In the Year 2889

source: In the Year 2889

The other day I was flipping through my dozens of movie channels and saw this film. It was rated NC-17. So of COURSE I had to take a look. This was a gosh-awful film. And what the heck was the NC-17 for? Someone lost their job and thought it would be funny to rate this "NC-17" as they were going out the door?!?! As many of you know, I am a big fan of the 60's series "The Outer Limits". As all of us fans know, their make-up and special effects budget was very light. But ya know -- the stories were wonderful, the actors were wonderful and the effects, although rinky-dink to some today -- still work. BUT THIS on the other hand is a great example of crap-crap-crappity-crap-crap-crap. I can't even blame this production on substance abuse. This is not camp, its not even fun. But like any bad accident, you cannot help but to look and afterwards question why you did.

As another commentator said, Larry Buchanan has to be the 1960's version of Ed Wood. However, where at least Ed Wood more or less was very original in his thinking, Buchanan never had an original thought in his whole career. The only original films he ever made was 1969's "Its Alive" and his most infamous film, the epic schlockfest "Mars Needs Women" but even those epics had to work hard to reach the bottom of the heap. This essentially is a remake of Roger Corman's 1950's epic "The Day the World Ended". However, where Corman was able to use his B-pictures to make some social commentary, Buchanan never was able to rise above being boring. Also, whereas Corman was a great scout of young talent both in front of the camera and behind it, Buchanan relied on washed up has beens (eg. Paul Petersen of "Donna Reed Show" fame"). This is definitely a piece of crap.

Despite the film's title, in the year 1967, a nuclear holocaust erupts, leaving a young lady (Doherty) and her retired naval officer father Fletcher in one of the very few unaffected areas of the U.S. It seems Fletcher had been prepping for the big day and deliberately built his home in a valley that is surrounded by lead and has an updraft that prevents radiation from falling on them. What he didn't foresee was the endless parade of interlopers who keep knocking on the door! He is reluctant to let them in but Doherty is either lonely, since her fiancé was lost in the destruction, or otherwise feels obligated to take the others in. This despite the fact that the strangers include a common thug (Feagin), his * girlfriend (O'Hara), a local drunk (Thurman), a chain-smoking young man (Peterson) and his radiation-drenched brother (Anderson)! The seven, seemingly sole survivors on earth, set up housekeeping at Fletcher's pad, but have trouble getting along and also frequently fret about whether it will rain or not, thus dousing them with deadly radiation. Fletcher waddles around with a detector, checking to make sure everything is under 50. As the static, trite (this was based on a 1955 film script called "The Day the World Ended") film continues, Peterson, who hasn't brought a change of clothes but seems to have brought a year's supply of Lucky Strikes, and Fletcher speculate about their fate and, fortunately for the male audience members, open up the pool so that the ladies can have a swim! Sadly, there's a hideous deformed mutant living in the woods who likes to watch them. Also, Anderson becomes increasingly odd, craving raw meat and lurching around the woods in search of it. The personal relationships begin to unravel just as the mutant decides to start killing people, but, predictably, there is still an Adam and Eve left at the end. Former child-star Peterson gives a stilted, dull, expressionless performance in the film. He wouldn't move much at all if it weren't for his nonstop cigarette smoking. What's sad is that he is one of the better actors! O'Hara adds some much-needed pulchritude and zip to this bland affair and Doherty isn't too bad, though she's a far cry from her role as a wise-cracking preteen in "Take Her, She's Mine." The badge of acting dishonor has to go to the sleep-inducing awfulness of Fletcher, who is given far too much to say and do in the film. His type should always be relegated to a supporting role. Anderson is actually quite ruggedly-handsome if not for his radiation scars and his penchant for going out in the woods to eat animals raw! It's a tacky, $4.13 production with occasional unintentional laughs, but not enough of them to warrant sitting through it.

Don't be fooled by the title: this movie is anchored in the present(1960s, Dallas,Texas).The director/auteur, Larry Buchanan, can best be described as a minor league George Romero. However, I think this film has merit and should not be dismissed so easily. The opening shot reveals the inside of the cockpit of the bomber that drops the nuclear bomb. The subsequent mushroom cloud and rolling cloud formations over majestic mountains are well lensed. The basic story concept is fine and ripe for exploring. Paul Peterson and the chick who plays the go-go dancer are competent thespians. The gent who plays the radioactive brother of Peterson is appropriately creepy. I also like the old captain's regret when he breaks Timothy's jug of whiskey after a evening of partying. He tells Peterson the next morning that he was unaware of the degree of Timothy's alcoholism. Groundbreaking and insightful for a Sci-Fi script of the Sixties. Show this movie to the young ones and remind them how movies of the past used imagination over special effects.

Thanks to the cable television movie service provided by the Encore group, including the Action Channel and The Western Channel, those of us who subscribe to the Behemoth Comcast and who truly cannot sleep at night ... were treated to multiple showings of In the Year 2889, recently. Treated is a good word. Because after seeing this incredible bit of cinematic flotsam and jetsam, I felt like I needed 'treatment.' There must be a name in science for the psychological disorder which causes a normal person to arise in the middle of the night and watch bad Science Fiction on cable !! Truly, if I didn't need 'treatment' for it before watching "2889," I sure needed it afterwords. At least the colors in the film as shown were true. Everything else, absolutely everything else about the movie was simply ABOMINABLE. Well, Charla has a very fine female form, which is semi-revealed for about twenty seconds in an otherwise meaningless swimming pool scene. This has all the virtues of a movie made by people who were bored one week-end and found a camera and a lot of extra film which needed exposing, and lowered themselves to the task. Apparently the beaches and the liquor stores were all closed that week-end, for nothing else accounts for the decision somebody made to say, "ACTION," and beginning shooting film. There is no way to comment on the director's skills for there doesn't seem to be any direction in evidence. Once upon a time I thought the worst movie ever made was something done by Andy Warhol or one of his confederates, where they just rolled film on the outside of a skyscraper, slowly panning up the building for hour after hour. By contrast to "2889", watching that movie was truly exciting. Honest. I wouldn't kid you about something this serious.

