Paramount gives us a stand-alone release of its newest remaster of George Pal’s visionary, ambitious and amusingly dated Sci-fi epic followup to his smash hit Destination Moon. It’s the classic fantasy, first considered for Cecil B. De Mille, of a ‘space ark’ built to spare a tiny group of humans from a cataclysmic End of the World. The Technicolor is bright and the spaceship design is awesome in what has become a modern fable. The framing story is a straight-up Bible prophecy — but the movie’s Sci-fi core worships secular science and technology. This is the video remaster that corrects the film’s color design for the Space Ark launch sequence.

When Worlds Collide
Blu-ray
Paramount
1951 / Color 83 / 1:37 Academy / 83 min. / Street Date June 25, 2024 / Available from Amazon / 22.49
Starring: Barbara Rush, Richard Derr, Larry Keating, John Hoyt, Judith Ames, James Congdon, Stephen Chase, Frank Cady, Hayden Rorke, Kirk Alyn, Casey Rogers, John Ridgely, Stuart Whitman, Leonard Mudie, Mary Murphy.
Cinematography: W. Howard Greene, John F. Seitz
Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Albert Nozaki
Costume Design: Edith Head
Editorial Supervisor: Doane Harrison
Film Editor: Arthur P. Schmidt
Special Effects: Gordon Jennings, Tim Baar, Harry Barndollar, Dick Webb, Barney Wolff
Visual Effects: Jan Domela, Paul K, Lerpae, Chesley Bonestell, Farciot Edouart
Original Music: Leith Stevens
Screenplay by Sydney Boehm from the novel by Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie
Produced by George Pal
Directed by Rudolph Maté

When Paramount Presents issued its 4K disc of George Pal’s  The War of the Worlds back in September of ’22, they added a bonus feature, Pal’s previous Oscar-winning Sci-fi epic When Worlds Collide. Both films had made their Blu-ray debuts on import discs from Australia; Paramount later corrected an image in War, bringing a proper red cast to a shot of the planet Mars.

Paramount’s disc of When Worlds Collide was much improved from the older transfer on the import disc. Now it’s available as a stand-alone Paramount disc.

Note: this is a condensation of the CineSavant review-essay for an earlier disc release, from 2020. If you wish to take in the full story, that review is here.

It’s 1951 and the ‘fifties Science fiction boom is just getting started. George Pal’s ambitious epic is one of the trend’s first big hits; although it now plays as dated, the show still exhibits more than its share of conceptual imagination and visual wonder. Gee-whiz spectacle is the order of the day — how many End Of The World movies actually show Terra Firma expunged from the Solar System?

We dearly love this core Sci-fi thriller despite a screenplay that introduces an odd new absurdity in almost every scene. Yet When Worlds Collide was a popular hit and took home an Oscar for special effects. Most of those effects have limitations, but the fabulous silver spaceship remains a wondrous spectacle.

The original Balmer & Wylie book (and its sequel After Worlds Collide) were likely inspired by Abel Gance’s French talkie La fin du monde (1931). Paramount purchased both for Cecil B. DeMille right after publication. Sydney Boehm’s screenplay indeed reads as if it were written in 1934. With the discovery that two rogue planets will soon strike the Earth, scientists scramble to build a Space Ark to ferry a small group of humans to safety. Before the final impact, one of the planets will pass by close enough to cause cataclysmic earthquakes and flooding. If the Ark Project survives that disruption, there’s still no guarantee that the spaceship can be completed in time.

With only 40 seats on the Ark, most of the project’s scientists and engineers will have to be left behind. On launch day some of them riot and attempt to seize the ship.

Every scene change introduces fresh new scientifc, logical and moral non-sequiturs. An incredibly advanced rocketship Ark is designed and constructed in just eight months, with no flight tests. The script evades all consideration of reproductive reality beyond chaste go-forth-and-multiply terms. Domestic farm animals are gathered literally two by two, Noah-style. Ignoring the laws of genetics, forty randomly paired lottery winners are chosen to take the trip — a wholly inadequate species sampling. The writers instead offer a monogamous love triangle, to distract from thoughts of future birth defects.

The moral logic of When Worlds really breaks down with the lottery to select those forty lucky Ark passengers. Not one of the young engineers and scientists objects when the project head Cole Hendron (Larry Keating) arbitrarily reserves space for his personal entourage, including his daughter (beautiful Barbara Rush) and her boyfriend (Richard Derr), a random kid and a stray dog. Hendron gives another seat to a lottery loser (Judith Ames aka Rachel Ames), so she can join her boyfriend (James Congdon). No wonder the also-rans revolt.

