Customer Reviews

The Earth Dies Screaming

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Another Midnite Movie double feature masterpiece! CHOSEN SURVIVORS concerns a group of eleven men and women chosen (by the government) to be the ones who wait out WWIII. Yep, they get to repopulate the planet! Luckily, our beloved elected officials have thought of everything, sending these folks deep beneath the earth. Once there, they are greeted by a pre-recorded message telling them that the world has been destroyed. Tensions start to build as each person tries to comprehend what has happened. Unfortunately, things go badly, as a massive swarm of vampire bats somehow infiltrate the underground facility, hungry for the red stuff! Richard Jaeckel (Grizzly, Day Of The Animals, The Dark) is the military engineer. Bradford Dillman (Bug, Piranha) is the psychiatrist who just might know something the others don't. Jackie Cooper (Superman 1 and 2) is the slimy corporate executive of the bunch. CS is a nice claustrophobic thriller. THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is sort of the british version of TARGET EARTH. The movie opens with a train crashing, a plane plummeting from the sky, etc. It seems that some alien force has unleashed poison gas on mankind! Soon, a few survivors find each other and attempt to make sense of it all. Our heroes are hunted by lumbering, annoyingly slow robots. Also, some re-animated zombies w/ eyes like boiled eggs are shambling around. Watch for Dennis Price (Horror Hospital, Tower Of Evil) as a sneaky jerk with selfish plans of his own. Both of these films are quite re-watchable. A terror-ific double bill...

It seems like many of the reviewers of this release have concentrated on "Chosen Survivors" in their comments. I'd just like to put in a plug for "The Earth Dies Screaming" as the movie here that I liked better. (Admittedly, an awful title if one wanted the film to be taken seriously).

A movie directed by Terence Fisher cannot fail to be of interest to genre fans. Dumb title aside, the plot is reminiscent of The Day of the Triffids; I actually find this film as good if not better than the 60's version of that. All in all, a sort of Triffids meets Village of the Damned meets Target Earth. And I can't say enough for the demo-quality black & white transfer. I know I'll be returning to this film often, something I can't say about "Chosen Survivors".

If you like 50's-60's sci-fi, do treat yourself to this set! (Four stars for "Earth", two for "Survivors" is what is behind my overall three-star rating.)

Grab that popcorn kiddies and light up that smoke coz we gonna enjoy another fun Midnite Movies Double Feature. Usually with these discs, they try to choose two films with at least a similar theme, but these two are quite different from one another. First on the bill, Chosen Survivors, is a very fun little piece of early seventies drive-in nonsense. It deals with a group of humans hand picked to live in an underground facility in the event of a worldwide war or catastrophe. The idea is to preserve the human race, but you'd think if this was the last hope for humanity, they'd at least pick some hotter chicks(going with Dr. Strangelove's theory) and people who could respond to stress and pressure better. The facility is damn near perfect in every way except the damn bats who have somehow crept in. The survivors have to deal with a swarm of hungry vampire bats that begin to pick them off. Hey, at least it breaks up the boredom. It stars B 70s sci-fi regular Bradford Dillman. We also got Jackie Cooper, who you may remember as Mr. White from the Superman movies. And lets not forget everyone's favorite character actor Richard Jaeckel, who you may remember from The Dirty Dozen and everyone's favorite, The Green Slime. Fun movie and a good time.
Th Earth Dies Screaming tells the tale of a small group of survivors in England(I guess there actually is a bit of a theme here) who band together to fight an alien invasion. The invaders take the form of big clunky robots that electrocute you to death if they touch you. The robots are merely tools of the real aliens who we never see. If that's the biggest threat to Earth, we shouldn't be worried since the robots are extremely slow, clumsy and seemingly blind. A toddler would have no problem escaping these things. How did Earth ever succumb to this? Hell, Don Henley is a bigger threat. Plus, they are able to resurrect the dead bodies and use them also, but they move just the same and are about as threatening as the robots. It was directed by Hammer director Terence Fisher. Fisher should stick to gothic horror coz Sci-fi isn't his strong point. That's not saying the movie's a dud coz it is fun. Two more worthy additions to your Midnite Movie collection.

