to see the rising sun across the beautiful land. They still don't kiss, I think John is secretly gay. We see Katy and Laduq hugging, maybe they will kiss later, I need to see a kiss!