The project head then takes petty revenge on the Scrooge-like millionaire (John Hoyt) who funded the Ark, denying him his agreed-upon reserved seat. The reality of doom unaccountably restores the wheelchair-bound man’s ability to walk, Doctor Strangelove- style. It’s a nasty, vindictive miracle: ‘You’ve got ninety seconds to live, Mister Moneybags, so go have yourself a stroll.’

Artist-designer Chesley Bonestell’s Space Ark remains a marvel, a gleaming rocket silhouetted against dramatic painted skies. It is an icon of the Sci-fi boom years, representing the drean that technological progress will save mankind. The mile-long launch ramp swoops down into a valley before zooming up a steep mountainside. This design choice allows for the Ark’s construction to take place on a dramatic promontory, instead of the bottom of a gulch.

When Worlds Collide won an Oscar for Visual Effects and was nominated for best cinematography. Many of its visuals still spark the imagination. Views of the onrushing planets looming in the night sky are appropriately frightening. A cataclysmic disaster montage has just one full effects composite, a not-bad traveling matte of the Atlantic pouring into Manhattan’s Herald Square. A briefly-glimpsed painting depicts capsized ocean liners floating next to the Chrysler building. George Pal’s editors then assemble every bit of Technicolor volcano, flood, and earthquake stock footage that they could find.

The rocket’s roller-coaster launch is breathtaking, but the actual astral collision is under-represented. Our planet and its history are gone in an instant, but our survivors show no reaction. The only plan to alight on the new planet is a ‘thumbs up and hope’ crash landing. Happily, a convenient field of mountain snow materializes. A woman passenger squeaks out “We’re HEERE!”, as might Minnie Mouse on arrival at Disneyland. The finale has been debated ever since. When the hatch is opened, the view is surprisingly unsatisfying, a cartoonish landscape more suitable for Disney’s  Fantasia. It’s attractive, but artificial in the extreme. The new planet might as well be a Sunday School Heaven. Any grim considerations are bypassed in favor of storybook sweetness and light.

Not a single preacher on board …

What with the Bible that opens and closes the story, it would seem that the Production Code liked the idea that Man’s Fate and the Fate of the Earth be portrayed as entirely in the hands of a Judeo-Christian God. A montage tells us that other faiths are enaged in Special Guest Prayer. A dialogue line or two does mention God, but the core story is entirely secular. Some rogue planets happen to invade our stellar neighborhood, plain and simple. If we really think God has decided to obliterate ‘all the things of man,’ why is he allowing a pack of science-worshipping technocrats to escape?

We always did note that the interior of The Ark is arrayed like a Church … with the pilots in the pulpit, their backs to the passengers in the pews behind them.

The bigger irony is that When Worlds Collide has always been a favorite, flaws and all. We love its fanciful rocket and the spectacular special effects, and its apocalyptic tone feels like a prophecy of fearful scientific challenges to come. One re-imagines the tale in multiple forms. It’s core 1950’s Sci-fi Sense of Wonder stuff, an ambitious idea fleshed out just enough to stimulate the imagination.

Paramount’s stand-alone Blu-ray of When Worlds Collide is the exact same disc encoding that appeared in the 2022 combo set with Para’s 4K of The War of the Worlds. We compared it with the [Imprint] 2020 release and confirmed that it is a much improved remaster. The existing 4K scan appears to have been given an extra clean-up pass — the dings and dirt specks we saw before are now gone. It does not seem less sharp or detailed: it is more yellow here and there, and the contrast isn’t as harsh. We noted a different color grading on some of the matte paintings.

The best thing about the new transfer is a key color decision at the climax. Back at UCLA in 1975, we projected Paramount’s Technicolor studio print. As a rule, the colors on IB Tech prints don’t fade. This transfer looks very close to what we remember, as the Space Ark takeoff exteriors now have an amber wash, reflecting the color of the approaching planet. Memories can fail, but more evidence that this was intended can be seen in an effects shot inside the spaceship just before launch. On one of the exterior TV camera screens, the daylight is a very bright amber color — golden. The exterior launch shots now match this amber cast. It helps to squeeze a bit more realism out of the extravanant launch effects — the giant planet looming in the sky is bathing Earth in reflected light.

It’s a completely plain-wrap presentation; no commentaries or featurettes for this non- Paramount Presents release. We do get a handsome remastered Collide trailer, which assures us that a rogue planet could hit us Within Your Lifetime!

The disc is language-ready for both French and Spanish — separate audio tracks and subtitles are on board for those tongues. The English audio track is very punchy and dynamic — it can’t compete with modern surround mixes, but it still makes its points. Composer Leith Stevens’ compositions embrace ‘holy’ themes whenever appropriate. I’ve saved an old Paramount laserdisc, which has an excellent isolated music track.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

When Worlds Collide
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good, for sci-fi fans Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplement:
Remastered Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: July 7, 2024
(7161coll)

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