Customer Reviews

World Without End [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I had not seen WWE for more than 25 years. I remember it as a SF movie that shook me to my core. Even then, most movies did not begin with a framing sequence, but this one had the audacity to place the upcoming action in centuries-jumping sequence that quickly and convincingly landed the actors in the far future of an earth ruined by atomic war. As a child, I had just read, Wells' 'The Time Machine' and I connected the similarities: the handsome travelers (one of whom,by the way, was Rod Taylor, star of the 1960 'The Time Machine);the division of humanity into the intelligent but weak humans who are threatened by the savage Morlocks; the abundance of tall, sexy women who could appreciate Rod Taylor's beefcake (Yvette Mimeux in 'The Time Machine' and Nancy Gates in 'WWE'; and the struggle between the two races of a divided humanity. Still, WWE was more than just 'The Time Machine' reborn. Despite the hokey special effects, it became clear that WWE was not a movie of special effects. The focus was on people adjusting to a colossal change in their lives. The time travelers had to learn to adjust to the loss of their known civilization. The weakened humans had to learn to adjust to a savage reminder of their past in the pistol packing personas of the time travelers. And even the mutated beasts had to learn that with the death of their fearsome leader Naga, a new dawn of human reconciliation had begun. The closing scenes of the unity of pre-war man, post-war man, and mutated man still resonate with me. I could sense that humanity might yet survive the horror of atomic war. WWE was one of the first intelligent post-apocalyptic films to suggest that our civilization need not take the detour that the Mad Max films would later travel.

I saw this movie once on a Sci-Fi matinee back in the 60s when I was about 12 years old. I was swept away by this vision of the future and the hopeful heroic message of survival and rebuilding after a nuclear holocaust. It became my favorite movie, and although I searched, I never saw it again until this video was released. Now I still enjoy it, and it is a favorite of my three children. Part of what we enjoy is how camp it appears to today and it is educational (we homeschool) to discuss with the children how differently movies are made today, from special effects to how women are portrayed. This movie won't scare young children, especially since you can use rewind and slow/stop motion to get them to notice the spiders are "puppets", and laugh at the protagonists wrestling with them. The improbability and good fortune (for our protagonists) of sickly males and EXTREMELY healthy high heeled females intrigued by red blooded 20th century men makes for campy fun and a male fantasy that transcends the decades.

The production values and casting are good. This should be considered a Sci-Fi classic, that bears multiple viewings, especially since you will HAVE to share it with friends.

Unquestionably this is one of the most memorable films I have ever seen. I first saw it on Million Dollar Movie in New York City during the early 1960s and saw it many times during that period. It was probably one of the first science fiction films I ever saw. What I remember most was the mood, the sense of wonder, fear, and hopefullness that imbued the film. It placed human beings firmly in the center of their world, able to deal with whatever hardships history dealt them. The special effects were so few they might as well have been nonexistent. Even today when I see it I still get chills during the final scenes, especially the one showing the children of the advanced humans (once sickly and dying but now healthy) playing with the children of the mutant humans. The video could use a re-release in wide screen since there are obviously scenes when characters are speaking out of sight. I recommend this movie highly to one and all.

WWE has been one of my favorites since I first saw it at the age of 12. When I saw it for the first time in a movie theater in 1956, it seemed awesome. Time has reduced this time-travel sci-fi movie to something a little less than awesome, but it's still a wonderful flick. Granted, the special effects and makeup are only average or somewhat less so and the acting sometimes falls short of credibility (as, for example, in the scene where Morees strikes Timic's daughter). But the magic is in the music. Somehow, the score, which ranges from the deeply eerie to heights of almost cosmic beauty, conveys a mood throughout that's a mixture of overwhelming tragedy and soaring hope--the very elements that make up this story about the fate of a nuked humanity. If you're a sci-fan, you owe it to yourself to buy this one. The cold war may be over, but the threat of nuclear holocaust is still very real.

