Rating: 
Summary: Fails in comparison to the book.
Review: Taken by itself, this isn't too bad as science fiction movies go. But it is far inferior to the book by Balmer and Wylie. (To be fair, of course, few films measure up to the books on which they're based). However, it also does not attain the status of true classic that belongs to other sci-fi films of the era such as "Forbidden Planet" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
Rating: 
Summary: A classic science fiction film that has not aged very well
Review: As we all know, "today" if the Earth is threatened with a collision by a giant asteroid, meteor, comet or whatever that is hurtling through space, then we would simply send some people up there to blow the thing to smithereens before it could bring about the end of the world as we know it. But "When Worlds Collide" is a film from an earlier time, when the imminent destruction of the planet and all life upon it is a reason to build a space ship really quick preserve civilization by taking 40 people and getting away, well, the worlds collide (Think of it this way: this is not your father's end of the world science fiction movie, but your grandfather's end of the world science fiction movie). Of course this is not just some little old asteroid, meteor or comet, but a rouge star, Bellus, which happens to have an orbiting planet, Zyra (please, do not ask me to explain the celestial mechanics involved here). Based on the novel by Edwin Blamer and Philip Wylie, this George Pal film set us a situation where Bellus is going to crash into the Earth, but Zyra become the destination for the lucky individuals who win the lottery and get to jump in an untested spaceship (wearing ponchos) and fly off to this completely unknown planet on the off chance it has oxygen, water, vegetation, etc. Clearly the film is a sci-fi retelling of the Biblical story of Noah's Ark. The drama is supposed to come from how humanity faces The End. Unfortunately, some of the more melodramatic elements of Sydney Boehm's script get in the way of the tension. On the one hand we have real man David Randall (Richard Derr), a courier delivering secret documents from one concerned scientist to another who learns the end of the world is coming and decides to stick around and provide what help he can to astronomer Dr. Cole Hendron (Larry Keating), who just happens to have a good-looking daughter, Joyce (Barbara Rush). Meanwhile, rich man Sydney Stanton (John Hoyt) agrees to bankroll the effort to build a spaceship provided he is guaranteed a seat. There is some notion of preserving civilization through a frantic effort to convert books to microfilm and a lottery is instituted to determine which 40 individuals get to survive (which has its own predictable melodramatic moments). Warning: do not expect to see much in the way of cultural diversity when it comes to picking the potential survivors. I am surprised that this film only runs 81-minutes because it certainly seems longer, which, of course, is not necessarily a good thing. Granted, "When Worlds Collide" was a classic science fiction film in its day, but it has not aged well at all and is filled with unintentional laughs. "When Worlds Collide" won an Oscar for special effects, but clearly not for scenes of the destruction of the Earth (which are extremely brief). For most of the film the special effects are simply tracking the ominous approach of Bellus and the miniature of the spaceship taking off in the nick of time. The film tries to show that humanity has its good eggs and bad apples, even in the face of the end of the world. But this is hardly news. Ultimately, this film takes the science more seriously than it does the situation and in the end comes up with as blatant "deus-ex-machina" as you have ever seen this side of the final "Omen" movie. If you have an interest in the history of Science Fiction films, then you should check this film out once. But unless you consider it as camp, it will not stand up to repeated viewings.
Rating:
Summary: When Worlds Collide: People do Too
Review: Armageddon has been used often in print and on the screen. The difference between the more memorable attempts like WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE and the more recently forgettable ones like ARMAGEDDON and DEEP IMPACT lies not in special effects but in special relations. In the latter two end-of-the-world films, the viewer is treated to marvelous special effects which serve as a distraction that helps the viewer overlook the paucity of believable interaction among the characters. In WWC, the characters are not one-dimensional cut outs who simply go crazy under the stress of impending doom, but they react in unpredictable ways as that doom causes them to bounce off one another such that their inner fears and hopes are brought to clarity.
The doom is an approaching asteroid, and given the recent publicity of such a danger, the modern audience is likely to overlook the cheesy special effects right out of Flash Gordon and focus attention on how individuals think and act under crisis. As the world learns of the impending collision, the majority of the earth's population reacts in predictable ways, first ridicule, and then when the abstract idea of death is replaced by its unmistakeable reality, fear and chaos result.
This external chaos in the outer world is mirrored in the internal world of the launch site where a group of scientists and workers labor to save a tiny fraction of their number. A lottery is held to determine who will be chosen. It is at this point that director Rudolph Mate exposes some truly ugly points about what lurks beneath the skin. There is one slimy character in the film, a rich but crippled industrialist who provides the money to build the spaceship, but on condition that his money buy him passage. It is beside the point that he is mean, arrogant, and reprehensible. The unspoken message of his character is that once one overlooks his money and his crippled body, he is seen as no different from the majority of those who were not lucky enough to be chosen as passengers. In fact, even the head scientist who was initially presented as the Noble But Misunderstood Leader is himself exposed as a rulebreaker; he prevents the crippled industrialist from boarding at the last moment. Moments before the launch, the mass of workers who were not chosen shout that the lottery was unfair, so they grab weapons to force entry into the ship. The only source of basic human decency occurs when one man who was chosen volunteers his winning ticket to his wife who was not. Interestingly enough, aside from a minor focus on the film's predictable lovers, almost nothing is known or shown about the other lucky passengers who get to exit earth. They are passive puppets who board when told. The audience, after having been exposed to the depths of horror that Ordinary Folks fall under stress, must be thinking that this group is no better than the rest, only luckier. At the end, when the ship lands on the new world, and the survivors emerge to confront a clearly phony painting that is supposed to represent the new world, then the viewer can see that the phoniness of the painting is matched by the phoniness of the survivors.
