World Without End [Blu-ray]

Director: Edward Bernds Edward Bernds

Overview

The first spaceship to Mars rounds the Red Planet and heads back toward Earth but runs into an unexplained phenomenon in space that accelerates the craft to such a high speed that all four men aboard black out. When they awake, they've crash-landed on a planet that they only gradually realize is Earth -- of the distant future: they have crashed through the time barrier. After they are chased by ugly "Mutates," they are taken in by the declining remnants of human civilization who live underground. It's now 2508 A.D, almost 400 years after an atomic war almost wiped out the human race. John Borden (Hugh Marlowe) falls in love with Garnet (Nancy Gates), daughter of Timmek (Everett Glass), leader of the underground people -- a fact that enrages Mories (Booth Colman), who's always assumed she would someday be his. The scheming Mories tries to turn his people against the space/time travelers, but falls victim to his own nefarious plans. Learning from Deena (Lisa Montell), a servant girl from the surface of Earth, that most people up there are normal though cruelly ruled by the deformed ones, Borden and his friends take on the mutates with modern weaponry and reclaim the Earth for normal humanity. Although this is (surprisingly) the first American feature film to deal with scientific time travel, World Without End is really just another lost-civilization plot, complete with princess, evil grand vizier, and lots of skulking in corridors. There are few imaginative touches -- the giant spiders in particular are pathetic -- and some of the cast isn't very good. But for the period, this is slightly above-average science fiction; the exteriors, shot at the famous Iverson Ranch, have an open, fresh feeling, but the interior sets are unimaginative and routine. The plotline owes more than a little to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (a lawsuit was filed), which makes the presence of Rod Taylor in the cast (as the hunk from our time) a little ironic, as just a few years later, he starred in George Pal's much-loved movie version of the Wells novel.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/28/2017
UPC:	0888574474577
Original Release:	1956
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Language:	English
Time:	1:20:00
Sales rank:	20,050

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Hugh Marlowe	John Borden
Nancy Gates	Garnet
Nelson Leigh	Dr. Galbraithe
Rod Taylor	Herbert Ellis
Shawn Smith	Elaine
Lisa Montell	Deena
Christopher Dark	Henry Jaffe
Booth Colman	Mories
Everett Glass	Timmek
Stanley Fraser	Elda
William Vedder	James
Rankin Mansfield	Beryl
Paul Brinegar	Vida
Mickey Simpson	Naga

Technical Credits

Edward Bernds

Edward Bernds	Director,Screenwriter
Richard Heermance	Producer
Irving Block	Special Effects
Jack Rabin	Special Effects
Milt Rice	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

Looking at Edward Bernds' World Without End (1956) in the twenty-first century, its story plays a lot like Planet of the Apes -- but in place of talking apes, the surface of the post-apocalypse Earth here is ruled by deformed mutant humans; and the underground-dwelling civilization depicted here does bear some similarities to the mutant humans of the sequel, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes. The movie also owes more than a bit to H. G. Wells' vision of post-apocalyptic Eloy and Morlocks (and Things To Come with its airmen versus feudal rulers). But for all of those disparate, familiar elements, in its sources of inspiration as well as its influences, World Without End is also strikingly refreshing, in its optimistic vision of the future -- considering that most of the human race is wiped out in the timeline described by the four heroes, that's saying something, but it's true. This is a movie that depicts mankind starting to get things right the second time around, and it's worth seeing on that basis alone. One might add that, at the time of its release, World Without End was a special movie on another level as well -- it didn't look or play like much of what Allied Artists had released before. Its 80 minute running time made it longer than most of the movies that the B-studio, an outgrowth of Monogram Pictures, had ever issued -- what's more, it was shot in Technicolor and CinemaScope, both elements that people had come to expect from the major studios, but not from Allied. And it featured a good deal of outdoor shooting, rather than confining itself to the studio. Its release marked a new phase in the studio's history, as well as somewhat elevating the accepted and understood level of B-science fiction.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder