This movie took a couple ideas and drove them so far into the ground that they never should have been seen again.They spend so much time having meaningless science conversations about magnetic inversions and other such nonsense that it's very hard to stay interested.They also have way too many music-less montages.The first half is basically just scientists looking at screens and talking over radios, waiting to launch this rocket.They don't even have any real reason to launch this rocket.They just want to circumnavigate the Earth.The rocket malfunctions and falls to Earth and then weird things start happening.Animals start to migrate and weird light balls are seen in the sky and everyone knows it because of the rocket.They could have cut out all the pointless crap and made this a nice thirty minute short.At eighty minutes, it's an exercise in attention paying.

One problem that has long bothered most filmmakers, since the dawn of cinema, is the smoke-and-mirrors magic act itself--namely, getting big, great, creative ideas that movie watchers will be interested in and like, while getting these ideas across in as budget-conscious a manner as possible. Take this film, 'The Day the Sky Exploded', for instance (but make sure you give it back--I liked it LOL). Rome-born director Paolo Heusch (who later made the no-budget enjoyable thriller, 'Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory') wisely utilized as much stock footage as humanly possible, and a fine cinematographer in future horror-aficionado hero Mario Bava (though his name is bizarrely misspelled in the film's credits), to credibly bring his ambitious ideas of widespread panic and civil unrest to fruition.Mildly problematic is the dated way that women are portrayed here. Usually in older films, this isn't bothersome to me, simply because it was so widespread, and thus expected to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean it was right. For example, the only two principal women in the film are the wife of the main astronaut, who basically is left to complaining that she doesn't get enough attention from him while the world is in chaos, and a math expert, considered 'cold' because she dares to simply think about her job, who basically falls to pieces when the going gets tough (though, to her credit, she comes to her senses). And, playing the devil's advocate for a moment, it was kind of crappy that it was a Russian who went crazy and made thinks difficult for the scientists who were binding together to try and save the world. But those are minor nit-pickings.It made me very happy to watch this valiant cinematic attempt. It left me far more satisfied than later, big-budget efforts in the area, such as 'Deep Impact' and 'Armageddon'. Some fanfare for the common man, please! =)

The movie isn't half bad as long as you don't get distracted by the lips not matching the words, and as long as you accept it as a Spaghetti Sci-Fi movie (like a Spaghetti western, except in outer space). It is par for the time, the late fifties, when sci-fi in black&white wasn't supposed to be Oscar material. I like the Russian character the most. On another aspect, the English dubbing is interesting. The voice of the astronaut, McLaren, is sooooo familiar. Can anyone figure out who it is? I've heard the voice many times, as you probably have. But just can't come up with the name. It will probably come to me in the middle of the night. I just hope I remember to write it down. I wish there was a way to make a contest out of this.

This little Italian oddity offers the drama of a world-wide disaster and the themes of international cooperation which were better capitalized by the Star Trek franchise and several similar disaster films of more recent vintage.The film is somewhat unique for its unusually jerky pace, clever low budget effects, odd use of stock footage, and strange cinematography. The Day the Sky Exploded begins as if it is going to be a space-flight adventure, but instead treats the space flight in a realistic, almost mundane manner, before proceeding to reveal the real plot - concerning the meteors. The astronaut (nicely played by Hubschmidt) is forced to eject from the nuclear powered rocket and the rocket flies off to .... where? before you know it, a cluster of meteors, probably blown off of some planet or perhaps the moon, is threatening to destroy the earth. Some of the 'scientists' allude to unknown religious beliefs and seem to think that some great big meanie out there has it in for us because we've ventured off our planet in a serious way for the first time (like the perspective offered by Star Trek First Contact inverted). The plot begins with the rocket launch and a great feeling of optimism and then proceeds into panic, and then a feeling of inevitable doom, as nobody seems able to come up with an adequate solution.There are also some amusing but really unnecessary romantic elements and some decent character development which help to round the film out in a general way. The acting is generally good, but there are a few really odd moments where people seem either too calm or absurdly evocative given the circumstances they are dealing with. There are also a couple of bad moments for the script, which may be a result of translation problems from the film's native language.I have noticed a lot of people making fun of the special effects. Sure, the dozens of stock footage clips of rockets being launched is over-done, and yeah, some of the scenes showing people and cars moving around in the parking lot of an unidentified building are kind of funny, but I actually enjoyed the primitive but creatively filmed scenes of asteroids and explosions. They were, at the very least, more artistically designed than some of what appears in contemporary films with similarly low budgets.