This appears to have been a fifties sci-fi film made on a better-than-average budget with its cinemascope and color. There were a plethora of science fiction flicks made back in this decade, but the vast majority of them were filmed in cheapo black and white. A twentieth century manned space probe destined for Mars gets caught in a time warp and lands back on Earth in the year 2508. A devastating global atomic war has decimated the planet's population to a handful of survivors belonging to one of two major groups. One group comprises physically-mutated individuals who have culturally retrogressed back into stone age savages while the other group retains their normal physical appearance and social stature. Unfortunately, the savages in their warlike ways dominate the land on the surface while the normal people are forced to take refuge underground. The members of the space probe go underground with the civilized group and are appalled to see that while the women are vivacious and beautiful, the men are pacifist, impotent wimps. Rod Taylor and company do their best to stir up this group's men by reacquainting them with weapons and psychologically stimulating their self-esteems. In this film, it takes men from the twentieth century to put civilized mankind back on the right track. Although the plot and the screenplay aren't really the greatest, this film is still fairly entertaining to the average science fiction junkie. This movie might do well as an early Saturday afternoon matinee or fill-in for rained-out baseball games in the summer.

I originally saw this movie when it first came out in 1956, and it immediately jumped onto my list of favorite sf movies. It was seldom (or maybe never) shown on TV, but I finally caught it during a free preview of a premium channel in 1992, and of course bought the tape when it eventually came out. This is primarily a movie of mood, not action, and the feelings it produced in me in 1992 (and since) are as good as in 1956. The first twenty minutes or so are the best, an sf mystery that has the most "sense of wonder" I've felt from any sf movie. The middle is a little talky, but if you become caught up in the characters, as I do and an earlier reviewer did, you don't mind. The ending finally resolves matters with a plausible action sequence. I think this was Rod Taylor's first movie; he clearly shows "star quality". I hope someday the movie is released in wide-screen format--there are a few instances on the present tape when someting is occurring off the edge of the screen that viewers should be able to see.

Should Steven Speilberg ever decide to do a remake, this film should be on his short list. How this mid-50's sci-fi drama has remained hidden from sci-fi buffs is beyond me. The poor special effects provide a chuckle, but do not detract from the quite plausible (in the world of science fiction, anyway), well-conceived storyline that keeps your attention throughout the film. You find yourself bonding to the characters, following them on their journey, wherever it takes them. And isn't that what is required of any good film? Well acted, despite its obvious low budget (remember: Speilberg budgets were unheard of in the 1950's), the sexy outfits the ladies don and the predictable male-as-hero scenarios provide, shall I say, multifaceted entertainment? Nonetheless, this film was created not more than ten years after two atomic bombs were dropped in a major world war. The dawn of the nuclear age was not lost on Hollywood. Mankind (and the film industry) was still shuddering from the wake of its terrible consequences. 'World Without End' was born in that age; and being 'of its time', it hints at man's newly acquired, dubious achievement of mutually-assured-destruction. The film asks some sobering questions: Is mankind capable of altering it's own destiny? Will we survive our own technological prowess? Dim the lights, sit back, pass the popcorn, forgive the '50s special effects, and enjoy the film.

Take a look at the awesome original poster reproduced on this Italian import DVD of the film: World Without End (Dvd) Italian Import Pretty cool eh? It's got that sort of surreal/abstract look that a lot of late 50s and 60s science fiction paperbacks had. Alas the movie doesn't quite live up to it. Hugh Marlowe and Rod Taylor and two other guys you've never heard of (unless you know your 50s b-movie actors better than I do, and I know them fairly well) are on a manned mission to Mars, when they run into some strange magnetic cloud or something (never explained but that's what it looks like) that makes their ship speed up and knocks them all out. They wake up having landed in snowy mountains, their ship damaged. Quickly figuring out that they're not on Mars and that the air is breathable by the simple expedient of just opening the hatch (!!), they venture out and down the mountain into an arid, rocky western landscape. In short order they encounter ridiculously stupid-looking giant spiders and a cemetery full of tombstones that date from 200 years after their blast-off from earth. Now we get 5 minutes of an explanation of time dilation, followed by an attack by ugly cyclopean mutants! Taking refuge in a cave, they are soon in the underground world of the human survivors of the atomic wars, who seem to be all withered and effeminate old men and totally hot young babes (one of them played by Nancy Gates, a serious beauty who wasn't a bad actress and should have had a better career; she made her last film four years later at 34 in a fine role in one of the greatest of all westerns, COMANCHE STATION, with Randolph Scott). The leaders of the underground city don't want to help the men get back to their ship, or to fight the mutants; the women on the other hand appreciate the virile newcomers, especially Taylor when he takes his shirt off...

