Watch Five For Free

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely the worst movie.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Writer / producer / director Arch Oboler conceived this landmark, meagerly budgeted post- apocalypse drama, one of the very earliest of its kind. It brings together five strangers: a poet & philosopher named Michael (William Phipps), a young pregnant woman named Roseanne (Susan Douglas Rubes), a black man named Charles (Charles Lampkin), a bank clerk named Mr. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), and a mountain climber named Eric (James Anderson). After the bombs decimate much of American life, these five people find each other, and spend time at an isolated cliff side house (Obolers' real life, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home). Various personality conflicts form the basis for the plot as these people struggle to survive, debate methodology, and air grievances.Also utilizing a poem dubbed "Creation" by James Weldon Johnson, Oboler tries his hardest to create something fairly profound. Stark b & w photography by Sid Lubow and Louis Clyde Stoumen is an asset, and the tale is enacted with sensitivity by its well chosen cast of actors who were, at the time, relative unknowns. The biggest sparks fly when Eric is revealed as a racist, and also somebody who will question things and be certain that there have to be other "immune" survivors living out there somewhere. On the other hand, Michael isn't sure that the cities will be safe. Roseanne is understandably distraught not knowing the fate of her husband.As one can imagine, this is a pretty intimate story, and it attempts to show how human flaws can still manifest themselves under extreme circumstances. It's at its most chilling when showing how truly alone our characters seem to be, with shots of forlorn streets and buildings and skeletons that are the grim reminders of the devastation wrought by the atomic explosions."Five" earns points for good intentions and ambitions, and it stands in contrast to more action-oriented giant monster features of the Atomic Age.Seven out of 10.

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.

I just sat through 90min of this movie & have come to the conclusion that eating broken glass with mayonnaise would be more pleasant.The sluggish, lethargic plot is AWFUL...I wouldn't know where to begin. Lack of realism infests this movie on many levels. The explanations as to why each character survived the atomic holocaust are paltry as well as unscientific.Anytime a movie begins & ends with a biblical quote, beware! The only reason I gave this awful movie 3 out of 10 stars is because it was shot very well, and the sound is good but the story is excruciating.It's a rare movie that needs to stay rare...sorry.

Seeing this as a six year old on a local television channel in 1963 proved a traumatizing experience! One that generated nightmares for years.Why you ask?--the sight of a forlorn, bedraggled, and very wretched young woman (Susan Douglas) wondering in absolute exhaustion, back bent, arms dangling forward through a skeleton infested ghost town. Only the wind and a few birds accompany her solitary odyssey.Even in her exhaustion, she screams out "Somebody help me!" to no avail, her shouts in counterpoint to a tolling church bell the wind has activated, a bell and church no longer destined to call forth any living congregants.Susan Douglas's predicament: a world in which she is seemingly the sole survivor--her emotional response: benumbed stupor--proved far more unsettling to this six year old than the exploits of Frankenstein.Seen in 2008, those haunting images still retain their unsettling power. Miss Douglas, by the way, later became a regular cast member of the daytime serial, "The Guiding Light."