User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

The titular menace in AIP's 1958 "Terror from the Year 5000" ('a hideous she-thing!' as the ads screamed) does not come from another planet but from Earth's future (5200 AD to be exact), a novel idea at the time but quite common since. Like her counterpart in "The Astounding She-Monster," both share the radioactive touch of death, this Future Woman revealing that every fifth child is born a mutation, and that their contaminated blood needs a fresh supply from the 20th century. Triple threat writer/producer/director Robert J. Gurney Jr. previously scripted the AIP sci fi comedy "Invasion of the Saucer Men," and does a pretty good job on the low budget, the lab located in an ordinary house on a coastal island in Florida (location shooting in Dade County), where two scientists have been trading objects from our time with those from the future, until the vain, glory seeking younger one brings back something alive, a cat with four eyes that gets dumped in the lake. Joyce Holden, sadly making her screen swan song, is a breath of fresh air modeling a nightgown and two bathing suits, former leading lady in Columbia's 1956 "The Werewolf," but it's the enigmatic Salome Jens in her film debut that audiences recall as the Future Woman, who alas only appears in the final reel. There's enough intrigue to last its hour long running time however, at least for male members of the viewing audience, topping a double billed in certain markets with either "The Screaming Skull" or "The Brain Eaters."

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.

Scientests living in rural Florida build a teleportation device that brings out a freaky woman from the year 5000 A.D.

Admittedly Terror from the Year 5000 is a completely hokey low-budgeter, but it's one of those old drive-in flicks that has an unintentionally funny edge that makes it a riot of a watch. The effects are all very low budget, after all our villain is a weird screeching woman in a sequined suit! The cast is OK, but everything else is a bit silly!

Still those that enjoy old schlock flicks will find it a decent laugh.

** out of ****

The movies title is a bit misleading in that there isn't much terror in this movie. In fact, there isn't much of anything going on till the last maybe 20 minutes of this flick. A museum curator gets a mysterious statue and is asked to test it for its age. Somehow he finds out it comes from the future. I don't know if I am right on this point, but I don't believe you can tell if something comes from the future...only how old something is. Well, he also finds out it is highly radioactive so he goes to this professor's house where the statue came from. There the professor and his extremely stupid assistant are doing, of course, time travel experiments. Since the statue was radioactive the professor wants to stop the experiments for the time being, but the stupid assistant wants to keep going. His fiancé eventually goes with the curator and the assistant summons a mutant from the year 5000, which kills people for no reason and then convinces the assistant to go with her to the year 5000 and help out their people. She steals a nurse's face before this and uses it as a mask as she is a bit mutated. All in all a pretty lousy sci-fi flick that has so many inaccuracies it is pathetic.

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.

Experiments in time travel bring a predatory female mutant from a distant, post-apocalyptic future to an isolated island. Sadly, the film is nothing like its excellent poster: the 'terror' is a woman in crude 'mutant' makeup wearing a sparkly suit that emerges from a bargain-basement 'time machine' that looks more like a converted boiler than the 'window into the future' depicted in the poster. The acting ranges from adequate to amateur, with cardboard characters delivering an insipid and derivative script. The only highlights are the terror's face stealing machine and the briefly glimpsed four-eyed (dead) cat from the future. The story doesn't make much sense, even from a time-travel perspective, and is yet another example of the 'our dying civilisation needs your men/women to survive' shtick (a storyline flogged-to-death by 1958). For extreme fans and life-listers only. The film was edited by Dede Allen - another example of a future A-lister getting started in the business (her next editing job was Robert Wise's 'Odds Against Tomorrow', 1959).

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.

If you look past all the plot holes and things that just don't make sense,you still have a terrible movie here. A guy has invented a machine that can send things to the future and apparently future people have these machines and they send stuff back. One guy decides to send his phi beta kappa key into the future(because they are very unimportant) and the future sends back a coin asking for help.When a woman from the future comes through the machine she makes it clear that she can read Greek yet she has no clue what a phi beta kappa key is.The only good thing is that people in the future can rip off a persons face and use it as their own,brilliant.

I admit it – if it wasn't for a copy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Terror from the Year 5000, I doubt I would have ever had the intestinal fortitude to sit through this thing. It's bad in every way a movie can be bad. I've often seen (and even occasionally used) the expression, "So bad it's good". Well that doesn't ring true with Terror from the Year 5000. It's so bad it's bad. If I were asked to do a one word review, "inept" comes to mind and satisfactorily describes the movie. Other fitting one word reviews would include: dull, monotonous, laughable, clumsy, horrible, etc. Skip it at all costs.

The MST3K commentary was actually quite funny. Two of my favorite running gags throughout the episode were the continuous riffing on the male lead each time he found himself shirtless and Servo's announcements and explanations regarding "Terror" being delayed from making an appearance in the movie. Both are laugh out loud funny. Good stuff!

