Deluge (film)

Plot

Scientists detect a violent storm approaching New York City and begin warning the populace, believing abnormal barometric patterns signal an unprecedented event. A sudden solar eclipse confirms their fears, and global destruction appears imminent. Telegraph messages from Rome and London report days of unending earthquakes and declare 'The End of the World is at Hand.' Tremendous earthquakes hit the United States West Coast, killing millions, and the entire west coast is reported destroyed.

The quakes generate major tsunamis in the world's oceans. Martin Webster and his wife Helen gather their children, Ronny and Mary Ann, and head for a high rock formation to escape the floods. Martin leaves Helen and returns to their house for more supplies, but the destruction of New York begins while he is away. Buildings crumble and large tsunamis strike the city.

Martin returns to find his wife and daughters missing. Isolated on a newly formed island near the former site of New York, the grief-stricken Martin builds a cabin and hides supplies in a tunnel. On another island, two ruffians, Jephson and Norwood, find world-class swimmer Claire Arlington unconscious on the shore. They feud over her, and when she is attacked, Claire flees and swims away.

Jephson kills Norwood and searches for her by boat. Claire reaches Martin's island, collapses, and he nurses her back to health. They become friends and eventually fall in love.

Production notes

The film begins with a verse from Genesis 9:11. Author S. Fowler Wright started pitching a movie adaptation of his 1928 novel in 1933, and by May he had sold the options to Worldwide Studios for $5,000. His own screenplay was never used. Instead, the independent company Admiral/K.B.S. Productions made the film on a budget of $171,000 (about $3.51 million in 2020).

Wright saw the final scenes being shot and was unhappy that the producers had altered the book’s ending. He called the film “ghastly” in his diary and told his children to skip it. Though it was the first movie to show New York City completely destroyed, all the filming took place in Los Angeles. A scene where a tidal wave drowns the city and kills nearly everyone was later reused in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow.

The special effects were handled by Ned Mann, Russell E. Lawson, and Billy Williams; Mann went on to work on Things to Come (1936). Some stock footage of ships and planes heading back to port during severe storms includes real footage of the U.S. Navy airship USS Macon ZRS-5, which was lost at sea in 1935.

Preservation status

Republic Pictures acquired the film solely for its special effects sequences, repurposing disaster footage for S.O.S. Tidal Wave (1939), Dick Tracy vs Crime Inc (1941), and King of the Rocket Men (1949). For decades, Deluge was believed lost. In 1981, Forrest J Ackerman located an Italian-dubbed print (titled La distruzione del mondo) in an Italian film archive. That same year, Kansas City film distributor and collector Wade Williams said he found an Italian-language nitrate print in a Rome mansion basement, owned by his friend Luigi Cozzi.

Ackerman confirmed it was a lost film in the United States. After Williams purchased access rights, he created a preservation duplicate negative and a 35mm print, which was subtitled in English for its first VHS release by Englewood Entertainment. The 35mm print then had a theatrical re-release at New York’s Film Forum and other revival venues. In 2016, a 35mm nitrate duplicate negative with the original English soundtrack surfaced.

Lobster Films performed a 2K restoration scan, which Kino Repertory picked up for a limited theatrical run. Kino Lorber Studio Classics issued a home media Blu-ray in February 2017.