This is a very low budget remake of THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED--a film about a tiny group who have somehow survived nuclear annihilation. Considering that it was made by Larry Buchanan, it's no surprise that the film not only stinks but is rather boring. This is the same guy who managed to make MARS NEEDS WOMEN dull--and which a title like this, how could you possibly make it dull?! This is the same director who is seldom mentioned in the pantheon of bad directors but should--producing films that even Ed Wood would be ashamed of making!! The film begins just after a worldwide nuclear war. Practically everyone is dead but a small oasis of life exists all thanks to an explanation that really never made any sense. But, the old guy who explains it all seems to know what he's talking about, as he's got provisions and plans on surviving along with his daughter. However, several survivors straggle in as well as there just isn't enough food for them all AND a couple of the survivors are obvious scum--so obvious that you wonder why anyone would bother to save them! Well, with the help of one of the 'nice' survivors (Paul Peterson from "The Donna Reed Show"), they do their best to conserve the food and fight against mutants (why are there ALWAYS mutants?). Despite mutants and nuclear war and a * and her evil (and horny) boyfriend, Buchanan manages to make a film that seems about 20 minutes too long. The pacing is like lead and the film is so cheaply made that there really are never any thrills or excitement. While not among the very worst films I have seen, it's definitely close and only of interest to bad movie fans. This film was recently released along with another Buchanan 'classic'--IT'S ALIVE. Both are excruciatingly terrible films, but somehow IT'S ALIVE manages to provide a small amount of entertainment--something IN THE YEAR 2889 never even comes close to doing.

In the mid-60's notoriously ill-regarded Grade Z exploitation feature hack Larry Buchanan made a handful of uniformly awful films -- "The Eye Creatures," "It's Alive," and this thuddingly dismal dud among 'em -- under the auspices of the legendary B-movie grindhouse studio American International Pictures. These flicks were so bad that AIP deemed them unworthy of theatrical releases and instead tossed them away as strictly direct-to-television fare, where these clinkers have since become firmly established as perennial late night cathode ray timekiller fodder. This is Larry's typically lousy $1.98 remake of Roger Corman's admittedly cheap, but still hugely enjoyable sci-fi doomsday classic "The Day the World Ended." The basic premise remains the same: A motley assortment of people who are unscathed by a lethal nuclear blast hole up in a remote mountainside redoubt run by a hard-nosed survivalist. They quarrel and squabble with each other until a disfigured telepathic cannibal mutant finally attacks the shelter in the last reel. Harold Hoffman's drab, talky, studiously by-the-numbers trite script doesn't offer any fresh, compelling imaginative twists on the original, thus relegating this turkey to tepid Rehash City Snoozeville from cruddy start to dreary end. Moreover, Buchanan's lifeless direction fails abysmally to create either tension or momentum, allowing a stultifying surplus of tedious talk to bring the already leaden pace to a grindingly torpid snail-like clip. Robert C. Jessup's ratty, all-beat-to-unsightly-hell cinematography, the watery, tunelessly droning stock film library score, dreadfully unconvincing make-up (the mutant looks like some wizened old guy with a severe sunburn and a glowing white fright wig), an irritatingly preachy and heavy-handed Christian morality, and the largely wooden acting (only the always dependable Bill Thurman as a crusty old alcoholic rancher adds any much-needed vitality to the staggeringly static proceedings) certainly don't help matters any as well. Overall, this insufferably atrocious wash-out sadly rates as one of the all-time worst and most dissatisfying end-of-the-world sci-fi losers to ever limp its crappy way onto celluloid.

Are you ready for this? This is one of a string of little or no budget remakes by filmmaker Larry Buchanan for AIP. IN THE YEAR 2889 is a remake of Roger Corman's THE END OF THE WORLD(1956). A stick in the mud retired Navy Captain John Ramsey(Neil Fletcher)and his daughter Joanna(Charla Doherty)survive a nuclear disaster in their built specially for the occasion home in the bottom of a canyon. With very little food to thrive on an array of uninvited guests drop in for shelter. A chain smoking young man Steve(Paul Peterson)and his brother Granger(Max Anderson)arrive first. Granger has already become a radioactive mutant. Soon arrives a *(Quinn O'Hara)and her sleazy manager Mickey(Hugh Feagin). Oddly enough the next to appear is an alcoholic farmer Tim(Bill Thurman). This strange collection of folks are not only in fear of radioactive fallout; but also the raw meat eating mutants like Granger that keeps coming closer and closer to the house. Lust, drunkenness and murder are interrupted when fresh rain falls and saves Joanna from a telepathic mutant that has carried her off to the woods. Will this rainfall be mankind's salvation? The mutant(in an awkward rubber mask)is played by Byron Lord.

Back in '71 and '72, the local one-lung independent TV station I grew up watching subsisted on a weekend schedule of AWA pro wrestling, Milwaukee Brewers or Bucks games, "Roller Game of the Week" (the L.A. T-Birds version) and every American International film ever released to television syndication. This was one of those movies. Essentially a colour updating of THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (which was also frequently run on that station, once right before this very picture), IN THE YEAR 2889 covers pretty much the same territory as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (produced around the same time), except that it's a nuclear holocaust the housebound survivors are trying to live down rather than zombies. Paul Petersen gives a fairly good performance of what they handed him here. Look for it in one of those super-cheap DVD boxes of 10 or 20 movies on the same theme that the Brentwood label puts out.