Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

I remember seeing this British disaster film on TV in my youth, and it having quite an impact which has remained with me ever since.   The premise (that a couple of nuclear bomb tests have changed the Earth's orbit, sending it towards the Sun) may be ridiculous, but the main strength of this picture is that it succeeds in making this seem a scarily realistic scenario. This is despite the small budget for special effects, which is evident at one point where we see what are clearly model boats being passed off as the real thing.  But overall the director (and co-writer) Val Guest does a good job of using stock footage and matte paintings to portray a world suffering from extreme weather, especially (of course) heat. It’s a clever idea to have the entire tale be told from the point of view of journalists because it helps give the unfolding events a veneer of verisimilitude.   An actual newspaper editor plays the fictional editor, and I thought he was...