Terror from the Year 5000 (1958)

A low budget lacklustre sci-fi with uneven performances, sloppy direction, uneven editing and a multitude of plot holes. So bad, it’s oddly good!

The 1958 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film, Terror from the Year 5000 (a.k.a. Cage of Doom in the UK) was produced by Robert J. Gurney Jr., Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson, and Gene Searchinger. It was directed by Robert J. Gurney Jr., and starred Ward Costello, Joyce Holden, John Stratton, Salome Jens, and Fred Herrick. The screenplay was based on the short story Bottle Baby by Henry Slesar, that was published in the science fiction magazine Fantastic (April 1957). American International Pictures released the film on a double bill with The Screaming Skull.

The story involves Prof. Erling and his financial backer, Victor who have constructed a prototype time machine which they use to obtain various objects from the past. On one occasion they discover that one item - a modernist Venus de milo-like statuette – that materialized in the machine, radiometrically dates to the year 5200 AD! It turns out that 20th-century objects that are placed in the machine appear to be "traded" for objects from the future by someone or something. It also transpires that Victor has been secretly trying to get a living intelligent specimen from the future to materialize in the time machine.

What does the future hold in store for humanity?

What present danger is humanity faced with now!

Directed by Robert J. Gurney Jr.
Produced by Robert J. Gurney Jr., Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson, Gene Searchinger
Written by Robert J. Gurney Jr., Henry Slesar
Music by Richard DuPage
Cinematography Arthur Florman
Edited by Dede Allen
Running time: 66 minutes

Cast

Ward Costello as Dr. Robert Hedges
Joyce Holden as Claire Erling
Frederic Downs as Prof. Howard Erling
John Stratton as Victor
Salome Jens as Future Woman / Nurse
Fred Herrick as Angelo
Beatrice Furdeaux as Miss Blake
Jack Diamond as First Lab Technician
Fred Taylor as Second Lab Technician
Bill Downs as Dr. Blair
William Cost as Joe the Bartender

Movie Clip

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Teenage Monster (1958)

Is it a Western?

Is it a Horror?

Is it a Sci-fi?

NO!

It’s a monster case of Teenage angst!

Directed by Jacques R. Marquette
Produced by Jacques R. Marquette, Dale Tate
Written by Ray Buffum
Music by Walter Greene
Cinematography: Taylor Byars
Edited by Irving M. Schoenberg
Distributed by Marquette Productions Limited
Running time: 65 minutes
Budget: $57,000 (approx.)

Cast

Anne Gwynne: Ruth Cannon
Stuart Wade: Sheriff Bob Lehman
Gloria Castillo: Kathy North
Chuck Courtney: Marv Howell
Gil Perkins: Charles Cannon
Norman Leavitt: Deputy Ed
Gabe Mooradian: Fred Fox
Stephen Parker: Charles Cannon as a Boy
Jim McCullough Sr: Jim Cannon
Frank Davis: Man on Street
Arthur Berkeley: Man with Burro

In 1880 in a small town in the American southwest, a young boy is exposed to the rays from a meteor and becomes a grotesque teenage killer monster who is hidden from a hostile world by his mother.

Trailer

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Top 10 Soviet Science Fiction Movies

Top 10 Soviet Science Fiction Movies

Brought to you by Indie Sci-Fi 451 (sci-fi and independent cinema)

Read about these Top 10 Soviet sci-fi movies accompanied by a dozen modern trailers made specially for the following article;

https://indiescifi451.com/2017/09/15/top-10-soviet-science-fiction-movies/

Also check out the following YouTube preview:

Space Master X-7 (1958)

A low budget drive-in feature with a nice mix of sci-fi and detective drama

Directed by Edward Bernds
Produced by Bernard Glasser
Written by George Worthing Yates, Daniel Mainwaring
Music by Josef Zimanich, Harry Bluestone
Cinematography: Brydon Baker
Edited by John F. Link Sr.
Production company: Regal Films
Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Running time: 71 min.

