TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000 (1958)

In 1947, the narrator tell us, man broke the sound barrier; in 1958, the space barrier; now, someone on an isolated island in Florida is trying to break the time barrier, but in doing so, will unleash a Terror! From the Year! 5000! In this Florida laboratory, Prof. Earling (Frederic Downs) and his assistant Victor (John Stratton) put an item in a large chamber with a glass window, fire up the electrical power—so much that they had to move to this island to avoid messing with the community's power grid—and when all the bells and whistles have stopped, they find a different object in the chamber. They believe they have just made an exchange with someone from the future—and Victor has even seen the hazy face of a woman appear briefly. Earling's daughter Claire (Joyce Holden), unknown to her father and Victor, sends one of these objects, a statuette, to Earling's former student Robert Hedges (Ward Costello) for carbon dating. Robert can scarcely believe the result: it's from the year 5200 A.D. It's also dangerously radioactive. Robert heads for Florida to consult with Earling and hits it off with Claire, which makes Victor jealous since he is supposedly her fiancé. The experiments continue for a time, and when Robert sends his Phi Beta Kappa key, the object returned is a bracelet with the phrase "Save us" etched on it in Greek, so Robert is convinced that Earling is on to something.

One night, Victor sneaks a couple of suitcases out of the house and throws them in a pond. Robert sees this, and the next day, he dives in and opens one of them to find a dead, mutant, three-eyed cat. It would appear that Victor has been running his own experiments without Earling's knowledge, and when radiation burns are found on Victor's skin, they take him to a mainland hospital for testing. But that night, Victor leaves the hospital, gets drunk, and heads back to the island where he pulls off one last experiment: bringing back the mysterious woman he saw earlier. It turns out that the people of the future have become mutated, radioactive freaks and she wants to mate with someone in order to save the human blood line. But who will want to mate with a scarred up woman dressed in dark leotards dotted with big sparkly doodads? Well, lucky for her, she can hypnotize folks with her sparkly fingernails. And Victor is her first victim.

This low-budget sci-fi film was mocked on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, but it's actually a little better than that accomplishment would indicate. If nothing else, the plot points were original in its day. Certainly the idea of exchanging items through time was new, and some critics say that this was the first American movie to show an operating time machine—MGM's adaptation of THE TIME MACHINE was made two years later. In most ways, it looks and feels like your average late 50s B-film, and one might wish that the effect of the woman from the future (Salome Jens) was better—she truly does look laughable in her sequined tights, though the scene in which she takes the face off of a visiting nurse to disguise herself is effective. The acting is passable, with John Stratton (pictured as the Terror's sparkly fingers cast reflections behind him) the standout as the mentally disintegrating Victor (though IMDb says that Stratton never made another movie). Of course, there are some bad movie moments just made for MST3K: the actress in the small role of Miss Blake, Robert's assistant, is awful—or maybe the person dubbing her is awful, or maybe both; there's a silly looking slapdown battle in the water between Robert and Victor; icky comic relief and creepiness are combined in the completely disposable character of Angelo. Interesting and watchable, though perhaps only for sci-fi fans. [YouTube]