Man’s creation of a weapon called the Super H-bomb is causing a fuss in outer space. The bomb is capable of annihilating the human race. A high tribunal in the Great Court of Outer Space is held to decide if mankind should be allowed to blow itself to bits or if divine intervention should be used to save the human race.
The High Judge of the tribunal (Cedric Hardwicke) recognizes the devil, Mr. Scratch (Vincent Price), as the prosecutor of the trial. On behalf of humanity in the defense chair is the Spirit of Man (Ronald Colman). Mr. Scratch argues that mankind should be able to blow themselves to smithereens. The Spirit of Man argues that the tribunal should intervene and prevent the Super H-bomb from detonating thereby saving humanity.
Both sides are allowed to present their case. The high judge allows the presenters to return to Earth to explain their position, view history and question witnesses. Noted humans who had an impact on shaping the world were either questioned in person or their stories were shown for the court to observe.
The presenters take mankind back to the prehistoric era and present snippets of man’s folly and enlightenment to push forward their views on whether or not humans should be allowed self-destruction.
“The Story of Mankind” was released in 1957 and was directed by Irwin Allen. It is an American dark comedy fantasy. The movie was loosely based on the 1921 nonfiction book “The Story of Mankind” by Hendrik Willem van Loon. The film uses a lot of stock footage from earlier Warner Brothers’ movies such as “Land of the Pharaohs” 1955 and “Helen of Troy” 1956.
It is a weird combination of evolution and religion. Promoted as an epic it is mostly splashy and silly. There are a ton of people in this movie. It’s like watching a bunch of tiny vignettes containing an all-star cast. Some of the historical points illustrated are, the Egyptian era and the rein of Pharaoh Khufu (John Carradine), Cleopatra (Virginia Mayo) and her evil greed, the Roman era and the reign of Nero (Peter Lorre), Joan of Arc (Hedy Lamarr), Christopher Columbus (Anthony Dexter) and the advancement into the new world as well as the various wars throughout history up until Hitler (Bobby Watson).
This is another one of Irwin Allen’s extravaganzas that turned into a rather expensive dud. I wasn’t impressed by it. Other than a decent performance by Coleman and a wonderfully campy performance by Price, the movie was a bunch of soliloquies punctuated by stock footage. The king of disaster movies managed to make one, although that wasn't his intent.
As an observer to this, it seems pretty obvious to me that mankind should be allowed to destroy itself. Of course, I’ve always felt that the world would get along just fine without people in it and would actually be better off to be left to its own devices. The only problem is that mankind has a tendency to destroy everything else around him as well.
This was the Marx Brothers' final film and the only one in color. Eden Hartford who played Laughing Water and Groucho Marx, who played Peter Minuit, were married in real life.