Terror from the Year 5000 (1958)

Professor Howard Erling (Frederic Downs) and his assistant, Victor (John Stratton), build a prototype time machine in a remote swampland lab in Florida and begin “trading objects with the future”.

The Professor’s daughter, Claire (Joyce Holden), sends the latest artefact – a small statuette – to New York archaeologist Bob Hedges (Ward Costello), who – upon carbon-dating the statuette – finds it is from the year 5200 AD. He also discovers it is dangerously radioactive and travels to the professor’s lab to warn him.

The professor decides to temporarily halt the experiments, but the vainglorious Victor continues experimenting secretly, increasing the power levels.

He materialises a mutated cat from the future with four eyes – which he dumps in the lake – and eventually a radiation-scarred woman from the year 5000.

The woman from the future (Salome Jens) – dressed in a skin-tight spangly disco jumpsuit (!) – proceeds to hypnotise people with her sparkly press-on fingernails and removes the face of a nurse (also Salome Jens) to wear as a mask.

She has come to take Victor back to the future as a breeding stallion to father a new race and save her radiation-decimated people from extinction.

Filmed in and around Dade County, Florida, this film from American International Pictures was released in the US on a double bill with The Screaming Skull.

Released in the UK as Cage of Doom.

Dr Robert Hedges
Ward Costello
Claire Erling
Joyce Holden
Professor Howard Erling
Frederic Downs
Victor
John Stratton
Future Woman/Nurse
Salome Jens
Angelo
Fred Herrick
Miss Blake
Beatrice Furdeaux
First Lab Technician
Jack Diamond
Second Lab Technician
Fred Taylor
Dr Blair
Bill Downs
Joe the Bartender
William Cost

Director
Robert J Gurney Jr.

Video