Waste of time

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A quintet of people have to work together to stay alive and persevere in the wake of a nuclear holocaust that has killed off everyone else on the planet. Writer/director Arch Oboler relates the engrossing story at a steady pace, creates and sustains a properly bleak and sober tone throughout, puts a firm emphasis on interaction between the well-drawn characters over cheap melodrama or heavy-handed moralizing, and ably crafts a strong mood of despair and hopelessness. The fine acting by the capable cast holds the picture together: Susan Douglas as the pregnant, shell-shocked Roseanne Rogers, William Phipps as kindly intellectual Michael, Charles Lampkin as the genial, soft-spoken Charles, James Anderson as arrogant troublemaker Eric, and Earl Lee as polite old gentleman Mr. Barnstaple. Moreover, this movie gains considerable strength and impact from its low-key and unsentimental evenly balanced portrait of a dismal and distressful situation that brings out both the best and worst in humanity. The sharp black and white cinematography by Sid Lubow and Louis Clyde Stoumen provides a stark film noirish look (the shots of empty streets littered with skeletons are especially striking). Henry Russell's moody score does the brooding trick. Worth a watch for fans of end-of-the-world cinema.

I had been in Los Angeles on August and went around Arch Oboler's house. It was amazing! I saw FIVE more than 50 years ago and the place is still there, maybe assuring to me that the world won't end, in spite of men's irresponsibility. The silence and the sounds of FIVE are in my memory since I was less than 10 years old. I have it and use to see it very often. When I came back home I noticed the visit to the location opened my eyes and my mind to details I haven't seen and heard before, as the stairs, the poem "Creation" and the music of Henry Russel. What a movie! I have no doubt: my very favorite sci-fi. There are only two other movies that fixed the same discomfort in me: THEM! and the first PLANET OF APES.

Set against the backdrop of the director's own starkly beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright home, five survivors of a new type of nuclear bomb try to put their lives back together.Those looking for blast effects will be disappointed. Like _Testament_ and _The World, the Flesh, and the Devil_, this film is a character study. It skips the firestorm and focuses on the psychological aftermath.The five survivors include Roseanne, a pregnant widow; Michael, a reclusive poet; Eric, a European adventurer; and Charles and Mr. Barnstaple, two coworkers from a bank. Each has escaped the deadly radiation by coincidence, and all come together by chance as the story unfolds.Conflicts erupt as the survivors attempt to reconstruct some sense of normality. Roseanne remains stuck in the past, unable to grasp the uncertainty of her husband's fate. Michael is burdened by the guilt he feels at finally getting to enjoy a solitary existence. Charles, probably the most level-headed of all the characters, is locked in conflict with racist Eric, who cannot get past the now-irrelevant fact that Charles is black. The elderly Mr. Barnstaple simply cannot acknowledge the scope of the tragedy and thereby, in a particularly bittersweet scene, ends up being able to live his dreams.The film is marred by several glaring inconsistencies. Though the war was only several weeks prior, the bodies of the victims have been reduced to dry skeletons. Eric has somehow managed to "walk across Asia," find a plane, fly across the ocean, and arrive on the beach in California. Surely the budget could have included some tweaking of the script and the hiring of a few extras to lie there in place of the skeletons.Despite these flaws and a saccharine, too-predictable ending, _Five_ is a thoughtful, historically relevant diamond in the rough.

A bit overwrought and florid, but very enjoyable. Several reviewers pick on it because they seem to think that the characters are walking around in a totally depressed state throughout the movie. I don't see this at all. In fact, I perceive them as incredibly upbeat and positive about their situation, all things considered. One of the aspects of this film that I enjoy the most is the pure villainy of the bad guy. It's rare nowadays to see such an uncompromising and ungrateful jerk written into a script. He's human and believable, but he has no redeeming qualities at all. Also, he accomplishes this without the aid of technology, secret weapons, or even any sort of clever scheming or evil plans.The cinematography is pretty good, with some startling shots and quite a bit of hand-held camera.Finally, and I simply can't pass on this, the title is numerically correct for the majority of the movie. A couple other reviewers have stated that it is incorrect and I'm not sure if they're numerically challenged or what.