As you can tell, this is a fairly silly film that hasn't exactly dated well. It's kind of a shame that it's the first science fiction film shot in Cinemascope, because it doesn't exactly deserve to be remembered even for that accomplishment. If you've got this VHS, you're not missing as much I think as you would be with a really well-shot production from a director who really knew how to use the cinematic space. Director Edward Bernds had done, and continued to do, mostly work on poverty-row budgets or not much better; this was probably his most "prestigious" film. On the other hand, the use of color (cinematography by Ellsworth Fredericks) and music (Leith Stevens) are fine, and buried inside the ludicrous plot are some interesting ideas, particularly if you're at all knowledgeable when it comes to SF literature. The basic plot - a trip forward in time that shows the human species diverged into savage and weak and cowardly halves goes back to H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" - and, interestingly, actor Rod Taylor would find his greatest fame as the star of the MGM film based on that novel 4 years later. And the notion of the emasculated men being ultimately overthrown in a manner of speaking by their more agressive women's championing of the newcomers has all kinds of interesting things to say both about the sexual frustrations in the 50s as more women were going to work and "sexual liberation" was just around the corner, and about our notions of peace and agression - unlike most "liberal Hollywood" science fiction, this borrows from the playbooks of conservative/libertarian writers like A.E. Van Vogt and Robert A. Heinlein.

Science fiction in film and TV, while it pretends to look forward, too often seems to lag behind culturally and socially, and many of the notions about evolution, the roles of scientists, and mankind's propensity for violence in this film date back to the 1930s pulps; though I guess one could say that the odd color schemes of the interiors and the clothing of the future-men, and the womens' miniskirts point forward to "Star Trek" a decade later. All in all it seems that the future of 2508 as imagined in 1956 just wasn't ready for any kind of adult thinking about the way the species might actually evolve socially and morally. Not that one should expect, or desire, such deep philosophizing in a cheap Hollywood production aimed mostly at entertaining the kids, but in this case the political and ethical considerations are too obviously on the surface to completely dismiss - though I think it's still pretty easy to just have fun with the thing, it's not as if the film is deliberately trying to hammer it's message across at the expense of cheap thrills.

Pretty much a time-killer all in all, fun in a brainless way but certainly not one of the better SF films from a decade that was full of great ones. The best way to get it would be in the 4-film package TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Sci-Fi Adventures which also contains the much better THEM! and BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS as well as the so-so SATELLITE IN THE SKY. Any way you slice it, worth a look for all of us who passionately love 50s sci-fi; just don't get your hopes up for a classic.

Those looking for some sort of deep meaning underlying the film will likely be disappointed but if you are looking for a great evening of 1950's popcorn fare this is it. In fact despite some of its drawbacks it still has something that leaves one with the feeling that the whole film is a whole lot better than the sum of the parts - one of those that you can't quite place your finger on why you like it so much. Unfortunately, people tend to keep reviewing these films through the lens of today's high budgets and often over the top special effects.

Folks when this flick was made computers were the size of large offices, gasoline was around 30 cents a gallon and jet airline service had been around for only four years - get some perspective. This movie gets points just for nostalgia value alone.

Oh, and please don't go by what the fellow below with the 'sickening' review said - he obviously has some greater issues to deal with and is likely the type ready to trample all over your fun because it doesn't fit into some perverse Politically Correct mold.

Enjoy the Movie!

Because it stinks. Some cool recycled spaceship footage, an unlikely mystery acceleration transports our unlikeable heroes into the future, some goon-like cavemen attack them, they fight comically awful giant spider puppets, they meet the subterranean human survivors of a nuclear holocaust... blah blah blah. It's dead boring, folks, there is a good reason you've never heard of this movie. Yes, it really is that bad.