Five

In authoritative books about science fiction in the movies, Five is generally dismissed as crude and simplistic. There is justification for this, but somehow I found the picture interesting anyway. The fact that it was shot on a shoestring may even have helped. Being forced to use only five actors and a single ready-made set--his own Frank Llloyd Wright house in the California hills--director Arch Oboler created an intimate self-contained world.

This narrow focus increases the intensity of the drama, which, as an end-of-the-world story, has its own inherent interest.

The plot doesn't bear much looking into. The way these five people--out of the entire world population--came to be together amounts to wild coincidence. There is a certain amount of sermonizing of the why-can't-we-all-get-along variety. And so on--it's hardly a great movie.

But it's interesting nonetheless and worth looking into.