When Worlds Collide
“Not until television's Space 1999 would we see such an improbable set-up of celestial billiards as in Sydney Boehm's adaptation of the novel written by Balmer and Wylie in the twenties. Richard Derr plays the devil-may-care pilot who is on a mission delivering top-secret photographic plates to some very worried astronomers. They reveal that Earth is in mortal danger from a rogue dwarf star named Bellus. Surely as a Japanese monster's compulsion for urban centers, Bellus is on a kamikaze bee-line for Ours Truly. Only one opportunity remains, say the scientists, or: ‘...have we got a planet for you!' Zyra, the satellite of Bellus, appears to be habitable.

“Humanity's hope resides in a one-shot, one-chance rocket being built to carry forty emigrants to Zyra in the moment-of-truth of perihelion in what would be transit history's most exciting transfer. The calendar sheds its pages as Zyra Hour approaches and the great ship nears completion. And lo, the animals are loaded aboard the futuristic Noah's Ark where the humans are as racially diverse as a tin of marshmallows. The climax of the film is heightened by the bittersweet embrace-of-demolition by Bellus and Earth, and the ship actually lands on the new world. There, on Zyra, Chesley Bonestell's background matte painting which combines the strength of the Arizona state flag and the utopianism of an Hawaiian travel poster, serves as an exemplary paradigm of Western expansionism.

“It is George Pal's strong, even-handed skill as a producer which saves the picture from a spring-wound plot and earnestly cliched acting. Rudolph Maté's direction builds a visually seamless construct which effectively contains a shaky concept. Before becoming a director in the U.S., the Polish-born cinematographer's credits included La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc and Vampyr for Dreyer. Here he shot such opalescent gems as Cover Girl and Gilda. The scene of a hollow, aching tristesse of a New York City shattered and flooded in the aftershock of planetary duellos remains an indelible image of the screen.”