- Directed by: Terence Fisher
- Written by: Harry Spalding
- Stars: Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 2 Minutes
- Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VurNlP4J1k
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Set in England, a small group of survivors are left after alien robots gas the planet and kill most of the population. It’s kind of interesting, but we both felt like more could have been explained and done with it. With such a short run time, they could have done a bit more to up the satisfaction. We’d both call it interesting and not bad. At least it’s a short watch.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a train derailment. A man at the station passes out. No, everyone passes out at the same time. The train crashes, a plane crashes, people are flopping down everywhere. Credits roll.
A Jeep drives into town, and Jeff Nolan, the driver, is the only one who’s awake. He steals a radio from a shop window. He checks both it and the TV, but nothing’s on but static. A man and a woman come in behind him with a gun. Quinn and Peggy are locals, and they don’t know what’s going on. The others are not sleeping, they’re dead. Jeff was up in a plane, Peggy was in an oxygen tent in a hospital. Was this some sort of attack? Quinn suspiciously doesn’t say where he was.
Violet and Ed introduce themselves. They were in a car crash and just woke up. They were fooling around in a lab that had processed air. This all indicates that maybe it was a gas attack.
Men in metal space suits come into town, and Violet runs to them. One of them turns around, touches her, and she dies. They aren’t just men in suits. Two new people drive into town, Mel and Lorna. They slept in an air raid shelter last night when this all happened.
The whole group explores a nearby army base and gets more guns and supplies. Then it’s back to the hotel where they all hang out watching for trouble and getting to know each other better.
That night, one of the weird robots returns to town and watches Lorna through a window. Jeff watches it spying on her. Quinn sneaks out in the middle of the night and packs up some food to take with him. Virginia, who died earlier, gets out of bed and goes downstairs. Quinn shoots Virginia, who is possessed somehow.
Quinn whacks Jeff over the head and then insists that Peggy leave with him. Peggy runs back to the hotel where they’d all been staying, but he’s right behind her. She gets caught between a robot man and animated dead people. Jeff arrives in his car just in time to save her by ramming the robot and shooting the zombified humans.
Jeff and Peggy return to the army base for the others, but find that Lorna is in the process of having her baby.
Jeff listens to the radio and hears the same sound that the robots are using. He thinks maybe the robots are using a local radio transmitter to control themselves. If they can find that transmitter, they might be able to disable all the robots at once. They soon find it, unguarded out in the woods.
Back at the base, Quinn leads a group of robot men inside where Peggy and Lorna are. With no time to lose, Jeff positions the explosives and gets ready to blow up the tower. Boom! The tower falls down, and so do the robots.
They all board a plane and head South.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s only 62 minutes, and the credits are quite long. Everyone just sorta falls over dead, there was no screaming as the Earth died.
It’s a few days after the end of the world, but oddly enough, the power doesn’t go off and the gas pumps work perfectly. I guess the robots kept the power running because of their radio transmitter, maybe.
Who was behind all this? The robots didn’t seem like the brains behind the attack. Also, that one little radio tower wasn’t controlling all the robots in the world, so there have to be a lot more out there.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s said in trivia that the scenes in the opening of a plane crashing because the pilot passed out, and the car crashing into the brick wall for the same reason are recycled from “Village of the Damned” (1960).
My theory was that the invading robots were keeping the power going for their own purposes.
I thought the setup and idea was interesting, but they didn’t do enough with it. It’s uneven and the pacing drags. Though it is only about an hour long, and that helps. I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t really recommend it either. A solid 5 out of 10 for me.
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