The Earth Dies Screaming – 1964 | 62 mins | Science Fiction | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Slow and somnolent sci-fi directed by Hammer veteran Terence Fisher on a shoestring budget. Slow-paced but creepily convincing, Fisher does manage to inject atmospheric menace into the village-under-siege scenario, but is hampered by Canadian émigré Henry Spalding’s run of the mill script and stereotyped characterisations.

A beautiful summer’s day in England, but the peaceful tranquillity is due to an alien gas attack that has wiped out the entire population and caused some to be reanimated as zombies. Amongst this devastation in a quaint North England village arrives American test pilot Jeff Nolan (Willard Parker), fresh from having tested a new vertical jet. Nolan takes refuge in a nearby hotel in the village and encounters Quinn Taggart (Dennis Price) and Peggy (Virginia Field),two people from the South who headed North hoping to find citizens. They are quickly draw by a post-party married couple, Vi (Vanda Godsell) and her drunkard husband Eddie (Thorley Walters). All share the same unifying factor,that during the previous evening they were in purified air conditions.

Their nemeses soon appear in the shape of two mechanical robots walking up the street, Vi runs out to greet them in the mistaken belief they are military assistance, and is killed by the robots deadly touch. Another pair arrive in the shape of a young couple heading from London to Liverpool, prickly Mel (David Spenser) and his pregnant wife Lorna (Anna Palk). The band decides they must defend themselves, so venture to a local Royal Engineers TA drill hall for an unrewarding hunt for munitions.

That evening proves to be eventful, firstly a patrol robot appears at the rear of the hotel, and then the eyeless zombie corpse of Vi awakens. In the morning, self-centred cad Taggart decides to knockout Nolan and go his own way with Peggy, but the zombies in the village cause the two to part. Having run down one of the aliens in his Land Rover, Nolan discovers they are robots, and given the oscillating signal blocking their radio, sets out to discover the source.