The End

 

 (rotten tomatoes)

END OF THE WORLD-1977-A priest (Christopher Lee; in AIRPORT 77 the same year) enters a roadside cafe and asks to use the phone but it explodes and the owner is electrocuted. The priest then goes to church where he's greeted by... himself. After the credits Prof. Andrew Boran (Kirk Scott) picks up some strange signals from outer space. He's so famous there's a banquet in his honor but he's more interested in the signals. His boss (Dean Jagger)) sends him on a lecture tour but before his next lecture he and his wife Sylvia (Sue Lyon; LOLITA) decide to try and track the signals because they seem to be coming from Earth. They visit a nunnery then wander around in the dark. 

They stumble into the underground radio lab of Beckerman (Lew Ayres) who's listening to Russian space talk. Their investigation leads them to St. Catherine's, a church overseen by Father Pergado (Lee). He lets them check around but they don't find anything. Later they return to the place and are captured by Pergado and his nun horde. It turns out they are really aliens who killed Pergado and his nuns and assumed their form. They are stuck on Earth and want to go home. They force Boran to steal a device that will enable them to leave. He gets them the device but they left out one small detail: they are also going to destroy the Earth. Alien Pergado and his phony nuns escape through some kind of transporter. Boran and Sylvia follow. The Earth explodes. The future Sir Chris must have had a free weekend when he agreed to star in this sci-fi bore-fest with a lot of too dark night scenes. Macdonald Carey is the head of security in two quick scenes. 

Director John Hayes had been kicking around low budget cinema for quite awhile when he made END OF THE WORLD. Earlier he made GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE and GARDEN OF EVIL (both 1972). Screenwriter Frank Ray Perilli wrote the soft core takeoff CINDERELLA (with Cheryl Smith in the title role) the same year, which Kirk Scott co-starred in. He also penned LITTLE CIGARS, DRACULA'S DOG and LASTERBLAST.