Journey to the Center of Time

Remember the days when there used to be matinees on the weekends with double and triple features that parents could drop their kids off at and have a day of peace? Well, I saw this one when I was ten years old and I went with great anticipation, since one of the early matinees that I went to was a fun double feature of THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and KING KONG ESCAPES.

Now here's the problem: when the matinee was advertised on TV, the ads were for a film called JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME; something about a bunch of kids in a raft who somehow end up in the prehistoric era battling dinosaurs. All of the kids I knew went to see it, and we were alive with excitement. The lights dimmed...and we got JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME, a boring highbrow flick for a much older age group. That's right, the distributor sent the theater the wrong movie!!! I can only imagine the plight of the poor theater manager who had to face all of the irate parents after the show....Anyway, I was one of about twenty kids who actually sat through the movie, and I really wish I hadn't. That so-called "twist" ending...Oh, brother!!!

As I understand it, Ib Melchior and Dave Hewitt had a falling out over 1964's The Time Travelers. Both are credited with coming up with the story, but Hewitt left the production and Melchior wrote the screenplay and directed this little sci-fi B-film classic himself. Hewitt wrote his own version of the movie and later directed it as 1967's Journey to the Center of Time, making just a slightly different version. I can't remember ever seeing what is essentially a remake arrive just three years after the first movie's release. But then again, both films were grist for drive-ins where few people probably noticed the similarities. These movies had me scratching my head wondering if I had seen it before on TV where, after repeated viewings, I was able to make the connection between the two films.

This one is really bad yet it was fun to watch. It is a story about time travel with an absurd plot, a dreary script, a hokey set, illogical actions, and a strange and bizarre ending. Nevertheless, it was fun to watch. I purchased it on a two sided DVD with H.G. Wells "Things to Come" on the other side. This movie too is strange, but it was worth buying. What is worth noting is that the actor who plays "Doc" Gordon in Journey is also in "Things to Come" as the Jew.

If you enjoy hokey science fiction this is worth looking at.

David L. Hewitt's American General Pictures strikes again with 1967's "Journey to the Center of Time," following on the heels of cofeatures "The Wizard of Mars" and "Gallery of Horror" but lacking the presence of John Carradine, whose agent did manage to provide Scott Brady and Anthony Eisley for the project, something of a remake of Ib Melchior's "The Time Travelers" from 1964, made to coincide with Irwin Allen's teleseries THE TIME TUNNEL. Call it a waste of time, but with another quartet of scientific adventurers venturing into Earth's future (6968 to be exact) before going way back to 1 million B.C. (complete with giant lizard from "One Million B.C."), whatever hoped for thrills are dashed by excessive talk and virtually no action. Scott Brady's self centered industrialist is strictly out to make a quick buck, while Anthony Eisley, Abraham Sofaer, and Gigi Perreau are forced to prove that they can travel further than 24 hours into the future if the project is to maintain funding. Only a single shot from "The Time Travelers" is used (the rocket ship ready for takeoff), the actual arrival coming only at the half hour mark, the tale of alien invasion lasting but 15 minutes in front of a black backdrop before moving forward into the past (endlessly represented by footage from war movies, Westerns, and gladiator entries), a typical low budget jungle/cavern set with only the threat of molten lava keeping viewers awake (there's a very brief shot of the bat-rat-spider creature from Melchior's "The Angry Red Planet" flashing by on the viewing screen so fast one might easily miss it). Ray Dorn's Hollywood Studios still give off the same barren feel as in "Gallery of Horror" or "Blood of Dracula's Castle," but at least it proves better than Hewitt's "The Mighty Gorga" a sad reunion for Brady, Eisley, and Kent Taylor.

There is definitely a place for movies like Journey to the Center of Time. I really believe that if it weren't for astonishingly bad movies like this, it would be harder to really appreciate the good ones. I also, on the other hand, wonder what the people were thinking when they were making movies like this, because no one makes famously bad movies deliberately, do they?

At any rate, the movie starts out with a whole dialogue of scientific mumbo jumbo. A lot of it went right over my head because I have no background in science, but I don't think much of it makes sense anyway, because would a movie like this really make a serious argument about the logistics and technical aspects of time travel? I doubt it, because their destination, as you know, is the "center of time." Whatever or wherever or whenever that is.

Early in the movie they describe their destination as "the balance between past and future," which until now I had always assumed to be the tenuous and fleeting place known generally as "now."

But not in this movie, here there are enormously complex time travel experiments being conducted using enormously simple equipment. It's not long before we are given the bizarre explanation that this is a $14 million project to create a satellite that can show pictures taken 24 hours ago. Is that how much $14 million buys? 24 hours? That's really too bad. Maybe that's why most people can only afford surveillance cameras. The cheap, boring time-travel- less ones. No one makes movies about those!

Then again, for all the cardboard simplicity of the lab, they did have a hydraulic lift built in to raise and lower people about 18 inches from the upper platform to the lower platform. A more frugal team would have installed the two stairs, but maybe these guys weren't quite sure what to do with all that money.

There is a scene about 30 minutes into the movie where the crew, under a surprisingly effective 24-hour deadline, finally manage to conduct a successful experiment using the, ah, temporal displacement device they have been working on, and they are all shocked to see, on the characteristically 1970's oval-shaped big screen TV in front of them (and after more than a minute of pictures of galaxies, b-roll, and random head shots), what one of the scientists describes as "the test area. Time central!" I'm glad they knew what they were looking for, the rest of us may have reached the center of time and passed it on by without even knowing to stop!

But soon they notice that they've opened a window through which they can see 5000 years in the future, so I reckon it's going to be a good idea to stop about then. But soon we learn that it's a window that matter can pass through, so it's not going to be long before some silver guys in shiny jumpsuits mosey on into the lab and say come with us if you want to live.

They say that good science fiction movies, especially time travel movies, show us the future to comment on the present. This is a bad science fiction movie, but it still makes sure to comment on the present, specifically man's seemingly endless capacity and drive to kill each other in war. Even super-advanced future-people can be killed by man's "primitive" nuclear weapons!

The last third of the movie seems to consist of nothing but seemingly endless montages shown on that video screen, mostly of modern wars, and yet there's still only enough here for an 82 minute movie. And don't miss the hilarious hand-to-hand combat scenes! Classic!!