Terror from the Year 5000

1950's science fiction films are so earnest and so crummy that it's impossible not to like them. "Terror From The Year 5000" is a prime example of the genre.

On a lonely island in Florida's Everglades, a professor is experimenting with time travel. The project is successful to the extent that Prof Erling and his assistant Victor are able to trade artefacts with people from the year 5,200AD. One of these items finds its way to the desk of Dr. Bob Hodges, a museum curator and all-round good guy, who is amazed to learn that the figurine dates from the future.

Bob Hodges heads for the Everglades, where Prof Erling and his beautiful daughter Claire make him welcome. Victor, meanwhile, has started putting in some unauthorised overtime in the lab, with alarming results...

Robert Gurney wrote, produced and directed this gauche piece of malarkey with its wooden acting, daffy plot and laughable sets. The scientific gadgetry in the lab is particularly amusing.

The howlers come thick and fast. Bob explains to his secretary Miss Blake (boy, if there were only an oscar for stodgy delivery ...) that carbon-14 dating places the statuette in the future. Just how carbon-14 can do that is baffling to ordinary mortals like me! When Bob fires his shotgun, we hear the shot but there is no muzzle flash from the dummy weapon. When a female in a nurse's uniform opens the door, somebody says, "You must be the nurse". The clock on the lab wall shows silly times which don't match the sunlight outside. The prof's gadget disrupts all machinery in the district when it's switched on. We see a TV set in a local bar pack up, but nobody seems to mind.

There are many unintentional laughs ("I'll do my exploring in the laboratory, if you don't mind", "And then the missile centre fired him" etc etc). Every plot point is laboured to death. The non-sequiturs abound. Nobody flinches when it is realised that they are all contaminated with radioactivity, and no-one warns Claire when she walks in. Later, it turns out that the lab has protective suits available. When Victor breaks a pane of glass in the time chamber, he picks up a replacement pane of exactly the right size which happens to be lying beside him. When Bob gets out of bed and follows Victor, he unaccountably has his shoes on. Why would Victor go to the trouble of getting in bed in the same room as Bob, only to sneak out and tamper with the gadget? And why at this stage would Bob want to follow him?

It goes on. The 'monster' speaks perfect Greek and English, even though it comes from five millennia in the future. The men know there's a dangerous creature out there, but they stand back and let Claire answer the door. The monster kills Angelo easily, but Claire is able to unmask it without any trouble. When they find the nurse's body, Hedges and Erling stroll back to the house as if they were picking mushrooms. Nobody calls the police when Angelo is found dead. Bob and the Professor abandon the house, with its two women and sick man, to go searching the island together. Nobody thinks of calling for help. The nurse, in her immaculate uniform, has to walk up to the house through swamp and jungle without a guide. When the alarm is sounded, nobody wonders where Victor is until after it's all over.

The editing is atrocious. We see the Professor waiting for his cue before speaking, and the lumpy back-and-forth dialogue cuts are dreadful. The close-ups of Bob and Claire swimming in the pond are oh-so-obviously filmed in a studio tank. At one point, Victor says "Professor, we're wasting our time." One can't help thinking he's right.

The 1950s weren't exactly known for quality genre fare, but there are certainly some welcome, stellar exceptions. It doesn't take long to gather that this is not one of those exceptions. As 'Terror from the year 5,000' begins it's not very promising, as the first several minutes give us an unimportant female assistant played with utmost stereotypical airheaded dippiness, paired with the introduction of the tale's central conceit - something from the distant future existing in the present - which especially for the manner of its presentation requires an unprecedented level of suspension of disbelief. From the outset the dialogue and scene writing are less than great, and given the abbreviated runtime of just over one hour, it sure seems as if the picture approaches its plot with too much indifference. We're nearly halfway through before the story starts to advance beyond "is this from the future" and "vaguely suspicious behavior." While the narrative does pick up some more thereafter, the proceedings continue to be flush with tawdriness that's unbecoming of the suspense and excitement it ideally wishes to foster. Richard DuPage's music generally maintains a light mood even when nothing else does; an obligatory romantic element feels extra contrived; supporting character Claire is little more than eye candy for male viewers. The bulk of these 65-some minutes are built on fairly ordinary drama and conflict between present-day humans, leaving the science fiction for no more than a collective one-third of the length, and mostly in the back end.

