World Without End (1956) As promised, here we go off to the wild blue interdimensional yonder of time travel.......and again loaded with tropes cribbed from H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine"
Arriving 4 years earlier than the time looper we covered yesterday ("Beyond The Time Barrier" -1960), this one did catch the irritated attention of the H.G. Wells estate....enough for them threaten a lawsuit.
"World Without End" arrived with advantages over "Time Barrier".....the backing of an actual studio, Allied Artists, who forked over enough cash to shoot the film in Cinemascope and color.
This time around, we're in deep space with a crew of men headed back to Earth from an orbit around Mars......(including Hugh Marlowe, that 'Earth Vs.The Flying Saucer" warrior, and smarmy nemesis of Klaatu in "The Day The Earth Stood Still")
After one of those bumpy-ride glitches rocks 'n socks them around a little, they land on earth allright.....in the year 2508.......where they discover to their horror that Trump and Biden are still running for President....(just kidding, but not outside the realm of possibility....)
Mother Earth's been through nuclear war sure enough, since our plucky band discovers the populace divided up into those two traditional H.G. Wells classes. By that we mean the pasty-faced white people who live underground and the feral, hairy 'mutates' ....who are not only screaming cavemen but afflicted with multiple eyes....or just one really big one.
Our 1956 crew (including future 'Time Machine' star Rod Taylor at the start of his Hollywood career) have to dodge the mutates and a huge rubber spider until they're taken in by the pasty-faces. Not very fertile, these guys, which must drive their womenfolk crazy, since all the girls once again parade around in the true sci-fi fashions of miniskirts, stockings and heels.
One of the jealous, villainous pasty-faces tries framing our boys for a murder he committed but before long, the truth comes out and he tries escaping into the great outdoors, where the mutate guys make a meal of him.
Unlike "Beyond The Time Barrier", which ends on a somber, downbeat note, "World Without End", still steeped in the optimistic 1950's offers a sunnier, more hopeful climax......with our fish-out-of-time-warp boys rebuilding a new world side by side with the pasty-faces.
Way, way more fun than "Beyond The Time Barrier", we'll warp out 3 stars (***). And speaking of 'way ahead of its time', take notice of that striking modern art used for the poster.
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