Please don't spend money on this.

hyped garbage

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I came across this movie, which I had never seen in the 50's. It starred Rod Taylor, who subsequently had great success with "The Time Machine" in 1960, which I remember very well and have a copy of.I find it intriguing watching this oldie for its simplicity, even a little corny, but gave me much pleasure in taking me back to this era of movie making. Watching it on Blu-Ray now, probably gave me a better reproduction than was available then. I remember many old films that I saw in those years and watched them again recently in Blu-Ray. It surprised me that there were parts that I could not distinguish then and now are clear for all to see. Using modern technology to watch old movies is really a wonderful experience in nostalgia.I am happy to give this movie a solid 6 for what it is, but the enjoyment I got out of it is worth 8 out of 10.

I pretty much thought I'd seen just about all the sci-fi films of the 1950s and I was happily surprised when I discovered "World Without End" today. It's a wonderful movie--which, inexplicably, has a very mediocre score of 6. Why? I have no idea, as it's intelligently written and enjoyable from start to finish.The story begins with the folks on Earth learning that one of their spacecraft is missing and presumed destroyed. However, the ship actually was somehow catapulted off course and ended up about 500 years in the future. This future, however, ain't exactly pretty as the surface of the planet is controlled by mutated troglodytes who love to kill. Fortunately, the crew is eventually rescued by a small group of humans who have been living underground since the apocalypse destroyed civilization. Unfortunately, these survivors are a wimpy group (with amazingly hot women, by the way) and are content to just stay and hide. But these 1950s humans aren't about to spend the rest of their days underground and have a bold plan to retake the planet for intelligent beings. What's to come of this?While a bit of the acting is occasionally a bit suspect and the mutants look a bit silly, for a 50s sci-fi film it's actually exceptionally good--with special effects and production values far ahead of its peers. The film is shot in glorious color and the script is awfully entertaining and features a lot of innovations that you wouldn't expect in some 'shlocky sci-fi film'---which this one certainly isn't. Well worth seeing.

No need to recap the oft-repeated plot. Unlike many cheap 50's sci-fi, this one has big-budget aims—Technicolor, elaborate costuming, futuristic interiors. Trouble is it's still pretty hokey. Getting Hugh Marlowe as lead is like throwing in the towel straightaway. He's so bland, I forget he's there. Good thing for Rod Taylor who provides much needed energy. Then there's headliner Nancy Gates who gets about three lines and looks bored if not embarrassed. Good thing for Lisa Montell who provides needed energy on the distaff side.I would have liked the results more had the exteriors gone somewhere besides Iverson Ranch. My gosh, I half-expected Gene Autry or Roy Rogers to come riding through the set any moment, so familiar are the rocks and scrubby plants from old cowboy movies. Clearly, the production scrimped on locations. Then there's the battle scenes with the mutants that are about as well staged and suspenseful as a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. It does take more than an ugly face to suggest a fearsome adversary. On the skimpy plus side are the vaulted narrow passageways of the other world. They're both well done and highly suggestive. And, of course, there're the skimpy-skirted girls, as the producers well knew. Sure, it's easy to mock a turgid misfire like this. But I think there's a point to be made. Many of the best 50's sci-fi's didn't try to create eye-catching alternate worlds, the kind that consumes a lot of budget that could otherwise go into good casts and story lines. Here I'm thinking The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Them (1954), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). These are among the decade's best. More importantly, all worked with fascinating permutations of our everyday world, instead of alternate worlds whose construction was expensive, confining, and difficult for 50's special effects. Now of course, alternate worlds can be created with the click of a mouse, but not then.Anyway, it looks like the producers had much bigger aspirations than their budget could accomplish. And thus we're left with a half-digested film more obscure than most and deservedly so.

I'd actually rate this 6 and 1/2 out of 7, but compared to the movie that came out immediately before it ("Forbidden Planet"), this somewhat derivative production comes off looking a bit less than classic. So down it goes to 6 stars.Some of the SFX in the early part of the movie are poor enough to make a modern day fan of this genre wince (think Rocky Jones "Crash Of Moons" poor), but once the movie gets out of outer space and once you get past the ludicrous spider puppets, things look a lot better and you can start concentrating on what's good about the movie instead of what's painful about it.Yes, the screenplay has more than a little resemblance to "The Time Machine", and some of the "underground scenes" and future costumes are undistinguished, but the actors manage to save it. The intrepid astronauts are practically interchangeable as characters, but they are, as I said, intrepid and daring and admirable, and the actors work hard to sell their lines, and somehow, most of the time, things work fine.There are some enjoyable bits of staging here and there, and a nice climactic duel between the chief astronaut and the villain caveman. There's a believable depiction of human nature (and human frailty) in the far future, and a "Wagon's Ho!" coda that will probably put a nostalgic smile of the face of many viewers my age - that sense that hard work, a forward thinking attitude and perfect teeth will always save the day.Worth seeing once for its own sake.