LARGE EARTH DISRUPTION FOR SUE LYON IN 'END OF THE WORLD'

Kathe Cunha as Nun in END OF THE WORLD Year: 1977

There’s something utterly bizarre and eerily realistic about the films of producer Charles Band, each and every grainy frame resembling a last known photograph. And despite the title and possible turnout, END OF THE WORLD is a science-fiction exploitation not fitting into the disaster genre...

Instead centered on an excruciatingly mellow, deliberately slow-paced, investigative journey as the buried lead is, despite headlining Christopher Lee as a mysterious Father Pergado at a rural convent, obscure character-actor/b-movie leading man Kirk Scott as brilliant scientist Andrew Boran. Receiving random computerized signals that could be extremely bad (with green words reading "LARGE EARTH DISRUPTION" on an old black computer screen), he ventures into desert towns with his loyal and equally intrepid wife, Sylvia…

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In this role, Sue Lyon, famous as LOLITA from the early 1960’s, sleepwalks through the maze; yet it’s not completely her fault: Since the overall tone is calculating and methodical, and the atmosphere and locations are sparse and bland, any form of overacting… usually the staple of cheap sci-fi… would be a hindrance... 

Sue Lyon showered

Even former big timers like Dean Jagger as our curious hero's boss, Macdonald Carey as a benign security guard and Lew Ayres as a military code-breaker, all pretty much phone in their lines: questioning the young scientist’s doubts and concerns or just going along for his ride, these veteran ringers could have been played by anyone...

Large Earth Disruption Score: ***1/2

The most intriguing scenes have the married couple with a reason to be together on the road... 

Andrew's on a reluctant lecture circuit and both have a sort of busman's holiday, and, since he'd gotten particular readings from two locations, one dark and spooky, the other a monastery with a secret, they search these places, driving throughout desert locales with an extremely sparse looking, guerilla filmmaking style where what's being filmed is capturing the rather sluggish characters (to witness Sue really acting go back to LOLITA, NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, TONY ROME or 7 WOMEN)... 

Sue Lyon End of the World Sue Lyon

Then, when the third act rolls in, there's only one place left to learn the truth about the title of the movie, END OF THE WORLD...

Large Earth Disruption End of the World

The rural convent, full of mesmerized nuns under Pergado’s seemingly passive reign, becomes a sort of chamber-labyrinth where director John Hayes deserves credit for not only moving the story in a breezy, semi-involving pace, but creating... all on his own soundboard... spooky sound effects that give a mesmerizing, otherworldly vibe whenever the acting and script fall short: Winding up with Christopher Lee’s transformation into a “foreign imposter" who... in his own more underlying and unprovoked, subliminally-sinister fashion.... preaches like Michael Rennie did, twenty years earlier, in what's still the most obviously-inserted political agenda-ridden but otherwise sparsely suspenseful sci-fi classic, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL – and for the same exact reason: that We, Earthlings, suck.

Sue Lyon sits in pretty blue poolside, not so happy about this END OF THE WORLD thing her man's discovered

Those are the hands of Kirk Scott, apologizing to his wife for finding out it's almost THE END OF THE WORLD

These poolside Sue Lyon photos had been lost for years so they're brand new taken screen caps, and rae

Sue Lyon END OF THE WORLD Sue Lyon Charles Band Sue Lyon Christopher Lee Sue Lyon

Sue Lyon as LOLITA, watching Hammer's Frankenstein at a Drive, and The Monster's played by none other than...

The actor who she'd co-star with twenty years later, Christopher Lee shown here with buried lead Kirk Scott