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Slaughterhouse Five

Play trailer Poster for Slaughterhouse Five R Released Mar 15, 1972 1h 44m Sci-Fi Play Trailer Watchlist
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82% Tomatometer 17 Reviews 68% Popcornmeter 5,000+ Ratings
From his home in Ilium, N.Y., optometrist Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) narrates the tale of how he came to be "unstuck in time." Kidnapped by aliens and living in comfort with his assigned mate, B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine), Billy experiences the events of his life in random order, flitting between his past as an American prisoner of war in World War II, to his humdrum middle-class life in the present-day, to his future as a zoo curiosity on the planet Tralfamadore.
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Slaughterhouse Five

Critics Reviews

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Eddie Harrison film-authority.com ...one of the best grown-up movies you've never seen, a wise, satirical and important story that sees several great talents realise a difficult text... Rated: 4/5 Jul 2, 2021 Full Review Nicholas Bell IONCINEMA.com As faithful as Hill and scribe Stephen Geller are to Vonnegut's text, however, as visual spectacle it doesn't quite compare to the exuberance of the novel, which is arguably due to Hill's formalism. Rated: 3.5/5 Aug 10, 2020 Full Review Evan Dossey Midwest Film Journal About as close an adaptation to Vonnegut's humanist triumph as possible. A moving work despite its flaws. Dec 17, 2019 Full Review Matt Brunson Film Frenzy It's a helluva lot easier to adapt, say, Stephen King than Kurt Vonnegut, yet director George Roy Hill and scripter Stephen Geller do such an exquisite job with Slaughterhouse-Five that even Vonnegut himself raved about this celluloid interpretation. Rated: 3.5/4 Dec 15, 2019 Full Review John A. Nesbit Old School Reviews provocative Rated: A- Jun 6, 2013 Full Review Christopher Lloyd Sarasota Herald-Tribune The film captures the essence of the book even while diverging from it. Vonnegut himself always claimed to be extremely pleased with it. Rated: 4.5/5 Oct 11, 2010 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Jonathon J Apparently Vonnegut loved it, so that skews me a bit in its favor. Also in its favor: seeing Dresden was more effective than reading about it, and showed well the horrors of the aftermath. And Valencia's car crash scene was much more entertaining than in the book, where it was more straightforwardly tragic. The lead actor did a good job playing hapless, wandering Billy, although I found him much more unlikable than in the book. For me, it suffers from its 70s style, but most of all it does much less with the pointlessness of war. We never hear the catchphrase "so it goes" which shifts the tone away from the melancholic book. Overall, it's an interesting translation. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 06/29/25 Full Review Mark R There have been a few attempts to adapt Vonnegut but only George Roy Hill truly succeeded with Slaughterhouse Five. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 06/19/25 Full Review Daniel C. M A deep, misanthropic satire filled with dark and dry humor over it's sheer misery. The plot is very convoluted and has a pretty bad and confusing start. Nevertheless, it's positives outweight the negative, and this is definetely a movie you must see in your lifetime. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/20/25 Full Review Titus C It helps if you read the masterpiece. I applaud the film makers for taking the dare to make a movie that is so layered and the actors deliver. Open your mind. Let it in. Its a work of genius for 1972. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 06/23/24 Full Review Kyle C This movie is okay but nowhere near as good as the book. And as usual, it doesn't really make a lot of sense if you haven't read the book, so it's not really worth watching at all. It loses most of the irreverent humor from the book, coming off as more dark and serious than it has any right to. That being said, the directing and editing save it from being a total wash by giving us some unique representations of the weirder concepts at play here. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/21/23 Full Review Shioka O Conceptual film, I just couldn't get into it. I watched in 2022 and I think it's a good material, maybe better to remake. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 09/26/22 Full Review Read all reviews
Slaughterhouse Five

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Cast & Crew

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George Roy Hill

Director

Michael Sacks

Billy Pilgrim

Ron Leibman

Paul Lazzaro

Valerie Perrine

Montana Wildhack

Eugene Roche

Edgar Derby

Sharon Gans

Valencia Merble Pilgrim

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Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse Five (1972) Slaughterhouse Five (1972) View more photos

Movie Info

Synopsis From his home in Ilium, N.Y., optometrist Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) narrates the tale of how he came to be "unstuck in time." Kidnapped by aliens and living in comfort with his assigned mate, B-movie starlet Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine), Billy experiences the events of his life in random order, flitting between his past as an American prisoner of war in World War II, to his humdrum middle-class life in the present-day, to his future as a zoo curiosity on the planet Tralfamadore.
Director
George Roy Hill
Producer
Paul Monash
Screenwriter
Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen Geller
Distributor
Universal Pictures, MCA/Universal Pictures [us]
Production Co
Universal Pictures
Rating
R
Genre
Sci-Fi
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Mar 15, 1972, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Apr 19, 2016
Runtime
1h 44m
Sound Mix
Mono, Magnetic Stereo 6 Track
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