Terror from the Year 5000

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.

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.

(FYI, I caught this movie on YouTube.)

The average IMDb ranking is currently 2.5 for this movie, which is twice as low as it ought to be. This is not a great movie, it's not even a particularly good movie, but it is not in the same abysmal league as truly bad grades Z 1950s scifi.

Other reviews have noted some of the cool moments in the movie, such as the woman from the future at first speaking Greek, not knowing exactly what language is being spoken in the time frame to wish she has returned from the year 5000. There are a few other such moments, which exhibit more cleverness than the scripts from a good many other super low-budget movies of the era.

That's not to say the script is good. It's too talky, and there are long moments of melodrama which in the hands of a decent script writer could have been replaced by moments of Science Fiction plot and dialogue instead (without adding a dime to the budget). The acting is better than in many similarly low-budget movies, but it's still not good. The one exception is Joyce Holden, who has talent, and mostly succeeds in imbuing her lines with personality.

I myself don't find this movie worthy of repeated viewing, but for genuine fans of 1950s science fiction it is worth a look.

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!...