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Very disappointing...

Brilliant and touching

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A quartet of astronauts - John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh), Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor), and Hank Jaffe (Christopher Dark) - go on a fateful mission to Mars. On the return trip, they're caused to break the time barrier, and they end up back on Earth - five centuries later. They learn that, in the meantime, the apocalypse has caused a new advent of primitive man, and that a few thousand untainted survivors live in underground kingdoms. They try to encourage these people to take action and take control of their lives."World Without End" was conceived by director Edward Bernds ("Queen of Outer Space", "Return of the Fly"), and it's a solidly entertaining story if not a great one. It's likely going to remind people of other, more well known tales such as "The Time Machine" and "Planet of the Apes". It does have a fair bit going for it: a snappy pace, some amusing bits of dialogue, vibrant colours, impressive CinemaScope photography (by Ellsworth Fredericks), rousing music (by Leith Stevens), and good performances. Our heroes are inherently likable chaps, the ladies (such as Nancy Gates, as Garnet) are ravishing - gotta love those miniskirts - and there is at least one good villain worth booing. That would be Booth Colman, as the devious Mories. Bernds' script actually uses "mutates" as a noun and not a verb, referring to these aforementioned primitive men. The makeup on them is pretty clunky, but it serves its purpose. And, speaking of clunky: viewers are bound to erupt into tears of laughter, seeing those "giant spiders" in action!All in all, this is good fun. It's fairly serious without ever getting TOO grim, and finishes on an upbeat, hopeful note that will be sure to leave smiles on some peoples' faces.Seven out of 10.

Just watched one of my childhood favorites; a film that remains on my personal Top 100 List to this day, the great sci-fi film "World Without End" (1956). I have seen this film countless times and never seem to tire of it. This is the one in which four astronauts, returning home to Earth from an orbit of Mars, crash through the time barrier and wind up on the Earth of 2508. The Earth is a radioactive wasteland, with the only remnants of civilization living underground, and mutant cavemen preying aboveground. The film is kind of a flip of H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine," in which the mutants lived underground and the more normal folk lived under the sun. In "World Without End," two of the astronauts are played by Hugh Marlowe and Rod Taylor, the latter of whom would go on to star in the film version of "The Time Machine" four years later, of course. The film features a great use of CinemaScope and color, and the print that I watched last night, courtesy of TCM, was just about the best-looking that I've ever seen...and I've seen the film on the big screen, as well. It's hard to believe that as a kid, I used to content myself with watching this movie on a B&W set, with a squeezed-up, compressed image, and still be thrilled by it. And even today, the movie manages to thrill, especially the scenes in which our heroes blast those mutant cavemen out of the cliff rocks with a homemade bazooka, and when Hugh Marlowe engages in hand-to-hand combat with Naga, the one-eyed leader of the mutants. Wonderful stuff for a kid, and just as wonderful for adults. Nancy Gates is on hand as the daughter of the underground leader, and she is just one of many long-legged, miniskirted babes to be found in this picture (costumes courtesy of future "Playboy" artist Alberto Vargas!). This film was directed by the great Edward Bernds, who had previously directed so many Three Stooges shorts and would go on to direct yet another sci-fi cult classic of the '50s, "Queen of Outer Space," with which "World Without End" shares some common elements (that humongous, phony-looking spider, for one thing!). In all, pure entertainment!

Some guys on a space voyage get caught in a time warp and go into the future, five hundred years or so. Like it is in "The Time Machine," our future is populated underground with weak-kneed pacifists and a race of cave men have evolved on the surface. Leave it to our Tweintieth Century guys to bring back war as the only solution. It is a sexist society where the women run around in outfits like 1970's cocktail waitresses. They are quite attractive and the indigenous men are certainly lacking. The rocket men want to help out by building barriers, introducing weaponry, and hence protecting the people that don't want their help. It is reasonably entertaining but the acting is stiff, the interactions unbelievable and short sighted, and the message simplistic. There is certainly a grasp of true science missing here.

It is not surprising to see how much mankind's (and woman-kind's) knowledge has advanced over the last 60 years but when you watch this movie you will be struck by the blunders that the writers of this mediocre sci-fi movie made. Several examples include things that were known at the time by almost anyone who had taken a high school biology course: These include spiders on the earth of the future who were the size of dogs, which is impossible given the oxygen rate in the atmosphere and the level of planetary gravity on earth which limits the size of spiders all over the world. Another thing is when the space travelers encounter a spider they worry about it "stinging" them when in fact spiders only bite and none have stings. It is like this throughout the movie which makes you wonder who the technical advisers were and what they were smoking. StocktonRob