Back in the 50s, atomic monster pics were a dime a dozen. Everywhere you turned, filmmakers were slipping in (either subtly or not-so-subtly) their messages about the upcoming nuclear age and all the atomic fallout. Yes, tensions were mounting during that time as East and West raced to have the better nukes, the better space program, the better blah, blah, blah. From that period came some really good ones, like the giant ant movie THEM. In the midst of that period, this little movie was released. The concept is novel. On an isolated island in Florida, a few scientists are experimenting with time travel and nuclear power. Hm... why didn't Doc Brown think of that? And believe it or not, they actually manage to contact someone from the future who sends back little trinkets. One such trinket, a small metal statue is sent to Bob Hedges, a curator in New York. After much deliberating with his "loud and overbearing" secretary, he discovers the statue was produced in 5200 AD. So then it's off to Florida to see what's going on. Through a series of unfortunate events, a badly scarred woman is transported to the present and begins wreaking havoc. Kinda like THE TERMINATOR, in fact. Personally I think she is one of the scariest monsters to ever grace, or is that disgrace?, the silver screen. Late in the film, she kills a nurse and then uses a special mask that removes her face, to disguise herself. Wow, HELLRAISER did the same thing some thirty years later! The monster's make-up is thoroughly creepy. Most of the acting and dialogue is good too. I especially liked the witty repartee between Bob and Claire. Sadly little facts get mixed up, but let's not let the small details deter us... Well okay! What's mind-numbing is everyone's complete nonchalance around all the radiation. None of the scientists wear radiation suits or perform rudimentary decontamination. One character, dopey and brooding Victor, even says "Just because that statue was a little radioactive." A little radioactive? Either something is or it isn't. Factual error: the Carbon 14 test that Bob uses wouldn't really work on metal. Conveniently near the end, one scientist says to Bob "Better put on our anti-radiation suits." Huh, where did those suddenly come from? I know, I'm nitpicking. I hate to gripe but when an enjoyable movie overlooks facts like that, it annoys me. On IMDb the overall rating for this one is pretty low, but don't be fooled. Please track down this movie for some mild entertainment and for one of the best movie monsters!

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.

One wonders if the people who make films like this really care if audiences like them or not.So let's see...we've got a museum curator who gets a statue in the mail along with a request to do radiometric dating on it. If he were competent in the field he would send it back since radiometric dating is unlikely to produce a meaningful date on a manufactured metallic object. But he goes ahead and does it and somehow determines that the piece is from the future (5200 AD). Never mind that radiometric dating doesn't work like that and couldn't give a future date for anything. He also is told later that the piece is dangerously radioactive. Well, again, if he were competent at the radiochemistry needed for the dating, he would have found THAT out right away. But ANOTHER scientist has to tell him that after the fact.The piece is the product of a scientist and his financial backer working alone in the Everglades. If everything that comes though the time machine is so hopelessly radioactive, why aren't they both dead, or at least very sick? If the statue is so dangerous, why do the scientists who produced it (and who know it's radioactive) leave their amazing discovery lying around, and don't notice when it turns up missing? And if the apparatus used for this time travel is so powerful that it screws up TVs, lights, and motorboat engines, how is it possible for the young backer to be using it without anyone else's knowledge? And why 5200 AD? Don't the scientists have any control over the time period they explore? What's so interesting about 5200 AD as opposed to other times? Why not a hundred years in the future, or a billion years for that matter? Why not go backward in time?Nothing much happens in the middle of the movie so it branches out into desultory explorations of jealousy and voyeurism, only to drop these themes when it comes time for "science fiction" to rear its head again.And then the Terror shows up - an ugly woman. Somebody's got some issues with women I think! She speaks Greek from a few letters on a Phi Beta Kappa key, then conveniently switches to modern English when that doesn't work. She can hypnotize you with her sparkly fingernails. Oh, yeh, and she can kill you and steal your face. Which she does to the lovely and talented Salome Jens (the only actor in this wretched mess to deliver a well-crafted performance). From here on the script backfills furiously in a hurried attempt to generate meaning in this meaningless heap of trash before the budget runs out.Time travel is an enormously complicated plot device for a science fiction film; few have done it well. "Terror from the Year 5000" is not one of them. It tries to cover its obvious shortcomings in pointless and unexplained plot diversions.But again, it's unlikely the makers cared. Thank God it didn't wreck Salome Jens' career at the outset.

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.