An intelligent, witty and very adult science fiction film from a time when the breed was few and very far between, the British production "The Day The Earth Caught Fire" has been released in a restored print by Anchor Bay Entertainment.

The plot is simple: nuclear bomb testing on different sides of the earth by the then-current 'superpowers' have caused our planet's orbit and axis to shift, changing the earth's equator and hurtling us toward the sun. The London Daily Express begins tackling the story, uncovering the facts and reporting the imminent disaster. The story moves inexorably to an ambiguous ending befitting the entire piece, certainly not the type of ending common those days. Edward Judd ("The Concrete Jungle", "First Men In The Moon") is quite good as the alcoholic reporter assigned to cover the story. Janet Munro "The Crawling Eye", "Darby O'Gill And The Little People") shed her Disney image (and her clothes) deftly, giving her character - who works in the British government, sleeps with Judd and provides him critical information for his reporting - a sense of grounded reality. Leo McKern ("Help!", "Ryan's Daughter", "The French Lieutenant's Woman", "Ladyhawke", "Rumpole Of The Bailey") is wonderful as the science editor, spitting out some of the best dialogue in the film in scenes which would make Howard Hawks proud. Val Guest had worked as a reporter in his youth, and the newsroom scenes here are as good as any on film - much of the film was shot on London locations, and the publisher of the paper in the film actually had been a legendary Fleet Street editor for many years (he points out in his commentary how his film editor made the performance of the nonprofessional actor better by cutting away, allowing just the dialogue to remain over reaction shots of the reporters). Joined by Wolf Mankowitz in the writing, they won the 1961 British Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and the dialogue has the snap and crackle of the Hecht/Macarthur work in "The Front Page" - but the arc of the plot is certainly its own. For a country which had just spent the previous fifteen years rebuilding itself after the Nazi blitzes of World War II, this was a chilling depiction of just how much madness war contains - and how the arms race of the 1960s between the US and the USSR held the world in its thrall. This is one of the very best examinations of the repercussions of 'modern warfare' (for the time) ever made, and deserves a good long look.

Picture: The anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer is for the most part very good, though the bit-rate is moderate, and in some foggy/smoky shots there is pixelization which is quite distracting, and could have been easily avoided. Some of the shots seems a bit too contratsy, though they appear part of the original photography, and not victims of the transfer. Black levels are solid, and overall the black-and-white transfer is very welcome, with the tinted bookends restored after many years. This is the British cut of the film, a few minutes longer than the American release cut of the time, and has a flash of bare breasts and a little more 'raciness' than we were used to at the time - and which Universal-International, the US distributor, cut out. Sound: Unremarkable, serviceable Dolby Digital 2.0 mono is all that is offered. It delivers the extremely literate dialogue quite well, which is all that's really needed here, though the music score comes across a bit harsh (especially the "beatnik music by Monte Norman", who would next score the first James Bond film, "Dr. No").

A feature-length commentary by director/producer/cowriter Val Guest, in conversation with journalist Ted Newsom, is included. Guest is 90 years old now, and the track sounds recent, so he is understandably short on many details of the production (though it seems he can remember to the ha'penny how much it cost to make). It took Guest 8 years to get the backing to make this film, and time has now borne out his hypothesis - global warming is an accepted fact and, while its cause may not be as simplistic in the story here, the thought that science will devise a way to correct it remains. The commentary is entertaining, intelligent, and fun - Newsom knows the film very well, and coaxes as much as it seems he can from Guest. The most amusing part of the commentary is how much time the two spend talking about Janet Munro's nude scene LONG before it appears - not so much for any historical value, but rather for its voyeuristic appeal. Included are very candid comments about the talent in front of the camera - for example, Judd's 'difficult' behavior (due, Guest postulates, to Judd's feelings of inferiority, though Guest says he had no problem at all working with Judd) and Munro's drowning death a few years later (either from alcohol intoxication, suicide or both). The original theatrical trailer is included, as are 4 tv spots, and several radio spots. A small stills gallery provides more coverage of Munro's nudity than appears in the film, as well as promotional material from both sides of the Atlantic. There is also a fairly decent biography of Guest, though the quotes seem to be taken from the commentary.

I saw this film during its initial theatrical run in Chicago, during the height of the arms race, and I recall the audience leaving the Friday night showing quietly, contemplating what modern science and the political climate had wrought. I watched the DVD, then watched it again with the commentary recently; when it was over I switched to the tv tuner in time to see, live, the north tower of the World Trade Center afire, and the south tower being crashed into by a jet plane. Have we learned anything in the intervening 40 years? Thank you, Anchor Bay, for giving us back this film - if only we could learn something from it.