1960s SF film

In the Year 2889, 1967, USA   DIRECTED BY LARRY BUCHANAN
It was well known in ’60s Hollywood that if you needed something cheap and fast you might as well call Larry Buchanan. Made as a TV filler for American International Pictures, Buchanan was given the script of Roger Corman's Day the World Ended and instead of displaying any creativity with the project he simply repeated it line for line, scene for scene, with a far less capable cast and probably an even smaller budget than Corman's. It acquired the title of the Jules Verne short story after AIP's plans for a movie version of it were shelved, and the title, very misleadingly, was simply tacked onto this project instead. The end result doesn't even try to appeal to the intelligence of the viewer; in fact that probably wasn't even a consideration. The monster is less an actual monster and more just a guy wearing a Halloween mask, and this film has the most truncated ending you will ever witness – at least Corman gave his ending the few seconds it needed to make something of an impression; here, you don't even get that. As a film that has achieved some notoriety over time for its lack of both quality and originality, this movie almost defines the term 'Z-movie': it subliminally shouts "work for hire" and "time and budget constraints" from start to finish, because Buchanan clearly didn't have any interest in creating something that would last beyond the TV commercials that followed it. Yes it's a Corman remake, and one that was entirely pointless as Larry Buchanan himself would probably have admitted, but it's also worth avoiding easy put-downs such as 'worst SF movie ever" when discussing this film. Instead, put it in the correct context by remembering that this was created as TV filler: it was never intended to be something memorable, it was intended simply to fill airtime – Buchanan did precisely that with his talents and, sadly, nothing more.