Cast

Bill Williams : John Hand 

Lyn Thomas: Laura Greeling
Robert Ellis: Pvt. Joe Rattigan
Paul Frees: Dr. Charles T. Pommer / Train-Station Announcer
Rhoda Williams: Stewardess Archer
Joan Barry: Jean Meyers - brunet
Carol Varga: Elaine Frohman
Thomas Browne Henry: Prof. West
Thomas Wilde: Collins
Fred Sherman: Mr. Morse - Hotel Manager
Gregg Martell: Jim Dale - plane engineer
Jess Kirkpatrick: Pilot Vaccarino
Court Shepard: Hendry - Battalion Fire Chief
Moe Howard : Retlinger - Cab Driver
Al Baffert: Plane passenger

Trailer

A space probe returns to Earth bringing with it a mysterious fungus!

A fungus accidentally tinged with human blood and transformed into an ever-growing pile of …."Blood Rust!"

An entire world threatened by an ever-spreading alien infection!

Can the dynamic duo of John Hand and Joe Rattigan locate the one woman who holds the key to stopping the rust from spreading and engulfing the entire world?

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Night of the Blood Beast (1958)

A sci-fi film gem that may produce in you "a hypometabolistic state. A type of suspended animation, brought on by the contraction of the mezzentary blood vessels in the pressure change,” all as a result of simply watching it.  

Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski
Produced by: Gene Corman: Roger Corman
Screenplay by Martin Varno
Story by Martin Varno Gene Corman (credited on-screen)
Music by Alexander Laszlo
Cinematography: John Mathew Nickolaus, Jr.
Edited by Jodie Copelan
Distributed by American International Pictures
Running time: 62 minutes
Budget: $68,000

Cast

Michael Emmet: Maj. John Corcoran
Angela Greene: Dr. Julie Benson
John Baer: Steve Dunlap
Ed Nelson: Dave Randall
Tyler McVey: Dr. Alex Wyman
Georgianna Carter: Donna Bixby
Ross Sturlin: The Creature

Trailer

What If..........????

US Air Force Captain Eugene K. Matthews sits at his desk in a small office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He is just a minor cog within a much larger machine that has been ceaselessly grinding away for decades. The giant machine is called the Human & Extra-terrestrial Anomalous Dialogue project. Project HEAD was initiated specifically at the request of General Neil Thomas, chief of the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The order to initiate Project HEAD came via Roger Cowpepper, Special Assistant to the President, under the title of "NCS/MJ-12 Special Studies Project" dated April 1, 1954.

Many captains and other military intelligence personnel before Captain Eugene K. Matthews have been set the task of industriously beavering away at sifting through thousands of reports of human and extra-terrestrial contact, interaction, collusion and communication. Since the 1950s such reports have been collected, analysed and filed.

Project HEAD has been secretly and quietly humming away in the background while more publicised projects such as GRUDGE & BLUEBOOK have come and gone.

Project HEAD has two goals:

1. To scientifically analyse the related data.

2. To determine if the reported phenomena are a threat to national security.

Any data deemed to be of sufficient interest is to be immediately referred to the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council. Such reports will then be digitized, stored away and acted upon if possible.

And so, as part of this never-ending “house-cleaning” project, we have Captain Eugene K. Matthews sitting at his desk with yet another manila folder containing a report of yet another historical incident of human and extra-terrestrial contact and communication. Rarely had he come across such an historically ancient case crying out to be buried under mounds of time-accumulated dust. In fact, the manila folder and its contents looked as if they had been stored away only yesterday.

Under the icy circle of the white cool-glow LED light illumination of Matthews’ desk lamp, the manila folder, T-471947 is opened to reveal a 1958 Incident code-named: “Night of the Blood Beast.” This particular document, Matthews learns, was located in Record Group 197, entry 1952.

After carefully studying the contents of the document, Matthews is to stamp it with one of the following letter codes:

H: Hoax & Deliberate Deception – Disposal

E: Explanation Satisfactory - Documentation turned over to the office of the Air Force Historian

A: Anomaly unexplained– Retain & classify “Top Secret” pending referral to and further investigation by U.S. Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

D: Danger & threat posed to national security. Immediate referral to President & Joint Chiefs of Staff for assessment & appropriate course of action to be undertaken.

