Blowing Up The Sky

The sky exploded. You may have heard about it on the Internet. I went outside to check. Sure enough, ka-BOOM! Then I went checked later and it was back. I liked the sky better when it exploded. The movie about it, kinda.

That’s the selling sizzle of the 1958 Italian-French made sci-fi crap classic, The Day The Sky Exploded (aka, La morte viene dallo spazio), Italy’s first science fiction movie. And what caused the sky to explode? An atomic rocket, or as we say in Italian, “razzo atomico.”

It all started when an manned mission to the moon went askew and the astronaut driving the rocket disengages the broken atomic booster and hightails it back to Earth. The booster, though, goes on to crash and explode into an asteroid belt. (Note: Those are the things that hold up asteroid pants.) The resulting ka-BOOM sends asteroid chunks – now ganged together in a giant ball-shaped cluster, straight at where you’re sitting.

As the meatier meteors get closer to where you’re sitting, it triggers wind storms, earthquakes, tidal waves and sharknados (heh). The moon is smeared when part of the rock group slams into it. Unfortunately, there’s still enough left over to smear us as well.

The best part happens when, against the ticking clock, every armed super power on Earth teams up to shoot missiles at the cluster simultaneously. The final scene with hundreds of razzo atomicos heading into space to smack those punk ass pebbles, is one of the movie’s coolest visuals. Unfortunately, the rest of it isn’t as groovy, plodding along with pseudo-science dialogue and arguing about whose to blame. (It was me all along, b*tches!)

But don’t take my sound advice – watch The Day The Sky Exploded for free – it’s on YouTube™, right in front of where you’re sitting.