Terror from the Year 5000

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.

As a child I fell in love with 'monster' movies immediately upon seeing my first (Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman) on television. Fortunately for me I grew up in the fifties, an era prolific with cheapie horror and sci-fi films. A neighborhood theatre ran them almost exclusively at the time and I attended every Saturday (and sometimes a couple more days per week in glorious summer). Just couldn't get enough of this stuff.

I could take all the giant ants, scorpions and spiders, all the ghosts and haunted houses, the numerous editions of frankenstein monsters and invaders from space pretty well. For some reason, though, nothing frightened me more or stayed with me longer than the rare feminine monsters. Perhaps it was because women were always the loving caregivers (Mom, Grandma, my teachers, my sisters). When sick, or waking from a nightmare we always call for Mom. So, I think the idea of a woman being a vicious, scary thing was such a perversion of all I otherwise knew, the effect on me was especially chilling. I had no problem with the mutilated faces of men as in 'Horrors Of The Black Museum', 'The Black Sleep', 'The Unearthly' and so forth. But the visages of the female victims in 'The Hypnotic Eye' and of the niece in 'Frankenstein's Daughter' always made me squeeze shut my eyes.

'The Astounding She Monster' is a prime example of these fears - a malevolent, radioactive female relentlessly stalking me, her touch meaning sure pain and death. From the age of seven until seventeen, that particular luminescent character showed up in my nightmares. But the single most frightening thing I ever saw was the female terror that came shrieking out of the time machine in this movie, arms pumping in a marching style, coming right at me. Peeling off another woman's face to wear as a mask was incredibly disturbing. Yep - this was the single-most terror of my childhood movie-viewing. I couldn't even bring myself to keep my eyes open for more than half a second when the movie closes with a close-up of this hideously deformed feminist with a wicked widow's peak. Even at the age of sixteen, surrounded by buddies watching it on the late show, my body kept freezing with fear, though I didn't mention it to them.

Going by most of the reviews here, today's audiences, accustomed to the most graphic horror, just find this monster boring. But I'm still scared of this terror from the year 5000. Oh yeah, and the four-eyed cat gave me the creeps pretty good too.

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.

As far as I know, this is the first American feature film about time travel via a time machine. A time machine was featured in the American serial BRICK BRADFORD (1947) and in the English comedy TIME FLIES (1944). Film firsts should be noted and applauded even if the films they appear in are otherwise unremarkable. TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000 is a somewhat lackluster production with uneven performances and direction. I say that this film is shade a better than most other low budget quickies from 1958 in that its story slightly more imaginative. The time machine was something new to films in 1958, the bit with the hypnotic finger nails is certainly unusual and don't forget the four eyed mutant cat from the future. I thought the idea of having the future women at first mistakenly speaking Greek was a clever idea, since the present people had sent the future people with trinkets that had Greek writing on them. The make up for the future woman is quite poor, no wonder the director mostly kept her face hidden throughout. There is one scene where the scientists leave the island and go to a movie on the mainland. AIP studio heads must of come up with this scene to insert a little promotion. The film they go to see is AIP's I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. Oh, by the way, I like the 1958 Edsel Corsair that Ward Costello drives.

In TERROR IN THE YEAR 5000, scientists somehow bring an artifact from the far-flung future into the present. NYC museum curator, Dr. Hedges (Ward Costello) heads for Florida to investigate this anomaly.

Untold horror ensues.

Another of the very talky sci-fi movies of its era, the action level is extremely low. Any real interest comes from the jealous tension between the head scientist's daughter (Joyce Holden), her dad's assistant, Dr. Hedges, and Angelo the caretaker, who happens to have the world's most interesting eyebrows. This soap opera is interrupted only sporadically, up until the "big finale".

Salome Jens plays the visitor from the future who runs around causing havoc. Her shimmery outfit and fingernails, along with her "transformation" scene are semi-interesting. The rest is a bit of a slog to wade through.

POINT OF INTEREST: There's a scene where the characters go to the movies, and the posters of I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN are on display outside the theater. Any collectors will drool over these vintage images!...