Unknown World (1951)

Year: 1951

IMDb Rating: 4.1/10

Genres: Adventure, Sci-Fi

Directors: Arch Oboler, Terry O. Morse

Cast: William Phipps, Susan Douglas Rubeš, Otto Waldis, James Anderson, Earl Lee, Charles Lampkin, Bruce Kellogg, Jim Bannon

Dr. Jerimiah Morley becomes convinced that the world is headed to an inevitable worldwide nuclear war. He organizes an expedition made up of a team of expert scientists and an atomic-powered rock-boring vehicle called a "cyclotram" to find a subterranean environment where holocaust survivors could live indefinitely. When funding falls through, independently rich adventurer Wright Thompson underwrites the project under the condition that he be allowed to go. As the group goes deeper beneath the Earth's crust, personalities clash, tempers flare, and the dangerous journey claims the lives of several expedition members. When they come upon an enormous underground expanse with its own ocean and phosphorescent light, it appears that their goal has been achieved.

Five is a 1951 American independent horror/science-fiction film that was produced, written and directed by Arch Oboler. The film stars William Phipps, Susan Douglas Rubeš, James Anderson, Charles Lampkin and Earl Lee. Five was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film's plot involves one woman and four men, the apparent sole survivors of a war using a new type of atomic bomb. It appears to have annihilated the rest of the human race while leaving all infrastructure intact. The five people meet at a remote, isolated hillside house, where they try to determine how to survive and come to terms with the loss of their own personal worlds.

Dr. Morley (dubbed the Prophet of Doom by at least one newspaper reporter) is an obsessive opponent of all things nuclear. Fearing that atomic weapons will destroy all life on earth, he recruits a group of scientists for his Society to Save Civilization, and they make plans to find a living space deep within the earth where man can survive and rebuild from the nuclear holocaust they see just over the horizon. After the group fails to secure any funding, a rich newspaper publisher's son forks over the cash and accompanies them on their monumental journey. They design a cyclotram, basically a great big ugly metal boxcar with a humongous drill for a nose, ascend to the top of an extinct volcano, go down into the crater and start drilling through rock as they make their way downward. Every so often, they stop for a minute to fight or to provide an opportunity for one of them to die.