Someone commenting on the 1951 movie “Five” over at IMDB gives it as a “superb, gripping movie you’ll never forget.”
That someone wasn’t me. As a matter of fact, it’s not very often that I’ll say of an old sci-fi/horror film that I’ve chosen to write about, “Don’t waste your time!” It’s even more unlikely that I’d say that of a post nuclear apocalypse movie in which the major star is a Frank Lloyd Wright house. How could that go wrong? But within five minutes Marty was standing up and going to the kitchen to check on dinner, saying, “It’s not worth it”.
The film begins with Roseanne (Susan Douglas Rubes) stumbling around in a shocked daze, calling for help but only meeting up with an occasional pristine skeleton, because in this post nuclear war apocalypse movie, radiation sickness kills you only a little less promptly than it turns your flesh into dust.
Roseanne finds her way to the Frank Lloyd Wright house. Seems a relation of hers lived there, an artist, and she had spent a happy summer there once. Instead of the relation, Roseanne finds now living at the house the only other survivor she’s thus far encountered (how convenient), a man named Michael (William Phipps) who is a very bitter English major graduate from Dartmouth whose degree supplied him with a tour guide gig at the Empire State Building.
How can you not watch a post nuclear war apocalypse movie featuring a bitter English major graduate from Dartmouth?
Forward thinking Michael shortly becomes irritated that the pregnant and shell shocked Roseanne is still stuck on her husband and hopeful he may still be alive. Michael pretty much attempts to rape her as they are the last man and woman on earth and may as well get their relationship established on a proper footing.
“The concrete and stone mix looks like the same at Taliesin West,” I thought of remarking to Marty, but didn’t, because the observation didn’t seem worth the expenditure of energy.
Why a Frank Lloyd Wright house? The writer and director of the movie was Arch Oboler. The house was the Arch Oboler Complex “Eaglefeather”, given here as built in Malibu California in 1955, which makes things particularly interesting as the movie “Five” is from 1951.
And that’s Sci Fi!
Actually, seems the building of the complex spanned 15 years, from 1940 to 1955, and it’s no wonder I was reminded of Taliesin West as the same desert rubblestone construction was used and Oboler even gathered rocks for it from the desert near Taliesin West.
Down the road below Eaglefeather eventually come along two of the other five survivors of the apocalypse, a bank clerk, Mr. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), and another employee of the same bank, an African American (Charles Lampkin) whose job was to greet people at the door. As far as I can tell, poor Mr. Barnstaple’s singular purpose in the film is to get everyone to the beach, which is his last wish, that he go to the beach, where Barnstaple dies as onto the sands is washed up our fifth survivor, Eric (James Anderson).
Michael survived the nuclear whatever as he was in an elevator on the Empire State Building and thus, well, he lived and everyone else in New York died. Roseanne survived as she was being x-rayed behind lead shielding. Barnstaple and Charles had been stuck in the bank vault.
And Eric?
Eric was climbing Mount Everest when the nuclear whatever happened, and was stuck in a blizzard for five days which is how he survived. When he descended to base camp and found everyone dead, it must have been quite a shock to find no one alive to congratulate him on his successful ascent. He made his way across Asia and found no survivors. He boated to Hawaii and found no survivors. He then took a plane to America. The plane ran out of gas and went down and thus did he miraculously wash up on the beach just as Barnstaple died. If Roseanne and Michael and Charles hadn’t been there then darkly handsome Eric would have certainly drowned.
So, who will be the Adam to Roseanne’s Eve? Will it be the dull Dartmouth English major grad, the heart throb adventurer or the door man?
Charles is out of the running as he’s African American and it’s the 1950s, but he ends up being one of the more interesting plot developments (perhaps the only interesting plot development) as his presence brings out adventurer Eric’s not-very-latent racism.
There I shall leave you, in suspense as to what happens next. The movie is so unrelentingly dull and unimaginative (yet annoyingly preposterous) that I’m falling asleep as I write, even though it was FOUR MEN and ONE WOMAN AND ONE OF THOSE MEN WAS AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND ONE WAS A WHITE RACIST AND ANOTHER WAS A LOSER OF A DARTMOUTH GRADUATE!
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