Rating:
Summary: True to the Period
Review: An entertaining reflection of its time. The movie's centerpiece is its special effects, which are mostly effective, with the wall of water crashing down Wall St. canyons the biggest standout. A no-name cast performs capably enough, with Larry Keating of " The Burns and Allen Show" getting a featured role, ditto the always menacing John Hoyt, and on her way to bigger and better parts, the ever luscious and sparkling Barbara Rush. Like many sci-fi movies of the period, WWC is strongly influenced by the very real prospects of nuclear annihilation, prospects which tapped into strong undercurrents of fear running through screenplays and audiences alike. Here annihilation takes the form of a planetary collision that dooms all earth and its creatures to fiery death. The message to audiences of the time appears to be a comforting one. Not to worry, because no matter how devastating the apocalypse, the God-fearing will survive. This time on a space age ark that will transport them to a new life on an Earth-like planet, where gifted white people will build a new Eden. Whatever the viewer' s opinion of such fairy tale endings, the underlying values very much mirror the temper of the time, making this film of genuine interest to cultural research. My one real complaint comes at movie's end, with the backdrop drawing depicting the Edenic landscape of the new planet. I recall audiences of the time groaning--such a let-down after the generally superior effects that had gone before. Nor has this cardboard cutout improved with age. Imagine what today's digitalized FX could do with this unfortunate lapse!
Rating:
Summary: GODD OLE CLASSIC......
Review: THIS IS A GOOD OLE CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE. IT IS WELL DONE FOR IT'S TIME. THE STORY IS INTERESTING AND PRETTY TRUE TO
LIFE IF THIS SORT OF THING EVER HAPPENS.
Rating:
Summary: When Worlds Collide
Review: Heres one i remember from my youth. It was considered ahead of its time then and is still very entertaining today. Although just a bit over an hour in length, one gets the impression of watching an epic. A great cast of very well directed actors gets and keeps your interest from start to finish. The transfer to DVD was very pleasing and well worth the extra few bucks over the usual prices for these 50's sci-fi classics.
Rating:
Summary: Has Not Held Up As Well You Would Hope
Review: Although WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE was a seminal 1950s special effects movie, the movie has not held up very well with the passage of time. The prophetic story from the famous novel is interesting--a great deal more interesting, really, than a number of 1990s films that use the same general theme: when a roaming planet lines up on a crash course with planet earth, the brightest minds of the planet band together to create a space ship that will carry them to the safety of a second planet associated with crash-course first. Will this second planet be habital? Will it, as they hope, assume an orbit around the sun? The trouble with the film is that the famed special effects--and they are pretty good, too--are clumped up in the middle and at the end of the story. In the meantime, we are stuck in a story about a very nasty but ultra-rich man who funds the spaceship on the condition that he be accepted as a passenger. Well, we can all guess how that is going to work out--and just about everything else in the "between bouts of special effects" story line, which doesn't really amplify any of its more interesting possibilities. Fans of 1950s movie science fiction will certainly want to include it in their collection, and almost every one will enjoy seeing the film at least once. But with its excitement dimmed with the passage of years, once will be enough for most.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic that still holds up
Review: 'After Worlds collide' was the first Sci-Fi book I ever read. I had seen 'When Worlds collide' several times over the years. Now here I was, on detention in the library, killing time. Then I see `After Worlds collide' on the shelf. Gee, I didn't know there was a part 2 to the movie, I thought. That's the day I became hooked on Sci-Fi. 23 years and 3000+ books later, I still am. This is the movie that really started it all for me. The DVD is short on special features, but the transfer quality is great, and the sound in good. Sure it's dated. Yea, the color is off. But it's still enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: PRETTY DARN GOOD
Review: THIS MOVIE HAS TO BE JUDGED ON ITS MERITS FROM THE 50"s NOT TODAY. IT IS QUITE GOOD REALLY, WITH MUCH BETTER ACTING THAN TODAYS CARDBOARD STARS. THE SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE WHAT HURTS IT IN A COMPARISION WITH TODAYS FLICKS. THE STORY IS BELIEVEABLE WITH A RUNAWAY METOR HITTING THE EARTH AND HOW THEY SOLVE THE PROBLEM IS MUCH MORE IN LINE WITH WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TODAY. INCLUDING THE MOB SCENE OF WHO GETS TO GO TO THE NEW WORLD AND LIVE. THE END SCENES OF THE NEW WORLD REALLY HURTS THE MOVIE BECAUSE THEY ARE SO UN-REAL. IT REALLY LOOKS LIKE A PAINTING INSTEAD OF A PLANET. ALL IN ALL, I RECOMEND IT THOUGH.
Rating: 
Summary: Not exactly the best
Review: I'm not sure how long George Pal worked on this one, but it's not too good. It lacks credibility. Some of the SFX are good, others are appalling...like the view of the "new Earth"...clearly a water color matte painting. Also, did George Pal ACTUALLY believe that the people of the Earth would submit to a "lottery drawing" as to "who can go and who can't" without a single protest until the very end? HARDLY BELIEVABLE.
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