The whole world has been silenced. Annihilated by nuclear bombs.
The bombs have been dropped and the whole world is in ruins. Captain John Ramsey (Neil Fletcher) is a former US Navy Captain who has been expecting this for some time. For ten years he has been planning how to survive the holocaust. He built his home in a location that would afford the best way to fend off radiation. He has amassed enough rations to support him, his daughter Joanna (Charla Doherty) and Joanna’s fiancé. What he did not plan on were visitors.
The fiancé, Larry, never shows, but five other survivors manage to find this hidden refuge. First is clean cut Steve Morrow (Paul Petersen) and his contaminated brother Granger (Max W. Anderson). Then Mickey Brown (Hugh Feagin) comes sliding in on a trail of slime with his stripper girlfriend Jada (Quinn O’Hara). Finally, a drunk, Tim Henderson (Bill Thurman). Ramsey tries to turn everyone away, but daughter Joanna refuses to let him send anyone away, even the contaminated Granger.
With a house full of seven people with different personalities and dwindling rations people start getting on each other's nerves. Jada wants Mickey. Mickey wants Joanna and power. Tim just wants to get drunk. Granger wants raw meat. Ramsey wants everybody to go away. There’s a lot of soap opera going on, only with cannibalistic mutants running around in the forest.
“In the Year 2889” was released in 1967 and was directed and produced by Larry Buchanan. (The mind behind “Zontar: The Thing From Venus”.) The film is a made for TV movie. It is a remake of Roger Corman’s “The Day the World Ended”. The title of the movie is the same as a story by Jules Verne and his son, Michael Verne. Because the film was, an even lower budget remake, of Corman’s film, it needed a new title. Even though the movie wasn’t set in the year 2889, AIP already had the registered title available. It was for a previously unmade Verne project, so, waste not want not, it was used for the Buchanan film.
AIP gave Buchanan a copy of the script of Corman’s film as a reference. Buchanan used it as gospel instead of guide resulting in an almost line-for-line, scene-for-scene remake. The only real difference is that Buchanan’s film is in color. And of course, even crappier than Corman’s. At least when Corman does a bad movie you get some over acting and usually some camp. Sometimes even a fabulously silly looking monster. With “In the Year 2889” you get none of that. The acting is wooden. There’s no real emotion in any scene. The monster is no where’s near as silly looking, just sad looking.
Although not a good movie, “The Day the World Ended” is better. “In the Year 2889” is far more boring. The best part of the movie is the first two and a half minutes.