|
|
World Without End 
Actors : Hugh Marlowe, Nancy Gates, Nelson Leigh, Rod Taylor, Shirley Patterson
Director : Edward Bernds
Studio : Warner Home Video
by Warner Home Video
Release Date : 1997-09-02
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780790731216
UPC : 085391529637
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 11 reviews)
List Price : $14.98
Our Price : $84.49
|
|
| |
|
Good Old fashioned fun |
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! |
| |
|
Dork Trek |
A group of dorky-macho scientists winds up 500 years or so in the future, where it encounters all kinds of "Star Trek"-style nonsense. I refer to: skinny, carefully-spoken, pacifist leaders in goofy, uni-sex suits. Voluptuous women in cocktail outfits. D.W.-Griffith-style cavemen with twenty-word vocabularies (verbs and nouns only). Arty but cut-price sets. Multiple grave dangers that yield to redundant dialogue exchanges (followed by short bursts of contrived action). The world needs to be saved, and these intrepid nerds have an extra 15 minutes or so in which to accomplish same, so... why not? After all, they're hundreds of years away from home. They've got nothing else to do, besides future-girl-watch.
Luckily, the film is saved from total lame hilarity by competent, fast-paced direction (Ed Bernds, who also gave us "Return of the Fly" and "Queen of Outer Space"), unusually good acting for something like this, and neat special effects--especially the rocket, as it blasts through space, wriggles about in a time-whatever (a warp? Can't remember), and then crashes into the snowy surface of the future-Earth. No more sexist, macho, or Eisenhower-era-esque than the average "Star Trek" episode (was this one of Gene Roddenberry's favorite films?), "World Without End" is an entertaining time-travel capsule of its day. The fun outweighs the inanity, so I give it two and a half stars. (Three, by default.) |
| |
|
Fairly good production values can't hide a trite story |
WWE has several things going for it -
(1) It's in color
(2) The actors are a notch above the usual refugees from Central Casting
(3) The model effects and general production values are good.HOWEVER,...
The story of a spaceship hurled 500 years into the future to land on a bombed-out Earth was old-hat when the movie was made almost 50 years ago. Why the normal humans in the underground city dress in outfits straight out of the Middle Ages while their environment is all straight-line futurism is beyond me. And however decrepit the men from the future are, whatever made them that way apparently didn't affect the women who all seem to be runners-up in the "Miss I-Survived-The-Apocalypse" beauty contest. Add to that a hefty dose of 1950's male superiority and a lot of old feathers about atomic mutation and this movie stinks faster than a Mob snitch in the East River.
For crying old loud people, the leader of the mutants is a one-eyed cretin who has all of the agility of a dancing bear. SNEAK UP BEHIND HIM! |
| |
|
The years don�t erase the magic |
|
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. |
| |
|
WWE: The Magic of SF Still Works |
|
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. |
| |
|
