When Worlds Collide – 1951 (WINNER)
I have a lot to say about the special effects of this movie. What they got right, they got amazingly right. But what they got wrong, they got phenomenally wrong. The movie is about just what the title implies, the end of the world caused by a rogue star and its orbiting planet hurtling through space. When Worlds Collide was made by the same producer, George Pal, the man who made the previous year’s Best Special Effects winner. However, in contrast to Destination Moon, this movie threw actual science out the window, especially the laws of physics.
But don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, despite the glaring flaws in its scientific concepts. When the other planet comes close enough to earth to disrupt its gravity, the oceans overflow and submerge the coastal cities. There are earthquakes and volcanoes erupting on every continent. This entire sequence was amazing with perfectly composited visuals. It was exciting to watch and properly apocalyptic. Just don’t try to analyze the science of the story too closely.
As for the tidal waves, they used that old trick of building a scale-model of a city-scape, and flooded it with water, filmed at close range. The water, and the flowing lava from the volcanoes had that strange look of unnaturalness, unique to that special effect technique. The naked eye sees water quite differently when it is in motion. But the shot where the giant waves were crashing around buildings and down a metropolitan street was actually a cleverly constructed composite shot.
The design of the rocket ship was also pretty cool, especially during the launch and landing sequences. They had the rocket on a ramp so that it would use less fuel during take-off. Funny how the mile-long ramp wasn’t destroyed during the earthquake. Then there were loud, fiery jet engines that propelled the spacecraft forward with incredible speed.
As I said, most of the effects were pretty darn cool, but then there was one thing that I hated. It was the film’s climax. So a handful of humans leave in the rocket ship just as the earth is turned into a flaming ball of magma. They skip over to the other planet to rebuild the human race. But when they step off the rocket ship, the walk into a background worthy of any Buggs Bunny cartoon. It looked so fake and unrealistic! It literally looked like the people were stepping out onto a cartoon. I guess they were really trying to make the new planet look like a paradise. Never-mind that the gravitational forces that caused devastating destruction on earth should have wreaked havoc on the alien world at the same time.
Incidentally, this was the first year in which there was only one film nominated for the Best Special Effects category. I’m not sure why or what changed, but this year, it was not a competition. It was an automatic win.