The farmer takes them to the office of sheriff Wyatt Hampton, who calls Jackie at work to make arrangements to send the kids home.

The children, Frank, Jackie and Sam all deduce that due to Steve's removal of the gold pieces, the rainbow has been damaged and caused colour to be drained from the world, preventing plants from generating oxygen through photosynthesis.

Mike and Frank break into the pawn shop and retrieve a piece of the gold, barely escaping the violent mobs roaming the streets.

[6] Clarenceville, a 30-minute drive from Montreal, was the site of the important cornfield scenes (doubling for Kansas), and the opening and closing of the film features aerial footage in New York City and Hawaii.

"When the script was originally written, the locale was set in Washington D.C." Visual Consultant, 2nd Unit Director and Executive Producer David L. Snyder stated.

Hoskins chose Snyder to establish the appropriate look after their experience working together on Super Mario Bros. Pre-production commenced at Ealing Studios, London prior to the move to Montreal.

In early October, in the area of Montreal known as the Plateau Mont Royal, the cast and crew spent several days filming both the inside and outside of an authentic American diner.

About seventy-five extras were needed to portray a mob brandishing baseball bats, overturning cars and generally causing havoc, as the world turns headlong into disaster.

To achieve the floating quality for the interior of the Rainbow, originally the traditional special effects concept of harnesses and wire rigs hanging the actors from the rafters was suggested.

At first this underwater concept was questioned as being too radically different and untried, however after Robiner pointed out this would also save the production about 3 days of shooting because more than 70% of the rainbow interior scenes could all be shot at this one single pool location with a locked off camera and lights, the producers agreed.

The last portion of the shoot continued on a large sound stage in Montreal, where the Visual Effects segments involving the kids travelling through the rainbow was to be filmed.

Originally it was suggested to do this with the four actors hanging on wires, but Robiner rejected that idea because "hanging four kids on wires just seemed to be a dangerous and time-consuming idea, on top of being difficult for them to perform in..." To produce a shot in which the kids are supposed to be spinning head over heals while floating in the rainbow, another rig was used that let the actor remain motionless while the camera rotated 720 degrees over his head, behind his back, and then under his feet and up again.

In his one-star review of the film for the Daily Mirror, Simon Rose remarked that "despite improvements in the technology, Rainbow has the look and feel of naff American kids' TV.

"[8] Derek Malcolm of The Guardian said that "this cautionary ecological tale, which suggests that tampering with nature has penalties, includes some decent playing and a warmly human tone, but only the most cursory of special effects and very little dramatic drive.

"[10] Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard said that "the humour is laboured, the pace woefully inconsistent (it veers from magic realism through clubfooted farce to kiddie noir) and the tone so uncertain that belief remains less suspended than hung, drawn and quartered".

"[12] Quentin Falk of the Sunday Mirror, one of a number of critics to reference Hoskins' then-recurring role as spokesman for British Telecom, said that the actor "keeps telling us it's good to talk, but we could do without his lecture on the state of the environment in the well-meaning but dire family thriller Rainbow, which he co-stars in and directs.

"[14] Mike Davies of The Birmingham Post wrote that "the leaden manner in which Hoskins chooses to have his young stars do this is one singularly lacking in pace, humour (unless you count Dan Aykroyd's numbskull sheriff falling down a lot), or anything resembling fun or excitement.

"[15] Kevin Bourke of the Manchester Evening News wrote that "the mixture of some rather fey effects with some surprisingly strong and almost disturbing scenes of the world going mad doesn't really work and Rainbow is not a film that's going to seize too many people's imaginations.

"[16] Michael Wood of the Coventry Evening Telegraph wrote that "this ecological, cautionary tale for kids doesn't live up to the state-of-the-art special effects technology it uses.

Kemp further reflected that the "chief credit for the clarity and richness of the images should go to veteran cinematographer Freddie Francis, whose experience of colour/monochrome effects goes back 40 years to his work with Oswald Morris on John Huston's Moby Dick."