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Monster from Green Hell (1958)

An average 50's giant bug film that peters out at the end.

Directed by Kenneth G. Crane
Produced by Al Zimbalist
Written by Endre Bohem, Louis Vittes
Music by Albert Glasser
Cinematography: Ray Flin
Distributed by DCA
Running time: 71 minutes

Cast

Jim Davis as Dr. Quent Brady
Robert Griffin as Dan Morgan
Joel Fluellen as Arobi
Barbara Turner as Lorna Lorentz
Eduardo Ciannelli as Mahri
Vladimir Sokoloff as Dr. Lorentz

Trailer

Spoilers follow below….

Journey into Green Hell

(Full account of the “Green Hill” incident from the personal journal of Dr Quent Brady)

Entry….

My colleague, Dan Morgan and I have been put in charge of a U.S. government program that has been designed to send various animals and insects into earth orbit to test the effects of exposure to space radiation.

Why do we do this?

"This is the age of the rocket, the jet, atomic power. When man prepares to reach for the stars. But before he dares to launch himself into space, there is one great question to be answered: What happens to life in the airless void above Earth's atmosphere? Will life remain untouched, unharmed by its flight through space? Or will it change into…what? There was only one way to find out and we were working on it."

And how will we do this?

Thanks to the former Nazi German rocket scientist bastards we spirited out of Germany at the end of the war, we have lots of V2 rockets with which to conduct our tests and prepare human beings for what lies beyond the comforting confines of our planet. It is into one of these rockets that we were able to “load the passengers” and at 10.15 minus 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 we sent them off “into the wide blue yonder!”

Entry…..

After what seemed at first to have been a successful launch, the radar operator informed us that the rocket was “out of normal radar range.”

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It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

An at times quite frightening and atmospheric film achieved by means of economy and simplicity

Spoilers follow below…..

In a “future” 1973, the first manned expedition to Mars has been attacked and destroyed by an unknown life form which somehow later manages to stow away on the rescue ship. There is only one survivor from the initial ill-fated expedition: the leader, Col. Edward Carruthers. He is being brought back to earth under suspicion of having murdered his fellow astronauts! Will he have to face a firing squad for the crime of murder, or can he prove his claim that a Martian monster is to blame for the deaths of his crewmates?

Director: Edward L. Cahn
Screenplay: Jerome Bixby
Music composed by: Paul Sawtell, Bert Shefter
Producers: Edward Small, Robert E. Kent
Makeup: Paul Blaisdell
Narrated by Marshall Thompson
Cinematography: Kenneth Peach
Edited by Grant Whytock
Production company: Vogue Pictures, Inc.
Distributed by United Artists
Running time: 68 min.

Cast of Characters

Col. Ed Carruthers: (played by Marshall Thompson) Captain of the first expedition to Mars. All his crewmates were killed by the creature, but he is the one blamed for it.

Col. Van Heusen: (played by Kim Spaldin) Captain of the rescue ship that is sent to rescue Ed Carruthers and his crew. Initially he is hostile towards Carruthers and manages to become infected by the alien stowaway.

Major John Purdue: (played by Robert Bice) He gets injured and spends most of the movie with a bandage on his head.

Eric Royce: (played by Dabbs Greer) Mary's husband we can assume. 

Dr. Mary Royce: (played by Ann Doran) The ship’s doctor.         

Ann Anderson: (played by Shirley Patterson) Scientist and love interest for Carruthers. 

Lt. James Calder: (played by Paul Langton) Suffering a broken ankle and armed with only a blow torch, he becomes trapped between a couple of induction pumps by the monster. 

Bob Finelli (played by Richard Benedict) & Gino Finelli: (played by Richard Hervey) Brothers who fall victim to the creature. 

It!: (played by Ray Corrigan) A Martian life-form that stows away on the rescue ship and sets about picking off the crew one-by-one so that it can drain them of all their bodily fluids. The creature appears to be impervious to bullets, fire and radiation.

Movie Clip

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