The Danish director August Blom made the first attempt to put a NEO collision on screen in his eerie 1916 movie The End of the World. The conceit of the film was inspired by the appearance of Halley"s comet in 1910 but its mood reflected the revolutionary temper in Europe (Frank Stoll, a wealthy cad, dies after an angry mob of workers storms his decadent last-night party) and the horror of World War One: the meteor shower looks like a mortar bombardment while the shattered town into which one survivor emerges resembles any number of towns in France at the time.