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Post doomsday: A nuclear war has destroyed pretty much everything, A
sole pregnant woman, Roseanne (Susan Douglas Rubes) stumbles through the
debris and the corpses, who knows how she has survived. Eventually, she
reaches what turns out to be her sister's house, where Michael (William
Phipps), a total stranger to her who has thus far considered himself the
sole survivor, has taken up residence. The two befriend each other but no
more, because she can't forget her husband, who she hopes is still alive.
Eventually, they bump into two more people, old and frail Mr Barnstaple
(Earl Lee), a banker who suppresses everything and has managed to convince
himself that he's only on vacation, and his black driver Charles (Charles
Lampkin), the epitomy of calm. Barnstaple soon dies from radiation
poisoning, but the group soon finds another survivor, Eric (James
Anderson), a mountaineer who has survived the nuclear war on the top of
Mount Everest, and who has somehow made his way to America ... I don't
know why exactly. With Eric, a sort of dissense enters the group: While
Michael and Charles have taken to farming to provide for themselves, Eric
wants to raid major cities for supplies (and whatever else they can get),
and he questions Michael as the group's inofficial leader, tries to become
friendly with Roseanne, and eventually proves to be a racist. With the
birth of Roseanne's baby, things calm down a bit for a while, until Eric's
restlessness comes through, and he destroys Michael and Charles's newly
cultivated cornfield, persuades Roseanne to accompany him to the city (to
find her husband he claims), and behind her back he kills Charles when he
tries to hold him back. In the city, Roseanne finds the dead body of her
husband, and finds out that Eric only wanted to get her away from the
others to make her his, just like he wants to own the city and everything
in it. Away from the others, he can finally be the alpha male. But then
Roseanne reveals to him that he has got radiation poisoning, and he runs
away in terror. Roseanne tries to make it back to Michael and Charles
(whose dead she's unaware of), but her baby dies on the way. Eventually,
she and Michael run into each other, and now the two of them decide to
build the world up together ... A very sombre post doomsday
film, miles away from your usual propaganda fuelled drive-in fare from
roughly the same era, Five gives its topic a pretty intelligent
treatment without falling into Cold War rethorics, and it goes for
philosophical questions rather than mutant action. That all said, Five
is not a perfect film or masterpiece, it does take itself a bit too
seriously, a bit too often falls back on clichées and simplifications,
and it's not exactly free of plotholes. That said, it's still a welcome
change from the more sensationalist fare that seemed to overcrowd the
drive-ins in the 1950's - not that there's anything wrong with these
movies though.
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