Rating: C+
Dir: Felix E. Feist.
Star: Peggy Shannon, Sidney Blackmer, Lois Wilson, Matt Moore.
This is not a film I would have expected to be made by RKO, being considerably more ambitious in scale than most of their content. Early on, it does bypass the need for special effects, relying instead on things like newspaper headlines (“Earth Doomed!”) , reading messages off a teletype, emergency news broadcasts, and that old standby, stock footage. However, it’s edited together with such breathless intensity, it helps paper over the lack of actual disaster. The main focus is on the struggles of Martin (Blackmer) and Helen Webster (Wilson), as they struggle to survive, both during the disaster and in the post-apocalyptic world. This combination isn’t something you see often: it’s typically one or the other.
After about a quarter of an hour, we do get to see the destruction of New York by a tidal wave. Though, to quote Monty Python: “It’s only a model.” The pure model work is fairly decent (top); the efforts to combine it with footage of fleeing citizens, considerably less so. In the deluge, Martin is split up from Helen, and believes his wife and children are dead. Martin ends up saving swimmer Claire Arlington (Shannon), and the two fall in love. However, they come to the attention of the inevitable post-apocalyptic gang of thugs, with designs on Claire which I’m sure you can guess. Meanwhile, Helen has joined up with a group of survivors, who are trying to rebuild society under the leadership of Tom (Moore).
Eventually, the husband and wife are re-united. This is particularly awkward for Martin – because, unlike him, Helen has stoically refused the advances of Tom, refusing to believe her spouse has died. The resulting love triangle plays out against the backdrop of recovery, though outside of the marauding gang, it doesn’t seem like the new, moister world is particularly rough. Or maybe it’s just that in the thirties, lifestyle expectations were considerably lower for most people. Roof over your head? Adequate nutrition? That’ll do. Avocado toast, influencers and fur babies are all notable here by their absence. I do find myself wishing that a larger studio had committed to the project. After the genuine flood of Noah’s Ark, this is barely damp in comparison.
The film as a whole was lost for decades (though some of the effects footage shows up in later Republic serials like King of the Rocket Men). An English-language print did not resurface until 2016, thirty-five years after an Italian version was found, that apparently belonged to Luigi Cozzi. I’m fairly glad it was recovered. For it works better on the human level than Noah’s Ark. What you get is a fairly simple story of survival, as is necessary. We don’t meed the Websters for a while, and it only runs 76 minutes in total, so things in between are kept fairly basic. There’s a genuine poignancy to the ending. While I won’t spoil it in detail here, it’s enhanced by knowing that Shannon would be dead through chronic alcoholism just a few years later.