Hollywood in the 1950s generated a number of superb science-fiction productions that are not only worthy of repeat viewings today, but are also prime material for remakes. It was a decade that brought us The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet and The War of the Worlds but it was Rudolph Maté's award-winning When Worlds Collide that set the benchmark that the rest would have to follow.

The film, based upon the 1932 novel co-written by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer, takes a significantly different take on the usual invading alien scenario by formulating an apocalypse caused by a rogue planet that will crash into the Earth. Dr. Cole Hendron (Larry Keating) tries to convince the world of the discovery, but he is labelled a headline hunter and ignored. A number of private investors believe him and fund an "Ark" that will allow a few to escape and try to land on the planet scheduled to collide with Earth.

If we ignore the fact that the film has more holes than a string vest, such as two suns in our solar system would make the destination planet rather hot and nobody had noticed, even the 1950s, that a large mass was heading our way well before the year in the movie, we can settle down, crack open the popcorn and enjoy ourselves. The film has a great balance of humour, drama and, unsurprisingly, romance, plus the use of Technicolor brings further depth to the award-winning special effects.

Rudolph Maté had accumulated almost thirty years as a cinematographer before becoming a director, with his first Academy Award nomination for Best Black-and-White Cinematography coming in 1941 for Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent. Maté knew what would look good on camera and this is certainly proved throughout When Worlds Collide, plus it also garnered an Academy Award nomination for John F. Seitz and W. Howard Greene's colour cinematography.

However, it Gordon Jennings' win for Best Special Effects that the film has become known, yet the whole film's look is completely undermined in the final scene as they walk out onto the face of the new planet and discover they have actually walked into a painting… and not even a good one. When Worlds Collide was released ten years before Yuri Gagarin would orbit the Earth for the first time, so it was hard to contain a laugh when they managed to build a spaceship in under a year, stock it with animals, supplies and people and successfully launch and land at the first attempt. Classic!

You can't help falling I love with many of the ridiculous aspects of this film, such as David Randall (Richard Derr), who happily goes from flying a plane to piloting a spaceship to another planet, the wheelchair-bound millionaire Sydney Stanton (John Hoyt) who almost drowns in the rich bastard stereotyping, Dr. Hendron's daughter Joyce (Barbara Rush) who happily forgets that her father and 2.5 billion people have just died and the classic apocalyptic scenes of tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, floods and deserted streets – each of which is unintentionally hilarious.

As I said in the opening paragraph, these 1950's sci-fi films are worthy of repeat viewings and are prime material for remakes, so it is no surprise that Steven Spielberg has announced that he will be the executive producer of a new version of When Worlds Collide to be released in 2008. I only hope that director Stephen Sommers patches up some of the outrageous plot holes, but maintains some of the 1950's kitsch for which these films are so infamous.