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Five
BOOTLEG/APPROX. 93 MINS/1951/USA UNRATED
BOOTLEG/APPROX. 93 MINS/1951/USA UNRATED
5
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A blotchy, grainy black and white post-apocalyptic drama, Five is reminiscent of early episodes of The Twilight Zone, especially with regard to the
score and the tone, Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth is a pretty good reference point too. As a cinematic curio, it’s interesting, but hardly
essential. Hammily acted and not terribly well scripted, this film must have slipped through the cracks when it came to the DVD revolution.
Heavily pregnant Roseanne and naturalist Michael are our two survivors of the nuclear apocalypse, and a hard going of it they have, and no
mistake. They do come across a handful of other survivors, but not too many (well, three, obviously, given the film’s title), who they try to rebuild
their world with. And the earth appears to have copped one hell of a spanking in this post-nuclear holocaust existence. As a throwback to more
innocent times, this is a sad, elegiac piece of work. If you released this now, you’d find it hard to get bums on seats, given the morbidly slow,
meandering pacing.
The exploration of the characters psyches is interesting, but slow going, and given today’s audiences attention spans, I think this’ll find it difficult to
grab an audience. A shame, really, given it’s not a bad film. But I still think it could have been shorter, at the length it is, I found myself looking at
my watch on more than one occasion, during the third act.
Just like in Night of the Living Dead, all of the characters idiosyncrasies start becoming more and more evident, and more and more grating to
each other. Then we get the inevitable divide and conflict.
Again, this is a character driven story. The acting is par for the course, given the context in which it was made, but seems a little stiff and
melodramatic to today’s audience. However, I gotta say, a bit of re-mastering wouldn’t have gone astray. Frankly, the picture quality is terrible.
And considering we live in a day with High Definition TVs, this was like watching a blob in a snowstorm at the bottom of a swamp. I mean, I don’t
need HD or Blu-Ray – I still watch old VHS’ I taped off the telly-box when I was a teenager – but in this day and age, you do expect more from your
visual stimulus. Ditto the sound, crackly, hissing and popping all over the shop. Kudos to superhappyfun.com for re-releasing this public domain
curio, but damn I wish they’d done something to restore the picture.
score and the tone, Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth is a pretty good reference point too. As a cinematic curio, it’s interesting, but hardly
essential. Hammily acted and not terribly well scripted, this film must have slipped through the cracks when it came to the DVD revolution.
Heavily pregnant Roseanne and naturalist Michael are our two survivors of the nuclear apocalypse, and a hard going of it they have, and no
mistake. They do come across a handful of other survivors, but not too many (well, three, obviously, given the film’s title), who they try to rebuild
their world with. And the earth appears to have copped one hell of a spanking in this post-nuclear holocaust existence. As a throwback to more
innocent times, this is a sad, elegiac piece of work. If you released this now, you’d find it hard to get bums on seats, given the morbidly slow,
meandering pacing.
The exploration of the characters psyches is interesting, but slow going, and given today’s audiences attention spans, I think this’ll find it difficult to
grab an audience. A shame, really, given it’s not a bad film. But I still think it could have been shorter, at the length it is, I found myself looking at
my watch on more than one occasion, during the third act.
Just like in Night of the Living Dead, all of the characters idiosyncrasies start becoming more and more evident, and more and more grating to
each other. Then we get the inevitable divide and conflict.
Again, this is a character driven story. The acting is par for the course, given the context in which it was made, but seems a little stiff and
melodramatic to today’s audience. However, I gotta say, a bit of re-mastering wouldn’t have gone astray. Frankly, the picture quality is terrible.
And considering we live in a day with High Definition TVs, this was like watching a blob in a snowstorm at the bottom of a swamp. I mean, I don’t
need HD or Blu-Ray – I still watch old VHS’ I taped off the telly-box when I was a teenager – but in this day and age, you do expect more from your
visual stimulus. Ditto the sound, crackly, hissing and popping all over the shop. Kudos to superhappyfun.com for re-releasing this public domain
curio, but damn I wish they’d done something to restore the picture.
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| "Four men and one woman are the last five people on Earth...This is their story!" |
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