Strong and Moving!

Admirable film.

A Major Disappointment

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

AIP and 2.5 statue 5200 ad Florida swamps future---medallion asking for helpCurrently, "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.

American International at it's absolute worst. Ultra low budget film about time travel (in the worst, most boring way), where a monster woman from the future who is intelligent but at the same time stupid, is brought to the past to get new man seed. If I had watched this as part of a schlock movie package set it would have been stopped about 5 minutes in and never revisited. However as an MST3K installment with Mike (not Joel) it's pretty good. The one liners they use are decent though probably not in the top 50% of their shows, however it made watching this dreg palatable and even at times amusing. Favorite lines? I like the Jimmy Carter references, having lived through that pitiful time they cracked me up, plus you never see this bunch ribbing the left so it was a pleasant surprise. 1 of 10 on it's own, 6 of 10 as a MST3K episode. It doesn't surpass Beast Of Yucca Flats as my worst movie of all time but it's pretty close.

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.

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".