The day the world ended is a film I saw late at night and found it one
of the most frightening I had ever seen, to the extent that I had
nightmares about it and remembered scenes from it for the 45 years since
I first saw it. The plot: a survivalist with experience - observations
of horrible mutations after the H-Bomb explosion in the Pacific - has
built a house protected by lead deposits and natural ridges. But there
is a kink in his plan: a group of uninvited guests show up. With only
enough food for himself, his daughter, and her missing fiancee, the
danger of hunger increases tension between the group that includes a
scientist and a crook with his stripper babe. But the scariest part is a
man who survived in mutated form, with silvery atomic skin, who can
walk through the radioactive mist to the outside world in search of the
raw meat he craves, where, he assures the scientist, "wonderful things
are happening, but you will all die." The mutated man returns at night
because he has enemies on the outside. All the residents are unsure
whether or not they will become like that man with the radiation that is
sure to come with the next rains.
