DAY THE WORLD ENDED, directed & produced by new-punk-on-the-studio-block Roger Corman, 29, this atomic war-begets-radiated-mutant chiller began summoning chuckles in late 1955, earning back its subatomic budget by at least 400%, pleasing countless kiddies on TV in weekend showings over the next decade and earning nostalgia points from those same Boomers when they grew up and could better appreciate its straight-faced daffiness. It helped launch Corman’s subsequent spree of cheap, goofy but effective sci-fi and horror items.

“I just can’t help it, I have this uncontrollable urge to eat meat. Red…raw…meat.”

Opening narration (by Chet Huntley! *) lets us know that T-D day (‘Total Destruction’) has gone down: “the world as we know it no longer exists” and “man has done his best, to destroy himself“. Hey, we’re workin’ on it. Thankfully for the storyline, the population decimation has spared seven people, whom Fate has placed in the same isolated home in a Hollywood Hills canyon blessed by wind that keeps radioactivity at bay. Uh huh. Before the 78 minute warning has ticked down we will also learn that good old rain will cleanse the nuked atmosphere. Whew!  ‘How about the billions of rotting bodies?’—never mind, Sally, and don’t eat all your brother’s candy cigarettes! So then the two surviving (and most photogenic) members of the cast can stride into The Dead But Refreshed New Old World to start the whole create & wreck circus going again. Maybe skip the megatons next time.

Dealing with the dialogue, characterizations, ‘special effects’ and hope that maybe there’s a TV series on the horizon are Richard Denning (keep shirt unbuttoned for chest hair display, prepare to furrow brow), Lori Nelson (look innocent yet fetching enough for creature to carry off to L.A.’s convenient Bronson Canyon), Paul Birch (deliver gloomy prognoses), Mike Connors—as ‘Touch’ Connors (slimy gangster just begging for it), Adele Jurgens (tough dame with a heart of chocolate), Raymond Hatton (good ol’ prospector fella, with a donkey, yet) and Paul Dubov (festooned icky/obvious radioactive makeup, knowing can’t-help-myself smirk and Atom-fried ideas about what to snack on).

Lou Rusoff’s (It Conquered The World, The She-Creature) script doesn’t exactly knock one senseless with science acumen, or acu of any kind and producer Corman’s expenditure (to the penny reported as $96,324.49) might barely cover the beard outlay on The Ten Commandments, but the actors are game and the prowling monster is do-it-yourself absurd yet kinda cool in a creep-out-the-small fry’s way. It boasts three eyes and horns (cue mother-in-law joke). Like other compact cast/few sets/survival sci-fi flicks of the era (paging Target Earth) this Simple Simon script setup made for easy playtime reenacting if you were a child with imagination worth your allowance: you could do all the parts (except the donkey) in your room or the den, needing only a toy gun (caps optional) and a transistor radio or electric razor to use a Geiger counter.

Ronald Stein’s ‘eerie’ scoring (he did 19 for Corman) starts it off nicely. Photographed in ‘Superscope’, not that there is much here super enough to scope. A tasty $400,000 rolled into Roger’s let’s-do-another! mitts.

* Radio announcer Chet Huntley, 43, got this one-off gig just before he began the 14-year run of The Huntley-Brinkley Report, gaining fame and respect. One wonders if when covering the Cuban Missile Crisis he flashed back on this doomsday paycheck.

Corman: “In science-fiction films, the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.”