I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

As Good As It Gets

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

FiveThe upside to atomic war is finding out if your homemade Hazmat suit works. The folks in this post-apocalyptic drama, however, think it best to avoid ground zone.Wandering the radioactive hillsides looking for her husband in the wake of an atomic bomb that wiped out humanity, the pregnant Roseanne (Susan Douglas Rubes) stumbles upon Michael (William Phipps).Other survivors eventually join the couple on the outskirts: an elderly banker (Earl Lee), his African-American aid (Charles Lampkin) and a racist (James Anderson).As tensions mount between the males, Roseanne sneaks away to the city to continue searching for her newborn's father.A somber yet realistic take on atomic fallout and the struggle that follows, writer, director, producer Arch Oboler brings his radio drama sensibilities to the silver screen resulting in this effective meditation on the human condition.Incidentally, in a post-apocalyptic world store mannequins are your best hope for reproduction. Green Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Writer / producer / director Arch Oboler conceived this landmark, meagerly budgeted post- apocalypse drama, one of the very earliest of its kind. It brings together five strangers: a poet & philosopher named Michael (William Phipps), a young pregnant woman named Roseanne (Susan Douglas Rubes), a black man named Charles (Charles Lampkin), a bank clerk named Mr. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), and a mountain climber named Eric (James Anderson). After the bombs decimate much of American life, these five people find each other, and spend time at an isolated cliff side house (Obolers' real life, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home). Various personality conflicts form the basis for the plot as these people struggle to survive, debate methodology, and air grievances.Also utilizing a poem dubbed "Creation" by James Weldon Johnson, Oboler tries his hardest to create something fairly profound. Stark b & w photography by Sid Lubow and Louis Clyde Stoumen is an asset, and the tale is enacted with sensitivity by its well chosen cast of actors who were, at the time, relative unknowns. The biggest sparks fly when Eric is revealed as a racist, and also somebody who will question things and be certain that there have to be other "immune" survivors living out there somewhere. On the other hand, Michael isn't sure that the cities will be safe. Roseanne is understandably distraught not knowing the fate of her husband.As one can imagine, this is a pretty intimate story, and it attempts to show how human flaws can still manifest themselves under extreme circumstances. It's at its most chilling when showing how truly alone our characters seem to be, with shots of forlorn streets and buildings and skeletons that are the grim reminders of the devastation wrought by the atomic explosions."Five" earns points for good intentions and ambitions, and it stands in contrast to more action-oriented giant monster features of the Atomic Age.Seven out of 10.

A decade before The Last Man on Earth and its updated remakes, The Omega Man and I am Survivor, this apocalyptic film came along to describe the day after tomorrow. Missing special effects, silly soap opera and stars, it focuses on how people try to change old habits and temptations, dealing with the deadly consequences of a nuclear attack. The one key sequence in this that helps it rise into something unique is when two antagonistic survivors make a tentative truce, citing the realization that this is important for continuing peace. A disturbing scene has the pregnant heroine venturing into a city which was obviously a target. More profound than the silly science fiction films with radio-active monsters, it suffers as a result of too much silence which makes these five face a fate worse than annihilation: isolation.

The subject of this film may seem commonplace - the world destroyed by nuclear holocaust, one woman and several men the only survivors, - but it was the first to tackle this subject matter, and it does it very well. This one does have one interesting catch - the woman survivor is pregnant.I hadn't seen this one since the third grade - Thanskgiving 1966 - and it made quite an impression on me at the time, so I thought I'd purchase it and see if it lived up to my memories. It did and then some. I can't really share any details of the story without giving anything away, except perhaps the character of the survivors. The woman is understandably obsessed with returning to the city and finding out for sure if her husband is dead or alive. Of the four men one is disqualified as a suitor because of his age, and another is disqualified because, after all, this is 1951 and he is African American and the woman is white. Of the two actually eligible suitors by 1951 standards, one is a brutish slob and the other is thoughtful and forward thinking, setting up a Cain and Abel dynamic between the two. Highly recommended for fans of 1950's sci-fi.