In the Year 2889

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USA • 1967 • 80m •

• Directed by: Larry Buchanan. • Starring: Paul Petersen, Quinn O'Hara, Charla Doherty, Neil Fletcher, Hugh Feagin, Max W. Anderson, Bill Thurman, Byron Lord..

A group of post A-war survivors, gathered together in a valley, are menaced by cannibalistic human mutants with telepathic powers. They argue and complain a lot, which doesn't really help their situation.

Review:

The story of In the Year 2889 is your standard bad b-movie plot about the end of the world, except there is not a single thing done to make the world look futuristic. I would grant that they managed to pull off a thick, muggy version of the early 70s, so I guess they achieved a few years of a futuristic look, but it's more likely that I just can't tell the difference between 1967 and, say, 1972 or so.

The movie is an exercise in ham-handed and clunky story-telling. The sound dubbing is amazingly bad and doesn't even begin to match the action on screen, but no matter. Clearly this is a no-budget production so things like this must be forgiven. Or at least excused. The characters are in a fallout shelter, and wouldn't you just know it, it comes complete with a detailed miniature model of the house and surrounding area so that the inhabitants, mostly people who live in the area, can be informed about how the surrounding mountains will protect them from the radioactive fallout.

You see, the mountains are filled with lead, so any radioactivity will pass harmlessly over their heads like radio waves. Pretty convenient, although there is some concern because rain would swiftly deliver nuclear death. There is meant to be some tension about the rising radioactivity in the air, except that any exterior scenes never look like anything other than a beautiful sunny day.

So there is this thing about the radioactivity passing overhead and totally changing the world around them, but soon enough they are just fraternizing and grab-assing in the bomb shelter, and before you know it, the old man is instructing all the women, including his own daughter, that they must all bear children ASAP! What a guy!

Overall this is basically zero-budget nonsense. There is a title that says "The Beginning" when the movie ends, and this might be the most clever thing in the movie, so I'll let you do the math. It might have been fun had it been made as a student film or something, but the amazingly bad costumes and performances just don't belong in a commercial film meant for public viewing.

Review by Michael DeZubiria from the Internet Movie Database.

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