Journey to the Center of the Earth

A kind of transporter beam has been invented, and for a test run, a team of 6 female soldiers is sent from California to Stuttgart, Germany, which means they are beamed through the earth. They get stuck in a jungle with dinosaurs and realise this is most likely not Germany, but a lost world hundreds of miles below the surface. How can they ever be rescued from down there? But fortunately the sister of one of the soldiers just invented a laser drilling vehicle that can move below ground. What a lucky coincidence. Now there's just lots of monsters to run from. Will all members of the team survive the "Journey to the Centre of the Earth"?

Minimal budget flick that tried to profit from the blockbuster movie with the same title released around the same time. One example of the budget limitations: the area for the transporter beam is marked by a few stripes on the floor. That makes "The Time Tunnel" (1966 TV show) with its rotating opening look impressive by comparison. And of course nothing makes any sense, beginning with the equipment: why would they send soldiers with machine guns to Stuttgart, did they expect a riot? The opening titles are listing only 2 actors who are in this movie, I don't think I have seen such a lack of names anywhere before. Then again, there are reasons to remain anonymous here. I voted 3 of 10 because it has a few moments at least.

First, a single-word summary-- Unwatchable.

As I watched this film, I couldn't shake the impression that this may have been some group's first attempt at making a movie, with actors, crew, and technicians who are still learning their craft. The premise is intriguing, but of all the attempts to bring Jules Verne's 1864 novel to the screen, this one may be the worst of the lot. I am as willing as anyone to suspend my disbelief and hang on for the ride, if the story is well-told; but the wooden acting, preposterous dialog, cheesy special-effects, and overall lack of focus and discipline added up to a rather grueling hour and a half, that felt like six hours. If they were still making episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this turkey would be ripe for a good basting.

The 'science' in this movie would have been okay in the 1960s. I wonder if they actually had any technical advisors.

The only good thing about this movie was the fact that it passed the Bechdel Test , which is difficult to find, especially in Sci-fi. Pity it was so badly done.

I don't usually post... but had to on this one. I'm guessing the marketing pitch went something like this, "Okay... we release this piece of roughly cobbled together footage from the cut-room floor from an old sci-fi flick that was killed for good reason 20 years ago at the exact same time as Brenden Frazier's 'Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D', call it by the exact same name and hope nobody notices. Who wants in?!" My wife kept jokingly asking, "Is this a 'Sweded' version of a 'real' movie?" (see "Be Kind, Rewind" for concept of "Sweding"). Honestly. An all female combat unit who is neither on a combat mission nor behave like soldiers. Poor whip-cams and badly edited cut scenes. Special "ship effects" that have repeat-cells (remember Scooby-Doo cartoons? Remember how the background kept "repeating" when the gang would run down a hallway). Horrific dialogue, audio mixing (it was like watching old Kung-Fu movies... lip flaps don't match the dialogue... crap, the Japanese Anime we watch does a better job than THIS movie did!), acting, direction, photography...honestly, the only thing even remotely redeeming was the lame attempt to give Homage to Aliens (pirated dialogue "Hey... you look just like i feel...", an easily identifiable "Hudson", and even a gratuitous "chest bursting" concept), which would have been mildly funny if it wasn't attempting to take itself seriously.

Even below the typical level of Sci-Fi channel stuff. Most of these movies you can laugh at, but this thing barely achieves even camp-level status. It has next to nothing to do with the Jules Verne work, only rips off and defames the title. In fact, everything in this movie is ripped off from somebody else's ideas.

The $7 budget used in this film was only enough to hire some Drama 101 students from a local middle-school. A rag-tag group of Xena-wanna-be's are supposed to go to Germany in a covert mission, using some sort of teleportation device. Would you believe it doesn't work right? Well, they don't materialize inside of solid rock like this movie's writers did; instead, they end up in a south Pacific tropical island paradise. It's the home to a few CGI dinosaurs that actually appear occasionally, usually to roar. There's other Skull island type grotesque creatures scaring our heroines, too.

The group of stereotypes--I mean soldiers include Vilma Dinkley. She examines a pebble, and immediately knows they're 600 kilometers below the surface, under magma. You heard that right: under magma. There's a bully cat-fighter girl, a Barbie cutout doll, and their Camp Fire girls troop leader--I mean, captain. They all look like refugees from an Annette and Frankie beach musical. Scenes involving the tunneling vehicle are even sillier. The scientist and the army guy ride around through magma like they do it every day, making one-liners. The machine emerges from a magma chamber into the Hawaiian set, and shows no signs of even being warm. No smoke, ash, discoloration--nothing.

If somebody sells the DVD of this at a yard sale for 25 cents, it's price gouging.