Dimension 5

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Franklin Adreon; Produced by Earle Lyon for United Pictures and Harold Goldman Associates, released by Feature Film Corporation of America. Screenplay by Arthur C. PIerce; Photography by Alan Stensvold; Edited by Robert Eisen; Music by Paul Dunlap. Starring: Jeffrey Hunter, France Nuyen, Harold Sakata, Donald Woods, Linda Ho, Robert Ito, David Chow and Deanna Lund.

Foolish and cheap but slick sci-fi/spy film with the gimmick of Jeff wearing a belt which allow him to decompose and transport himself invisibly at will, in time as well as space. This allows him to change history at will. Hilariously dated: Chinese society called Dragon threatens to blow up Los Angeles unless all American forces are withdrawn from Southern Asia. One guy makes a flippant joke that is oddly prophetic: "You're as well protected as our president would be on the way to Peking".

Dumped Along-Side Piles of Low-Budget James Bond Trash.

This Embarrassing Miss-Fire with Jeffrey Hunter as a Blue-Eyed Lady's Man is Juvenile Junk that Meanders Along with Hardly a Scene that isn't Worth-Less.

Hunter as Justin Powers Super-Spy, Complete with a Time-Travel Belt that Looks like it Came From the Toy-Section at K-Mart.

The Snazzy Adornment with its Multi-Colored Dials is a Cumbersome Gadget that also Comes with a "Ring" Accessory.

None of this Means Much Because it is Underused and Unimpressive when it is Used.

There are a Myriad of Jet Airliners Taking Off and Landing and Helicopters Hovering Here and There.

A Couple of Fight Scenes are as Boring and Dull as Possible in a Film that Struggles Consistently to be Anything More than an Episode of a Mediocre TV Show.

There are Bond,eh, Powers-Babes Sprinkled Around Winking, Fawning, and Pitching-Woo, because that's a Trope of the Genre.

Beefcake and Oiled-Up Harold "Odd-Job" Sakata Shows Up as, get this, "Big Buddha", but for Some Reason is Confined to a Wheel-Chair.

Abysmal, Atrocious, and Skippable this is 1 Bond Knock-Off that is a Complete and Utter Fizzle.

The swinging 60s strike again in this mildly - make that VERY mildly - amusing espionage nonsense about a supposedly top notch intelligence agent, Justin Power (Jeffrey Hunter, "The Searchers") who is partnered with a Chinese-American female agent, "Kitty" (France Nuyen, "South Pacific"). Their mission is to foil a criminal organization dubbed The Dragons, which are headed by wheelchair-bound "Big Buddha" (Harold "Oddjob" Sakata, who is dubbed by Paul Frees). The Dragons plan to detonate a bomb in the City of Angels, but the good guys have a secret weapon: a time travel device that can be worn like a belt!

"Dimension 5" is low-tech and minor league, and it's also pretty short on action. Therefore, it's never particularly exciting, but it still has its moments. The give and take between our hero and heroine is enjoyable enough; she's Americanized enough to prefer steak and potatoes to more traditional Asian dishes. He's confident and has a fair amount of swagger. That said, neither of them are THAT smart - he needs to be saved more than once, and at the end, when she has the villain dead to rights, she doesn't kill him when she has the chance. Hunter and Nuyen are both very good looking, which should help to make their characters palatable nevertheless.

They're assisted by a fairly good bunch of supporting actors, including Donald Woods ("The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms"), Robert Ito ('Quincy M.E.'), Jon Lormer ("Creepshow"), Bill Walker ("The Long, Hot Summer"), Tad Horino ("Galaxina"), and Robert Phillips ("The Dirty Dozen"). The filmmaking isn't overly slick but it's passable; this was made by many of the same people behind the previous time travel sci-fi flick, "Cyborg 2087", including director Franklin Adreon.

A watchable, forgettable diversion for an hour and a half.

Five out of 10.

I just pulled out my copy of Dimension 5 the other night and looked at it....as with other United Pictures films it was filled with B actors in starring roles, Jeffrey Hunter, France Nuyen, Donald Woods and Harold "OddJob" Sakata. B plot that doesn't make you think much but it kept the pace going. Many of the United Pictures films were quick paced, "Castle Of Evil", "Destination Inner Space" , "Panic In the City, "Money Jungle" and "The Destructors" so if you get a chance to get any of these, they are good for any sci-fi buff's collection...not the top of the heap but not as bad as things like Astro Zombies. Other familiar faces were Kam Tong who was "Hey Boy" In "Have Gun Will Travel", Deanna Lund who went on to be in "Land Of The Giants", Robert Ito who was in "Quincy ME"

Dimension 5 is a strange little movie that combines several different genres. At best, I'd call it harmless enough as it does provide some small degree of entertainment. At worst, I'd call it a mess of movie that attempts to mix sci-fi and romance elements into what is basically a spy movie. The results are underwhelming. The sci-fi is missing from 3/4 of the movie, the romance isn't very believable, and the spy parts are too easily solved or handled.

Dimension 5's plot is a difficult one to summarize. A group called Dragon plans to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles if the US doesn't draw down its forces in South East Asia. Agent Justin Power (Jeffrey Hunter) is put on the case. He has at his disposal a time travel belt. He uses knowledge from the future to effect events in the present. He is assigned a partner, Ki Ti Tsu (France Nuyen), from Hong Kong. She is familiar with Dragon. Together, they'll have to discover the mastermind behind Dragon, how Dragon intends on bringing the device into the US, and put a stop to the plan.

Here's a laundry list of issues and observations I took from Dimension 5:

• I recently wrote about the lack of on-screen chemistry in Thor: The Dark World. If it's possible, Hunter and Nuyen have even less spark. On a scale of 1 - 10, I'd rate their on-screen chemistry at about a zero.

• The build-up to the big reveal that Power's new partner is a woman was painful to watch. I'm not sure how many times Power's boss said something like "your associate" or "your partner" without once using a pronoun. Maybe a female agent was surprising in 1966, but I found the whole exercise tedious.

• The time shift belt is featured in the first 10 minutes of the film and is all but forgotten until the final 10 minutes. There are plenty of other instances where the belt would have helped our heroes. And, at one point, we are treated to some rather lengthy scientific mumbo- jumbo about the dangers of getting stuck in a time shift. But I'm not sure why all this time is wasted on foreshadowing that goes nowhere. That movie, where the characters are caught in a different time arc, might have been more interesting.

• Why is Harold Sakata in this movie? You hire a big bruiser like Sakata and then put him in a wheelchair. What were they thinking? Also, what was the deal with Sakata's dubbing? The dubbing was horribly obvious. The sound quality was completely different from anything else in the film. However, I will give Dimension 5 some credit for hiring actual Asians like Sakata, Nuyen, and a host of others to play Asian parts. A lot of studios and producers would have hired non-Asians and (as I call it) "yellow-faced" the parts. I appreciate the effort.