World Without End: Down in the hole
I am a person of precious few skills, but I think I would recognize the planet I grew up living on, even if it has mutants.
NOTE: I realize that I listed Oliver Stone’s JFK as the next entry, but that will take a while to unpack and write, so here’s an appetizer.
Sure. Sometimes here on NUCLEAR THEATER, I try to tie the cultural offerings of the Cold War era to the history being made at the time and shine some light on the connection, but deep down, I am not a complicated person. For my post-apocalyptic films, I’m basically looking for a few things:
1) Mutants
2) Underground civilizations
3) Freakishly large whatevers (see #1)
Which brings us to 1956’s obscure sci-fi movie World Without End, which sounds like a kind of optimistic title if you think about it. I mean, hey, the world doesn’t actually end. It says right there on the screen. So that’s something we have going for us.
I love 50s sci-fi for its terrible effects, wooden acting and outlandish plots—as an art form you can see how these low-cost affairs set up the templates for the more respectable movies to come. This was a genre in its infancy. And to tell you the truth, I would much rather watch World Without End again than labor through another viewing of Asteroid City, which was a “serious” attempt to detail the 50s zeitgeist.
Here's the deal: The first manned spaceflight is approaching Mars (why they skipped the moon is not explained). Our four brave astronauts, flying in what appears to be the front cabin of a Winnebago, find some evidence of Martian life and lament that they cannot land on the surface for this mission. Two of the white guy astronauts are named Herb and Hank, which will only end up confusing me.
As they turn back to Earth, a mysterious force – so much so that it is never identified – propels them at high speeds into outer space. The ship crash-lands on a snow- covered mountain. The crew isn’t sure where they are. “We could be anywhere,” one member says. (I’m no celestial navigator, but that isn’t true as a matter of physics, right? I mean, there was a radius of possibilities in the solar system even at hyper-speeds. Like two, maybe three places tops.) Despite the fact they are literally standing in “snow,” our intrepid travelers conclude they are on Venus, which is closer to the Sun than Earth but never mind. Do not let any of these guys take you the airport.
Their next move is to walk into a cave, where they discover a massive spider web. Again, I am no astronaut, but here is what happens if I find an unusually large spider web: I. Run. From. The. Cave. As. Fast. As. All. Get. Out. Like Gilligan fast.
Not our happy wanderers. In an eyeblink, they are attacked by (rubber) spiders of unusual size. (I have to admit being startled.)1 Upon escaping, they are immediately assaulted by grotesque, one-eyed man-things and fight them off with their revolvers. At last, they stumble across some old gravestones when it finally hits them. They’re on Earth! In the future. They’re victims of Einstein’s time dilation principle. As the rocket’s speed increased exponentially, time slowed down for the crew while time on Earth advanced. Or something.
(To give them some credit, they figured this out in about 20 minutes – as compared to it taking Charlton Heston several days in Planet of the Apes and after Chuck literally had to see Lady Liberty with his own eyes before he got it.)
The one-eyed men? They must be “mutates” who were deformed by atomic radiation, they conclude. Is this all that’s left of mankind? On cue, they discover the entrance to an underground city. (They crashed in a very convenient spot.) Inside, a council of elders, all wearing costumes from a Buck Rogers trunk show, inform them that it is the year 2508, and that their underground civilization is all that remains from a brutal nuclear conflict. “Armageddon. The slaughter of humanity. An atomic war no one wanted, but which no one had the wisdom to avoid,” says the grim-faced council leader, Timmek.
As futuristic subterranean civilizations go, this one is fairly disappointing. It looks a little bit a like an outdated Embassy Suites, albeit with sliding doors. (Why don’t we have automated sliding doors at home yet? Make it happen, Elon.) Oddly enough, while the men are old and feeble, the women are young, vivacious, and let’s face it, pretty eager to get it on with the men from the past, whom they perceive as being more virile than their worn-out partners. Nancy Gates, who plays “Garnet,” in particular, is a true 26th Century Fox, dressed like a cocktail waitress at the Pan-Am lounge. (The less we say about Deena the slave girl the better.)
In fact, the promise of good ol’ American virility factors greatly in the plot. The crew is contemptuous of the survivors — it’s almost as if they have European-style health care. “The surface of the Earth was meant for man. He wasn't meant to live in a hole in the ground!” exclaims the leader, John Borden (Hugh Marlowe). The crew wants to get some men together, build some weapons and take the surface back from the mutates, who apparently don’t realize how good they have it. But this kind of aggression is precisely what led to the war that almost wiped out humanity in the first place, Timmek (correctly) points out.
That does not deter our heroes, who end up fashioning a bazooka (!) to blow the mutates to dust. The confusing message of the film seems straight out of 1956: It’s in man’s nature to be violent, to take over, to propagate – even if those are the tendencies that risk his ultimate destruction. As the story reaches the conclusion (after a fistfight between Borden and the king of the mutates that would do “Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk proud), the crew sets out to build a new civilization on the surface. But has mankind learned anything – besides not to stick around in caves with giant webs? It seems doubtful. 2
WHERE CAN I WATCH IT: World Without End is playing on HBO Max. You can watch it right now! It was shot in Cinema Scope, which was meant for widescreen films in theaters so it looks great.
HEY ISN’T THAT: Two years earlier, Nancy Gates starred in Suddenly, a film in which Frank Sinatra plays a ruthless killer who sets out to assassinate the president as he travels through a small California town. After Sinatra’s friend, John F. Kennedy, was shot almost a decade later, legend has it that Sinatra asked all copies of the film be destroyed. That story seems to have been debunked, and Suddenly was fully restored several years ago. As we warm up for JFK, the movie can be found on YouTube.
ARMAGEDDON INDEX: (8/10): It’s a world without. . . end.
DUST CLOUDS: As typical of the rudimentary sci-fi movies of the time, World Without End spends no time delving into the science behind a possible manned flight to Mars. But Wernher Von Braun, who was indeed a rocket scientist, started postulating in the 1950s that such a mission might be possible. In 1969, he proposed a plan in which 12 astronauts would travel on a nuclear-powered craft assembled in Earth orbit. The crew would spend 80 days on the Martian surface as part of a mission that would last almost three years. More than 50 years later, mankind still is trying to figure out a way – and the means – to get to the red planet. (Make it happen, Elon.)
TOP OF THE POPS: The hottest song around in March 1956 was “The Poor People of Paris” by Les Baxter. Rock ‘n’ Roll was still on the launchpad.
WHAT ELSE I’M WATCHING: TV: MobLand (S1, Paramount), The Studio (S1, Apple), Stick (S1, Apple), Your Friends and Neighbors (S1, Apple). Movies: The Contender (Lurie, 2000).
LAST ENTRY: On the Beach (1959)
NEXT ENTRY: JFK (1991) – for real.
Even as big, fake rubber spiders, they are more effective than the giant scorpions or the man-eating cockroaches in Damnation Alley.
The underground post-apocalyptic civilization is a trope that never goes out of style. Witness “Silo” on Apple TV and “Paradise” on Hulu. To their detriment, neither of these shows feature large, mutated creatures. That is not progress, people.
Great stuff James - a highly entertaining review of what sounds like a pretty entertaining movie in its own charmingly schlocky way. Who wouldn’t be drawn in by the promise of a 26th Century Fox (I see what you did there 😜) in an outdated Embassy Suites. Loved the screen grabs!