Dimension 5 is a 1966 film that only has a bit of SF in it, but I hadn't seen it before so I took a look. Jeffrey Hunter is a spy for Espionage Inc in this low budget thriller. I know, Espionage Inc, what a dumb idea. The script is a fairly poor. You can blame Arthur C Pierce for that. He's written a good number of poor low budget genre films like Beyond The Time Barrier, The Human Duplicators, The Navy Vs The Night Monsters. He even directed 6 movies in his 23 year career and I've seen all of them. It's nothing to be proud of, other than the dedication to the cause. The director is Franklin Adreon who I hadn't remembered hearing about before. He's wrote some serials I haven't seen yet, and directed a few pictures I probably won't see.
The SF element is the time converter belt Jeffrey is testing. Seems it's possible to get stuck in the past, or future, with the belt, it's what the belt's creator warned, but they use it anyway. Jeff's new mission is to tackle the Dragon's, a group of Red thugs. France Nuyen is Chinese agent Ki Ti Tso, Jeffrey calls her Kitty, and she's been assigned to work with him. Harold Sakata plays Big Buddha, the LA head of the Dragons, he's in a wheelchair. Someone dubs his voice though he rarely speaks. Jeffrey uses the time belt to find out how the Dragon's killed a guy in their custody. He returns to the present and puts a stop to that.
Jeffrey's agency has a device to interrogate prisoners. It's one of those beauty shop hair dryers with some other buttons stuck to the chair. They do find out that the Dragon's have been bringing in parts of an H Bomb and they plan to blow it up in three months on Christmas Day. They want the US to pull their troops out of Asia or they will turn LA into a wasteland. The Dragon's have a devious bunch of agents but they are no match for Jeffrey and Frances. That's surprising since Jeffrey is a bit of an idiot at times and Frances isn't that much better. Neither are no where near as clever as they should be to work that job. I guess that's why they aren't working for the CIA.
It's no great shakes, struggling to be less than average, but I managed to get through it. You can check it out on YouTube, in the link in the title above, if you want. There's no real need.
I watched Just Imagine again, I had first seen it in 2006. It's a 1930SF musical that imagines the world of 1980. It's nothing like what happened in 1980 though they do get that people wouldn't be much different. The citizens have numbers for names but that's not much different. They did give up real food for pills and prohibition is still on but there are bootleg liquor pills. Couples can purchase babies out of a machine. That's different.
It's written by Buddy G DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson. I hadn't heard of any of them. David Butler is the director and I'd seen a bit of his other work. A vaudeville comedian named El Blondel leads the cast but he doesn't do much to carry the picture.
One part of the story is about a love triangle and another is about a guy from 1930 who's been revived in 1980. J-21 wants to marry LN-18 but the marriage tribunal says no. That's them hanging out on LN-18's air plane. LN-18 is played by Maureen O'Sullivan. MT-3 is also in the running for LN-18's hand and he's got the nod.
J-21 makes friends with the 1930s man played by Blondel, he's called Single 0 in the new world order. J-21 gets a bit despondent and while thinking of jumping to his death, he gets interrupted by Misha Auer, playing B-36. He introduces J-21 to a scientist who has a rocket to Mars going on. J-21 and his pal RT-42 join the crew and Single 0 stows away. On Mars the guys meet up with the rulers there and have a bit of an adventure before returning to the Earth.
It's all pretty silly but the script is poor at times. There are jokes but they are few and not overly big. I didn't think the songs were much good, they certainly didn't make the picture any better for me. I read that the movie was a flop. I could see it. It's average, at my kindest, with only a couple of interesting behind the scenes bits to make it stand out. When I saw it back in 2006 I didn't care that much for it. I don't think it's any better now. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone other than being a bit of a curiosity.
I did like the models to the large cityscape. I read on the Wikipedia that they had 205 people working on it in an Army balloon hanger for 5 months. It cost $168,000 and had 15,000 tiny light bulbs. Footage of the city was used in the Universal serials Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
The revival of the 1930s man takes place in this lab. The equipment was designed and built by Kenneth Strickfaden. The following year he would build the lab for Doctor Frankenstein in James Whale's Frankenstein.Willis O'Brien also worked on some of the miniatures. Those bits make the film a bit more interesting, at least for me, others might hardly care.