NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

mark.waltz A decade before The Last Man on Earth and its updated remakes, The Omega Man and I am Survivor, this apocalyptic film came along to describe the day after tomorrow. Missing special effects, silly soap opera and stars, it focuses on how people try to change old habits and temptations, dealing with the deadly consequences of a nuclear attack. The one key sequence in this that helps it rise into something unique is when two antagonistic survivors make a tentative truce, citing the realization that this is important for continuing peace. A disturbing scene has the pregnant heroine venturing into a city which was obviously a target. More profound than the silly science fiction films with radio-active monsters, it suffers as a result of too much silence which makes these five face a fate worse than annihilation: isolation.

edantheman An anonymous woman traipses from place to place, searching for any sign of civilization in the aftermath of nuclear devastation. Upon reaching a hillside house she finds another survivor, Michael Rogin. After some initial shock, she introduces herself as Roseanne Rogers and explains that the hillside house was her aunt's. He was trapped in an elevator on the Empire State Building, while she was being X-rayed in a lead-lined room. They soon become friends, though Roseanne resists Michael's attempts at intimacy, revealing that she is pregnant. Soon enough, the smoke from the fire Michael lights beckons fellow travellers Charles and Mr Oliver P Barnstaple, who were fortunate enough to be locked in a bank vault when the bomb detonated. The picture moves along languidly as our 'five' of sorts live off the land.Skeletons slouching against the door jambs of cars; ghost-town church bulletins urging Sin_ers to R_pent and evocative shots of lonely landscapes: yes, they were all here first in inglorious monochrome way back in 1951. Although later entries in the genre would offer fighter jets, radioactive mutants and Red-baiting gun-toting American heroes, Arch Oboler's seminal black-and-white feature has an eerie atmosphere and a far more believable form of threat.When the delusional Barnstaple (who believed he was on holiday) passes away peacefully on the beach, the balance is immediately restored by Eric, who washes ashore after his plane crashed at sea on the flight back from a climbing expedition on Mt Everest. He soon reveals his disdain for their communal lifestyle and discomfort in living with Charles, an African-American. After he drives their jeep through the crop they had cultivated, Michael orders Eric to leave but he pulls a pistol on him, telling him he'll leave when he's ready to. Meanwhile, Roseanne gives birth to her baby, a boy. One night, Eric kills Charles when he stops him for stealing supplies. He offers to drive Roseanne into the city where she can discover her husband's fate and, unable to resist, she accompanies him. After finding what remains of her husband, she returns to the jeep to find that Eric has used the day out to loot jewellery. She tries to return to the group but he refuses to let her go. A struggle ensues, whereupon his shirt is torn open, revealing radiation sores all over him. He runs away despondently.Roseanne's baby dies in her arms on the long walk back but Michael finds her, and they return home to replant their crops and begin life anew. Collectivism as expressed in the Bible is celebrated here as the aboriginal and final stage of human development. As Charles soliloquizes, "And God stepped out on space, and He looked around and said "I'm lonely --I'll make me a world." James Weldon Johnson's The Creation assumes an altogether different subtext in a nuclear holocaust. Has the Judeo-Christian God punished them or abandoned them due to boredom? It is a tragic ending, for if Michael and Roseanne are the Adam and Eve of the end times, then any children they may conceive will be the last (with two eyes/ears etc).It's surprising that Arch Oboler avoided the Hollywood blacklist given that his movie is so discernibly Red. Charles Lampkin portrays the first intelligent African-American character in Hollywood history, and not in an unconscious way. They all subsist happily in their commune until the gun-pointing racist with the German accent arrives, representing the fascist enemy he sought to destroy entirely in his wartime propaganda films. For him, 1951 wasn't too late to drop Henry Luce's vision of the 20th century for Henry Wallace's. It's no wonder he had to finance the film out of pocket considering the tone, and a shame it received such a limited distribution. Arch Oboler would go on to break new ground with the first 3D colour feature 'Bwana Devil' and 'The Bubble', the first to use the more economical Space-Vision 3D system. But never again would he reach the zenith of 'Five'.

Woodyanders A quintet of people have to work together to stay alive and persevere in the wake of a nuclear holocaust that has killed off everyone else on the planet. Writer/director Arch Oboler relates the engrossing story at a steady pace, creates and sustains a properly bleak and sober tone throughout, puts a firm emphasis on interaction between the well-drawn characters over cheap melodrama or heavy-handed moralizing, and ably crafts a strong mood of despair and hopelessness. The fine acting by the capable cast holds the picture together: Susan Douglas as the pregnant, shell-shocked Roseanne Rogers, William Phipps as kindly intellectual Michael, Charles Lampkin as the genial, soft-spoken Charles, James Anderson as arrogant troublemaker Eric, and Earl Lee as polite old gentleman Mr. Barnstaple. Moreover, this movie gains considerable strength and impact from its low-key and unsentimental evenly balanced portrait of a dismal and distressful situation that brings out both the best and worst in humanity. The sharp black and white cinematography by Sid Lubow and Louis Clyde Stoumen provides a stark film noirish look (the shots of empty streets littered with skeletons are especially striking). Henry Russell's moody score does the brooding trick. Worth a watch for fans of end-of-the-world cinema.

Harold Hewitson I saw this movie late one night way-y-y back in the 60's. I was only 7 or 8 and my dad let me stay up to watch it with him. Oh, I watched it, but with my hands over my eyes most of the time. Not a great movie for a little kid! After that one viewing, that was the last, and I do mean, The Last, I've ever heard of this movie. Until I looked it up on IMDb I wasn't even sure I'd actually seen it. It didn't become a cult favourite, nor has it, obviously ever been considered something kitschy. It kind of just fell off the face of the earth until I looked it up today. As a kid? I found it to be haunting. I remember very loud, very eerie, extremely haunting and scary, air raid sirens and lots of skeletons at the beginning. I probably fell asleep after that! Would definitely love to see it again to see if my memory corresponds with the actual film!!