On an isolated island deep in the swamps of...Florida, I think?... Professor Erling and his assistant Victor are tampering with Gods domain, namely the Time Barrier. Behind the closed doors of their basement lab, the two men believe they have been contacted by people from the future, who send them silly looking statues and bowling trophies. Professor Erling's strong-willed daughter Claire decides to send one of the sillier statues to museum curator Bob. Bob somehow manages to carbon date the statue to the year 5000 AD, and discovers in the process that it is highly radioactive. Intrigued, Bob heads down to the swamps for answers. Victor, the uptight lab assistant, has been running his own secret experiments with the time transport thingie in secret and, unbeknownst to the others, has unleashed the Terror From the Year 5000!!! Really, it's just a really ugly chick in a sequined spandex disco suit, but she is very deadly and she wants Victor to accompany her to the future and save her nuclear decimated race of freaks. Fortunately, the astute Claire notices the Terror's hideous silver spike heels and realizes that such shoes can only be FROM THE FUTURE!!! Will they be able to save Victor? More importantly, can they prevent the post- apocalyptic fate that awaits them all? Who cares?

This is a silly, senseless film with a threadbare plot and some very laughable moments...like the hilarious plot point of the futuristic pumps. No one is very likable: Claire is stridently annoying, Victor is a wuss, Bob is a dork. Who cares if they live or die? I can't believe that Salome Jens went from this to "Seconds" with Rock Hudson. The script is atrocious and the love triangle is just icky. Stick with the MST3K version. This film is dreadful, embarrassing, boring and just really painfully stupid.

This is the first time reviewing a movie featured on MST3K, but I do not let Mike and the bots influence my opinion on the movie. I have seen some pretty good movies on that show, and the hilarious riffing just enhanced it. This movie, however, was really bad, like most movies featured on the show.

I think the worst thing about this movie is the pacing. Basically a guy finds some statue thingy, which he uses some kind of weird science to determine it's from the future, and then nothing really happens for half the movie. There's nothing wrong with a slow- building thriller, but there's no tension in the first half. Sure we get some pointless subplot about a love triangle or something, but this is a movie obviously marketed as a sci fi thriller. How about some thrills? Those of you patient enough to get to the titular "Terror" will at least be treated with some cool make up effects, which is basically the only reason I gave it a three instead of a one. But other than that, the second half doesn't have much thrills either.

But enough of the pacing, let's talk about some of the filmmaking. Like I said before, there's some good make-up near the end. But the person wearing the make up was in a really stupid costume, but I can't really explain much more without ruining the film. There was some on location shooting that appears to be shot at night, without much lighting, so it was too dark to see what was happening at times. There was also lots of padding, with pointless shots of driving and walking, and a couple over long scenes with a scientist and a time machine being, uh, scientist-y. As for the acting, it was wooden, but the average amount of wood you'd find in a b-movie.

I would recommend the MST3K episode, but this movie is probably unwatchable without it.

Most of this movie is taken up by endless debates among the scientists about how to proceed with the experiments. Also, the romantic episodes are distracting and mean nothing. When they get around to meaningful experiments a subject from the distant somehow manages to arrive on her own. There are many loose ends, unexplained events that were sacrificed to make room for all the soap opera is sequences. The acting is very uneven and the script is tedious. If this is supposed to be a peek into the future gives us more about the futur.Yhis falls far short of expectations.

AKA "Terror From the Year 5000", shown on "Chiller Theater" back in the early 1970s... As kids, we called this the "Chicken Lady" movie because we thought the mutant Future Womans shrieks sounded like some kind of chicken (?)... Hey, but the name stuck...for us, anyway...

Almost 35 years later and I still recall it as the single scariest *bleeping* movie I ever saw! I Picked up a DVD copy online to watch with my kids... of course now this thing is one giant wheel of CHEESE compared with modern day CGI gorefests and bloodbath flicks. And it is no longer "scary" to me at all; my kids laughed uncontrollably every time the Future Woman jumped out and fried someone with those radioactive Lee Press-On Nails! BUT...

For my $$$ still rather see 100 movies like this than drek like "The Hills Have Eyes","The Devils Rejects" or "Saw"...

Rather odd to notice now - as an adult - that Salome Jens, aka Future Woman, was ONE HOT BABE without that mutant makeup job!

Hellllllllllooooooooooo Nurse Salome!

This movie try's to frighten you and spook you and OH MY GOD..LOOK OUT FOR THOSE NAILS!! She hypnotizes her victims with her shiny new press on nails...WHAT?? It's just plain pretty bad, but I'd have to say again that it's so bad that it's...GOOD. There is one scene that brings a little chill when the psycho killer from the future is marching(?) through time and spewing this bizarre shriek that's..actually.. kind of spooky. But this is a short scene and soon you're back to some serious cheapness. It's the kind of 50's sci-fi cheapness that makes this film pass over the border from "just a bad movie" to "so bad it's good/funny/culty". If you want to know how I can say this see my review on "The Amazing Colossal Man".