Scientists must find it a great comfort to know that the more eminent they become, the more beautiful their daughters will be. This device is as old as the hero-interloper: A beautiful princess furnishes an "in" for the hero, conflict with the inner circle, and romance. In science fiction there's an added rule: The daughter must be a princess of science and know what the father knows. This makes for a lot of brainy debutantes.

In When Worlds Collide, based on the novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, the raw emotions that any apocalypse must spawn are ignored. Unfortunately, the daughter device is sucked into the vacuum, turning what should have been an edgy thriller into a stale potpoiler. Joyce frets about which man to date as if her only worry were what to wear to the Mensa Cotillion, while doting dad, taking time out from his urgent efforts to save the world, coaxes young Randall to confront his feelings.

Apart from Stanton (who's made as repellent as possible), everyone is blandly wholesome and generally unmoved by the forthcoming holocaust--that is, until the mob jarringly appears at the end. Nonetheless it's welcome--the mob is the first foreshadowed suspense point that didn't quietly vanish into the swamp, never to resurface.

What does work for this film is its look: the Oscar-nominated cinematography and Oscar-winning special effects. Produced by George Pal (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds), When Worlds Collide has a strikingly rich feel throughout. At least it's something when the spaceship and the menacing star have a resonance to them, even if the protagonists do not.