The Earth Dies Screaming

Plot

After a mysterious gas attack which kills off most of the Earth's population, a few survivors gather at a country inn to figure out a plan for survival. However, the gas attack is only the first step in an alien invasion, in which groups of bullet proof killer robots stalk the streets, able to kill anyone with a mere touch of their hands. The group's members find additional weaponry in a nearby drill hall, but the robots continue their campaign of terror, which only increases when their victims rise from the dead as zombies, eager to kill anyone who might try to stop them. Yet despite frictions within the group - and the birth of a baby, which further complicates matters - most of the members survive. After discovering that the robots in the area are being controlled from a local transmitting tower, the survivors blow it up and head to a nearby airport, where they commandeer a plane and fly south, towards an unknown destination, hoping additional survivors see their plane and join them.

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, whose father, Edwin Lutyens, designed Manor House Lodge in Shere, a small property which features prominently at several points in the film.

Reviews

Wheeler Winston Dixon wrote about the film's use of silence:

"... it's remarkable to note than [sic] in a 62 minute film, the first five to six minutes have conveyed Fisher’s vision of the end of civilization entirely through a dispassionate series of images ... Much of the film, involving the pursuit of the living by the dead, is done entirely through gesture...

Writing in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle cited the film as "an obvious precursor to Night of the Living Dead.

In popular culture

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 involves shooting down satellites and fighter ships.

The British band UB40 used The Earth Dies Screaming as the title for a 1980 single release (catalogue: Graduate GRAD 10), which spent 12 weeks in the UK chart, peaking at number 10.