I saw this movie back in '74 when I was a kid. I remember all the bats and the plot pretty well. They were sent to this bomb shelter to survive a nuclear war, and the shelter was cheap, and the bats got in. The death scenes were cheesy, but effective for the time. I know the ending of the film, but wont disclose it for those who haven't seen it yet. It's complete with babes, and heros, and wild characters. It's definitely a good B-movie night flick!

Fox and MGM has done great with these new Midnite Movies Collections released Set 11th 2007 for the Double Features! They are two seperate discs! Each film released by FOX has its own DVD! The MGM ones are still flipper discs, still these are great collections! Maybe we can see more Midnite Movies coming soon from Fox including the Incredible Melting Man /// Chosen Survivors is really not that bad...in fact it is fun but at the same time holds your attention but really good fun I love the 70's B-Horror films!

MGM presents a decent pair of modest sci-fi offerings on this Midnight Movies double feature DVD of CHOSEN SURVIVORS (1974) and THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING (1965): the former a stylish post-apoc thriller about a disparate group of pre-selected "survivors" of a global nuclear holocaust sent to live in a shiny, high-tech underground bunker that soon becomes infested with vampire bats from an adjoining cave; the latter a cool little British chiller in which a U.S. astronaut (Willard Parker) and a handful of survivors of an alien gas attack gather in a rural English village while the robot sentries sporadically patrol the streets and zap people to death. CHOSEN, which long seemed to be available only via a mixed bag of bootleg tapes, has a TV vet, Sutton Roley, at the helm, and his prolificity no doubt came in useful on what seems to be a modest budget (a largely Mexican crew probably helped as well). The sets are all silvery walls and glass panels, 70's futuristic without being garish. Good cast of upper-tier contempo TV regs (Bradford Dillman, Jackie Cooper, Alex Cord, Diana Muldaur, Richard Jaeckel, Lincoln Kilpatrick) works well together in what is essentially a Rod Serling-esque Twilight Zone tale expanded to feature length and marbled with grue.

This is a great mid-seventies science fiction. Good special effects and terror. Survivors of a nuclear holocaust, must now survive something that was overlooked in their underground lair! This movie is a must see! Check it out.

Fete of Death
"The Earth Dies Screaming" is a short, very watchable British scifi flick about robots who take over the world. True, the robots aren't very scary and indigestion will give you more nightmares than the human zombies streeling around with their exophthalmic white eyes, but it's a pretty intense movie. I liked the exciting scene where the lumbering zombies chase one of the surviving women into a house and she desperately tries to escape their clutches. This movie isn't as good as, say, "The Crawling Eye," (another British scifi film) which was made some seven years earlier, but it has its moments and it has a similar feeling of dread throughout it. I never saw this movie on TV and I can't understand why not. It's much better than the average scifi flick.

well i wasnt expecting much with this purchase, but was actually quite surprised with this double feature. chosen survivors was your typical tv movie of the week with all your required overacting. i'd have to pick the earth dies screaming as my favorite, dont remember seeing it before so i was surprised with all the twist and turns. and i love early british horror. the transfer quality of both movies was excellent.
similar movies i suggest are. quatermass & the pit, island of terror, the hammer horror collection is also a great buy.

Yep, got this one to, and as I said, this is gonna really be short.

Chosen Survivor: Fine. I really think they should have stuck with the original plot--it was more interesting. Unlike everybody in the movie, I saw the 'brain doctor's' point...maybe it should have been tried like that.

The Earth Dies Screaming. Pretty fine Science Fiction about the earth being invaded by robots. Fine idea...but only 64 minutes long. It's like I've always said...if you make a movie and it's crap (most are today) then keep it short! If you made a fine movie, add another thirty minutes to it (not fluff)! But who ever listens to Oldtechno?
Anyway, if you like the old Science Fiction from the 40's,50's, this is your cup of tea. I like it!

BYE!