“I drove all day. You’re the first folks I've seen alive.”

A bunch of people sit around a pub talking about the end of the world, whilst outside, the rest of the Earth's population appear to have dropped down dead. And talk they do… on and on and on…

No-one in this film dies screaming, I'm afraid. Anyone who is seen to be killed is usually a zombie, and their reaction to a bullet hole is a kind of stiff upper lipped "Oh, I appear to have been shot. Cripes, what bad luck. Oh well…" than a blood curdling "Aaaiiiieeeee!" 

Still, you can't have everything, and this is a black and white British horror movie, after all. Anyway, back to the plus points. The first five minutes are awesome, as people all over the Home Counties succumb to the evil death plague from space. 

Oily mechanics collapse at the helm of steam trains, cars career off the road, bowler hatted types fall over on train station platforms… it's great. Until you realise it’s all been nicked from another film (see Village Of The Damned and compare).

Then our hero arrives in his Land Rover, and things take a turn for the downbeat. Turns out the population have been wiped out by a gas attack from a bunch of slow moving alien robots, who proceed to move slowly around the village our hero and a group of other survivors find themselves in. 

For reasons best know to their slow witted selves, the robots only attack occasionally, completely letting off the hook an annoying pregnant girl who spends at least three hours standing at a window in full view of them. 

These robots are impervious to bullets, but not to Land Rovers. They also look like they're made out of odds and ends found around the kitchens of Shepperton Studios. This film was obviously a big influence on Doctor Who - the alien robots pre date the Cybermen (although they're not as realistic, which probably tells you all you need to know) and the deserted village scenario pre dates about a hundred other episodes of the long-running programme.