In fairness, this flick can at least surely claim to be a step or two up from some of its contemporaries. There's no stock footage employed here, and the special effects are a smidgen better than what we've seen in other works of the period. The special makeup, and the outfit provided for Salome Jens, are modest, but an improvement on the cheapness of some kindred fare ('Attack of the giant leeches,' anyone?). Broadly speaking the cast actually give commendable, earnest performances, without (as much of) the ham-handedness that plagues other such titles. And while the plot has its troubles as written, there are good ideas here, and I think it all concludes with a fairly strong finish in the last several minutes. 'Terror from the year 5,000' never reaches a level exceeding "average" or "middling" at its very, very best, yet I'm of the mind that there's just enough value here - and equally important, just enough care taken - that the extremely low reputation it has carried over the past several decades seems excessive to me. Of all its faults, I believe the biggest issue here is that in the spirit of contemporary sensibilities (and presumably budgetary constraints), filmmaker Robert J. Gurney Jr. Takes so long to develop the story, and to gently weave in the sci-fi facets, that by the time the would-be thrills and intended weight are emphasized, we as viewers have already been somewhat dismissive of the remainder. One way or another, the movie just treads too lightly for its own good.

I don't think this feature is wholly rotten. It's sufficiently weak, however, that considering how many other things we could be watching instead from the 50s or otherwise, there's no real reason to seek this out unless one has a specific impetus. I'm glad for those who get more out of 'Terror from the year 5,000' than I do, and I also can't begrudge those who regard it more harshly. All I can say is that while there are far worse ways to spend one's time, if you're going to watch at all, it's best reserved as something light for a lazy night.

RE: The DVD edition of 1958's "Terror From the Year 5000" recently issued by Incredibly Strange Film Works (ISFW) of Jamestown, MO: Those of you who've been waiting for a pristine-quality DVD edition of this fun Sci-Fi oldie will have to go on waiting. The very fuzzy picture and sound quality (with contrasts so bad that some night scenes are nearly impossible to make out) make this ISFW DVD a big disappointment, especially considering the $24.99 price tag! (The Horror/Sci-Fi fans among you may also remember ISFW's equally unsatisfactory VHS video edition of 1964's "Horror of Party Beach", mastered from a toned-down TV print with all the gore removed!)

I'd say that any DVD or VHS video bearing the ISFW logo should be approached with caution.

Terror From the Year 5000 is of American International's poorer efforts from the 1950's. It is one of those movies that is so bad it's good.

A scientist experimenting with time travel on a remote island in the Everglades manages to bring back a mutated woman from 5200 AD! She starts killing people and after replacing her face with that of a nurse she killed, she heads back to the future.

The cast includes Ward Costello, Joyce Holden, Frederic Downs and Salome Jens as the woman from the future. I've never heard of any of these.

Despite the very low budget, I rather enjoyed watching Terror From the Year 5000 and taped it when it came on BBC1 during the early hours some years ago. Luckily, I still have it on video.

Rating: 2 stars out of 5.

AIP and 2.5 statue 5200 ad Florida swamps future---medallion asking for help

Currently, "Terror From the Year 5000" has an abominably low score of 2.5. This would indicate that this is a truly horrible film...but it isn't. Now I am not saying it's a good movie, but the picture clearly is suffering from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" syndrome. In other words, when a film is made fun of my the show, huge numbers of the viewers of the show go online and bombard IMDb with scores of 1. If you look at the bottom 100 films on IMDb, you'll also see that nearly all of the American films from the 1950s, 60s and 70s were skewered on that TV show as well. Often, much worse films manage to stay off the list simply because of exposure. So, if you are looking for a film as wretched as "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "Robot Monster", well, you should keep looking.

The film is about a weird experiment going on in the middle of nowhere in Florida. Why this odd location? Because the project requires so much energy it would tend to interfere with the equipment of folks living nearby. And what IS this huge power draw for....well, to make contact with folks from the future! Eventually, they are able to bring objects from the year 5200! And, a bit later, they get a medallion that is begging for help! So is this future trying to contact us? And, is this a good thing?

Now I am not going to say that this is a great film. The 'monster' is silly but there are much worse examples from the era. Overall, an okay movie but certainly not an awful picture. The acting and direction are competent...not really good, but competent.