Terror from the Year 5000
Entry updated 1 April 2024. Tagged: Film.
US film (1958; vt Cage of Doom). La Jolla Productions. Directed and written by Robert J Gurney Jr; very loosely inspired by "Bottle Baby" (April 1957 Fantastic) by Henry Slesar (uncredited). Cast includes Ward Costello, Frederic Downs, Fred Herrick, Joyce Holden, Salome Jens and John Stratton. 70 minutes. Black and white.
We are loudly informed by the narrator that "in the year 1947 man broke through the sound barrier; in the year 1958 man launched the first satellite and pierced the space barrier; now, in an isolated area of central Florida, man struggles to penetrate the most imposing barrier of all – the Time barrier! Here Professor Howard Erling, nuclear physicist, probes relentlessly into the future, only to unleash upon the world TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000!"
The professor (Downs) has extracted a statuette with his Invention and this is sent to a friend, museum curator Bob Hedges (Costello), to verify its age. Bob is baffled when, using Carbon 14 dating, he gets a minus figure that would mean the figurine was not made until 5200 CE. A science lab reports it is highly radioactive, and Bob travels to the Professor's Florida island for an explanation. Here Bob also meets Claire (Holden), the professor's daughter, and her fiancee, Victor (Stratton), who is funding the research. The professor and Victor demonstrate their Time Machine: they put an object inside a chamber, whereupon it is swapped or "traded" for another. Their next offering, which happens to have a Greek inscription, is replaced by a small disc imprinted with a message in the same language, reading "save us".
Professor Erling has suspended the research due to the radiation and other problems, but Victor – who sees it as a path to glory – has been secretly continuing the work at night: Bob notices him disposing of the resulting swapped items. Then one night something reaches out from the chamber and scratches Victor, giving him radiation burns. Next day, matters come to a head when he tries to kill Bob – mainly for his discovery of the hidden objects, though resentment of Bob's and Claire's obvious mutual attraction doubtless plays a part – but Bob proves more than a match for him. Victor is taken to the hospital to check his burns, but whilst the others wait for the results he gets drunk and returns to the laboratory to run the time machine at full power. Something humanoid comes out and, when the others return, they find an injured Victor on the floor. The next day Bob retrieves one of the items from Victor's earlier experiments – a dead four-eyed cat, mutated by radiation; meanwhile Angelo (Herrick), Professor Erling's odd-job man, a peeping tom, is murdered by the creature that attacked Victor.
Later, a nurse (Jens) sent to care for Victor is killed by the creature – now revealed to be a scarred woman in a shimmering catsuit (Jens), who is momentarily confused that her victim does not speak Greek. Material placed over the nurse's face removes her features and moulds into a mask which her murderer wears: after changing clothes, she gains entrance to the house. Hypnotizing the bedridden Victor by wiggling her fingers (see Hypnosis), she explains that "due to the ever-increasing amount of radiation in the atmosphere, by the year 5000 every fifth child born was a Mutant. Unable to cure these freaks, our rulers put them in special isolated colonies: it was one of these colonies that your apparatus probed – I'm one of those poor unfortunates." She was selected to lead Victor "into our world of the future" as "only with new blood, with undamaged pre-atomic genes, can we hope to break the terrible hereditary chain of more and more mutants born into each generation" (see Biology; Disaster), from which a nuclear War might be inferred (see Post-Holocaust). As they are about to depart to the future, Claire tries to stop them: the time-traveller pointedly responds that: "Our history clearly records how the women of the twentieth Century stood idly by while the atmosphere was contaminated and the children of the future doomed." The pair fight and Claire rips off the other's mask to reveal her horribly mutilated face. Bob and the professor now arrive – they had been outside and discovered the nurse's corpse – and shoot the time traveller, who now tries to escape into the chamber; but Victor – either trying to stop her or still hypnotized and attempting to join her – holds the door open, causing a short-circuit that kills them both.
Bob wonders if they can repair the machine and help the people of the future "see to it they get the necessary hereditary genes they need", though Claire worries: "If you do that others like her will come, there may be millions of them." The professor says there is another way: "The future is what we make it: whether there will be creatures like her depends on us, on all of us, on mankind."
This science fiction Horror film's plot bears no resemblance to the Henry Slesar tale that is its purported though uncredited inspiration: that story is about the winner of another galaxy's beauty pageant who materializes in a bashful Earth Scientist's vacuum pump, naked and looking for Sex. Nonetheless the main plotline of Terror from the Year 5000 is interesting; there are occasional nice touches and Jen's performance is good; but on the whole the storytelling, acting, subplots and direction are poor. Claire, though standing up to the time traveller, screams a lot; and whilst the two men get to make noble closing speeches, hers is more xenophobic (see Women in SF). [SP]
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