DAY THE WORLD ENDED

"You're dimestore, Ruby, you're cheap!" Adele Jergens and "Touch" Connors

DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1955). Produced and directed by Roger Corman.

"He's a mutation, Rick, a freak of this new atomic world of ours."

After nuclear holocaust, a taciturn fellow named Maddison (Paul Birch) holes up in his valley home with his daughter, Louise (Lori Nelson), whose fiance is missing and presumed dead. Unwelcome visitors looking for food and shelter include hoodlum Tony (Mike Connors, billed as "Touch"), his moll and former striptease "artist" Ruby (Adele Jergens), old prospector Pete (Raymond Hatton of The Three Musketeers) and his mule; and the radioactive, supposedly dying Radek (Paul Dubov of Girls' Town), who is developing a taste for raw meat. A more welcome addition is geologist Rick (Richard Denning), who is able to handle Tony and has a mutual attraction for Louise. Meanwhile a strange mutated creature (Paul Blaisdell) roams the grounds as the others wonder if the threatening rainfall will wipe them all out with radiation sickness. Day the World Ended may use some of the same settings as Attack of the Crab Monsters, but it doesn't have that film's cleverness, imaginative touches, and creepy atmosphere. Jergens offers the zestiest performance as the ill-fated Ruby. Like many films of the period, it suggests that a person can't be decent unless he or she is religious. There's a vague twist ending involving the "dead" fiance, but nothing much comes of this. Filmed in widescreen "Superscope."

Verdict: Even mutations can only do so much. **.

GIRLS' TOWN

June Storey and Kenneth Howell

GIRLS' TOWN (1942). Director: Victor Halperin.

Myra Norman (June Storey) wins the "Miss Ohio Valley" beauty contest and is sent to Hollywood with her plainer sister, Sue (Edith Fellows) as her chaperon. The girls live in a boarding house run by wheel-chair bound Mother Lorraine (Anna Q. Nilsson). Myra is an opportunist who latches onto Kenny Lane (Kenneth Howell), an agent for animal acts who wants to try his luck with humans for a change. But when director Lionel Fontaine (Paul Dubov) sees Sue act, he thinks she may have a lot more on the ball than her haughty sister. Which sister will become the movie star? Kenny, who's been dumped as hooker-hard Myra's agent, assures Sue that double-crossers don't get far in Hollywood -- who's he kidding? Hollywood is made up of double-crossers! In any case, Girls Town is a typical low budget PRC production with little to recommend it, although the acting isn't bad and Kenneth Howell, looking especially good in a mustache, is as charming as he was in all those Jones Family Movies such as Back to Nature for Twentieth Century-Fox. Edith Fellows was also in the 1934 version of Jane Eyre. One gal who makes an impression in this picture is Peggy Ryan [Chip Off the Old Block], who does a very good imitation of Bette Davis in Dark Victory. Talented and tragic Howell made his last film in 1951 and committed suicide 15 years later.

Verdict: "Jack Jones" to the rescue. **.