In the Year 2889 (1969)

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

What a horrible movie. After watching it I can understand Paul Peterson's bitterness toward Hollywood. How on Earth did he get hooked up with this production? Frankly I never thought all that much of him as Jeff on The Donna Reed Show or anything else he ever did - he always seems to be playing the role of "Paul Peterson" no matter what role he's in, simply a poor actor - but even HE didn't deserve to be in this piece of dung. The story is ridiculous, the script is abysmal, and other than the color film and processing I think it cost about $100 total to make. When Paul Peterson is actually the high point of a movie, it's ba-a-a-d. Ah yes, good ol' Paul in his khaki slacks and velour turtleneck, one wonders when Donna Reed might turn up. When one of the main characters realizes that Peterson's character and a young lady may be the only people left on Earth to have children and rebuild the population, he notes that it being an emergency, a ship's captain could marry them so they could start making babies. With nearly the whole planet wiped out, someone is going to care if they get married? What are they going to do, cheat on each other? Hoo boy.I like bad movies when they're so bad they're funny, but this one just stinks.

I stumbled across this film on Encore Action the other late night, and was surprised to see that it's a complete remake of the original sf film "The Day the World Ended" (1955). Even the dialogue is almost word-for-word. Ironically, this version though colorful just doesn't grab the viewer. The characters seem one dimensional (the original features two-dimension characters). The cast of this film are virtually cardboard cutouts. The cast from the 1955 version featured bit actors like Touch Connors (better known as Mike Conners in recent years) and Richard Denning and they outshone this inept cast completely. I would recommend skipping this version altogether and looking up the original, preferably the wide screen format as opposed to the 16mm print that seems to be running on AMC these days.

The story of In the Year 2889 is your standard bad b-movie plot about the end of the world, except there is not a single thing done to make the world look futuristic. I would grant that they managed to pull off a thick, muggy version of the early 70s, so I guess they achieved a few years of a futuristic look, but it's more likely that I just can't tell the difference between 1967 and, say, 1972 or so.The movie is an exercise in ham-handed and clunky story-telling. The sound dubbing is amazingly bad and doesn't even begin to match the action on screen, but no matter. Clearly this is a no-budget production so things like this must be forgiven. Or at least excused. The characters are in a fallout shelter, and wouldn't you just know it, it comes complete with a detailed miniature model of the house and surrounding area so that the inhabitants, mostly people who live in the area, can be informed about how the surrounding mountains will protect them from the radioactive fallout.You see, the mountains are filled with lead, so any radioactivity will pass harmlessly over their heads like radio waves. Pretty convenient, although there is some concern because rain would swiftly deliver nuclear death. There is meant to be some tension about the rising radioactivity in the air, except that any exterior scenes never look like anything other than a beautiful sunny day. So there is this thing about the radioactivity passing overhead and totally changing the world around them, but soon enough they are just fraternizing and grab-assing in the bomb shelter, and before you know it, the old man is instructing all the women, including his own daughter, that they must all bear children ASAP! What a guy!Overall this is basically zero-budget nonsense. There is a title that says "The Beginning" when the movie ends, and this might be the most clever thing in the movie, so I'll let you do the math. It might have been fun had it been made as a student film or something, but the amazingly bad costumes and performances just don't belong in a commercial film meant for public viewing.

Despite the film's title, in the year 1967, a nuclear holocaust erupts, leaving a young lady (Doherty) and her retired naval officer father Fletcher in one of the very few unaffected areas of the U.S. It seems Fletcher had been prepping for the big day and deliberately built his home in a valley that is surrounded by lead and has an updraft that prevents radiation from falling on them. What he didn't foresee was the endless parade of interlopers who keep knocking on the door! He is reluctant to let them in but Doherty is either lonely, since her fiancé was lost in the destruction, or otherwise feels obligated to take the others in. This despite the fact that the strangers include a common thug (Feagin), his stripper girlfriend (O'Hara), a local drunk (Thurman), a chain-smoking young man (Peterson) and his radiation-drenched brother (Anderson)! The seven, seemingly sole survivors on earth, set up housekeeping at Fletcher's pad, but have trouble getting along and also frequently fret about whether it will rain or not, thus dousing them with deadly radiation. Fletcher waddles around with a detector, checking to make sure everything is under 50. As the static, trite (this was based on a 1955 film script called "The Day the World Ended") film continues, Peterson, who hasn't brought a change of clothes but seems to have brought a year's supply of Lucky Strikes, and Fletcher speculate about their fate and, fortunately for the male audience members, open up the pool so that the ladies can have a swim! Sadly, there's a hideous deformed mutant living in the woods who likes to watch them. Also, Anderson becomes increasingly odd, craving raw meat and lurching around the woods in search of it. The personal relationships begin to unravel just as the mutant decides to start killing people, but, predictably, there is still an Adam and Eve left at the end. Former child-star Peterson gives a stilted, dull, expressionless performance in the film. He wouldn't move much at all if it weren't for his nonstop cigarette smoking. What's sad is that he is one of the better actors! O'Hara adds some much-needed pulchritude and zip to this bland affair and Doherty isn't too bad, though she's a far cry from her role as a wise-cracking preteen in "Take Her, She's Mine." The badge of acting dishonor has to go to the sleep-inducing awfulness of Fletcher, who is given far too much to say and do in the film. His type should always be relegated to a supporting role. Anderson is actually quite ruggedly-handsome if not for his radiation scars and his penchant for going out in the woods to eat animals raw! It's a tacky, $4.13 production with occasional unintentional laughs, but not enough of them to warrant sitting through it.