World Without End

1956 "Thru the Time Barrier, 552 years Ahead... Roaring To the Far Reaches of Titanic Terror, Crash-Landing Into the Nightmare Future!"
5.8| 1h20m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 25 March 1956 Released
Producted By: Allied Artists Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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Four astronauts returning from man's first mission to Mars enter a time warp and crash on a 26th Century Earth devastated by atomic war. At first unaware where they are, but finding the atmosphere safe to breathe, they start exploring and find themselves in a divided future where disfigured mutants living like cavemen inhabit the surface, while the normals live comfortably below the surface but are dying as a race from lack of natural water, air and sunlight.

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Director

Edward Bernds

Production Companies

Allied Artists Pictures

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World Without End Audience Reviews

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
Scott LeBrun A quartet of astronauts - John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh), Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor), and Hank Jaffe (Christopher Dark) - go on a fateful mission to Mars. On the return trip, they're caused to break the time barrier, and they end up back on Earth - five centuries later. They learn that, in the meantime, the apocalypse has caused a new advent of primitive man, and that a few thousand untainted survivors live in underground kingdoms. They try to encourage these people to take action and take control of their lives."World Without End" was conceived by director Edward Bernds ("Queen of Outer Space", "Return of the Fly"), and it's a solidly entertaining story if not a great one. It's likely going to remind people of other, more well known tales such as "The Time Machine" and "Planet of the Apes". It does have a fair bit going for it: a snappy pace, some amusing bits of dialogue, vibrant colours, impressive CinemaScope photography (by Ellsworth Fredericks), rousing music (by Leith Stevens), and good performances. Our heroes are inherently likable chaps, the ladies (such as Nancy Gates, as Garnet) are ravishing - gotta love those miniskirts - and there is at least one good villain worth booing. That would be Booth Colman, as the devious Mories. Bernds' script actually uses "mutates" as a noun and not a verb, referring to these aforementioned primitive men. The makeup on them is pretty clunky, but it serves its purpose. And, speaking of clunky: viewers are bound to erupt into tears of laughter, seeing those "giant spiders" in action!All in all, this is good fun. It's fairly serious without ever getting TOO grim, and finishes on an upbeat, hopeful note that will be sure to leave smiles on some peoples' faces.Seven out of 10.
utgard14 Four astronauts on a mission to Mars find themselves accidentally transported 500 years into the future. There they discover a post-apocalyptic Earth with cyclopean mutants and giant spiders. Luckily for them there are also plenty of beautiful babes around. Plus all of the men left on the planet are pacifist wimps, so the ladies are in desperate need of some Vitamin "D," if you catch my drift.Fun Technicolor sci-fi movie, filmed in CinemaScope, from the golden age of science fiction. As others have stated, there are some plot similarities to sci-fi classic "The Time Machine." Coincidentally one of the astronauts here, Rod Taylor, would go on to star in the definitive film version of that story. This is an early role for Aussie Taylor, who is clearly still working on his American accent. The leader of the astronauts is 'old reliable' Hugh Marlowe, who was in a couple of sci-classics himself ("The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Earth vs the Flying Saucers" ring any bells?). Nelson Leigh plays the requisite scientist of the group. He knows what's going on no matter what's going on. Christopher Dark plays the emotional one upset because he left his wife & kids behind. Booth Colman is the villain among the wimpy future men. He doesn't like how the future women are attracted to these "reckless and brutal" primitives from the past. The lovely ladies of future Earth are well-represented by Nancy Gates and Lisa Montell, among others.Love the great old sets, costumes, and special effects. One man's cheese is another man's treasure. The astronauts dress and act like grunts from a WW2 movie, which is awesome. Some of the dated views expressed in the film provide some unintended comedy today but, to me, the added historical and sociological aspects are a plus not a minus. And, let's be real, some of it is pretty funny. I think if you're someone who enjoys sci-fi from the '50s you will like this a lot. It's not one of the best but it is very entertaining.
kennethfrankel There was a question in one of the reviews or messages -- If the mutants were watching all the cave entrances, how could the man and woman go out and look at the Moon? Apparently, they were up on a cliff ledge, which was not accessible from the outside. They use Einstein's relativity and time warps sort of merged together. If you go really fast (the rocket frame of reference), your clocks slow down compared to the laboratory frame of reference (like the people on the Earth). So things look normal to the rocket ship passengers, except that when they return to their starting point, many years may have passed by. "Clocks" here include our biological clocks, the motions of atoms, radioactive decay, and so on. So what is a time warp? I don't know. Going forward in time just results from the apparent slowing down of the fast moving clocks. Going backward in time is a different matter, and it is not clear how to do it. The astute reader might ask - Why can't I assume my rocket ship was not moving at all, but it was the Earth that was moving really fast?. Yes, but the tricky part is that this part of relativity assumes a constant speed and direction. The little comment above about returning to your starting point invalidates that - you have accelerated - that is a change in speed and/or direction. The odd trig functions like tanh, sinh and cosh are the hyperbolic functions and deal with the time, length, and apparent mass changes in relativity. So if you fire a fast bullet from a fast rocket, it will not go faster than light. Say .75 c + .75 c = .96 c using the tanh function to add velocities properly. Not 1.5 c. The wimpy men are more the result of inbreeding than lack of sunshine or exercise, which would still be good for them. Adding 4 more men to the mix, one of whom seems virile because he took his shirt off, is not going to save the human race. How could the intelligent humans know about the "exponential time displacement" that happened somewhere near Mars hundreds of years earlier? Why did it happen leaving Mars and not going there? How did the rocket ship explorers change their orbit around Mars from equatorial to polar? That would take a lot of fuel. Rocketship X-M did something like that when they went straight up and then turned right to leave the Earth. Changing the plane of an orbit is a big deal. If you go 1 Planck length in 1 Planck time you are going as fast as you can - at the speed of light (in a vacuum). The gimmick is to use a wormhole (which is warp-like)-- if space itself can go faster than light, then it's OK, or use a tunnel or wormhole, so it is like a shortcut. Then you don't violate the speed rules. It is not clear if we could ever get to the stars or if we are stuck - going there would take thousands of years or more like the Voyager spacecraft. Time will tell (pun intended).
rrcharpe It is not surprising to see how much mankind's (and woman-kind's) knowledge has advanced over the last 60 years but when you watch this movie you will be struck by the blunders that the writers of this mediocre sci-fi movie made. Several examples include things that were known at the time by almost anyone who had taken a high school biology course: These include spiders on the earth of the future who were the size of dogs, which is impossible given the oxygen rate in the atmosphere and the level of planetary gravity on earth which limits the size of spiders all over the world. Another thing is when the space travelers encounter a spider they worry about it "stinging" them when in fact spiders only bite and none have stings. It is like this throughout the movie which makes you wonder who the technical advisers were and what they were smoking. StocktonRob