The Earth Dies Screaming

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The Earth Dies Screaming is a 1965 British science fiction film directed by Terence Fisher. It stars Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price, Vanda Godsell, Thorley Walters, David Spenser and Anna Palk.

1 Production
2 Plot summary
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Production

The film was shot in black and white at Shepperton Studios in London. Location filming was done at the village of Shere in Surrey. It was one of several 1960s British horror films to be scored by the avant-garde Elisabeth Lutyens.

[edit] Plot summary

As the film opens, people all over Britain are mysteriously collapsing, apparently dead: Trains careen off their rails; cars crash into walls; commuters drop to the ground where they stand.

Later, a test pilot (Parker) seeks cover in a village pub, having survived the "attack". Gradually six other survivors congregate in the pub, all puzzled by the deaths, and initially at a loss as to why they are the few still alive. It transpires that they were all cut off from outside air at the time of the deaths: The pilot was flying; a young couple were hiding in an air-raid shelter; another woman was sick in a hospital inside an oxygen tent. They conclude it must have been a gas attack from a foreign enemy.

However, when military help appears to arrive, it is soon clear that all is not as it seems. The spacesuit-clad visitors they assume have come to help them are in fact alien visitors, and the survivors must be quick to defeat them and save themselves.

[edit] Trivia

The Earth Dies Screaming was used in 1983 as the inspiration (and title) for an obscure Atari 2600 video game. The game is set in space, and has you shooting down satellites and fighter ships.[1]

UB40 had a Top 10 hit in the UK in 1980 with a song with the same name as the film, but the song's subject matter was a post-nuclear holocaust.

Tom Waits has a song called Earth Died Screaming on his 1992 album Bone Machine. The song and name were inspired by the title of the film despite Waits never actually seeing it.

Earth Dies Screaming is the name of a experimental band in Austin, Texas. Contrary to popular belief , the band actually takes their name from the 1983 Atari video game.