Journey to the Center of Time

Low-budget romp through the backwaters of time and space. The distant past and far-off future collide in what amounts to a fiery blast furnace of ideas and images. A trio of scientists, on the threshold of a major breakthrough in time travel, race against the clock and a funding cut. Stanton, the main source of cash, played by a blustery Scott Brady, behaves like an ignoramus. He doesn't see a profit margin in such an endeavor. At first glance, this remake of A.I.P.'s The Time Travelers, would appear to be a poor relation. Not so fast. I think there are some good ideas spinning around here. You might notice that Star Trek helped themselves to a few. One plot device, involving a time-displacement and frozen duplicates of the main players in a conference room, was lifted for "Wink of an Eye." And the dark and minimalist set for the alien leader must have inspired "The Empath." Any takers? The one love scene, strangely, involves a time travel limerick and a lengthy kiss. Uncomfortable. The mutant attack has an Andy Warhol feel to it. Abstract. Cockeyed. Out of whack. The door to the lab breaks into quarters when opened. Cool effect. Even stranger is the small elevator that takes Stanton down four feet, when he could have easily walked down the four steps on his own. A very quick shot of the infamous bat-rat-spider-crab from Angry Red Planet, a previous writing credit of the director, is a shout out to that film's director. The opening credits reveal time pieces from the past. Good touch. So where's the original flick. Put it out on DVD now. Let's compare. The sands of the hour glass are running out. At warp speed.

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!!

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.

Others may call this the worst film ever made without offering reasons; perhaps it's time to analyze why this is so bad. Well, let's put analysis aside for a bit. This seems to be almost a remake of "The Time Travelers" from '64. Or perhaps, it's a parallel depiction of events in the space-time continuum, utilizing stock footage from that earlier film. But we can save such scientific observations for later. Where "The Time Travelers" was low budget, this is EXTRA low budget. This means most of the movie has to take place on the same set, in the same room. Any other sets are bare bones; anything in the background is just black space, a very minimalist approach. But we can describe such things later.

The plot has to do with traveling into the future, to just before around the year 7000 AD. The group of 4 travelers chat with some visiting aliens there for a few minutes during a nuclear attack, then run back to their capsule and head back to a prehistoric past. Scott Brady, as a rich irresponsible businessman, manages to wreck everything he touches, including the cave they take refuge in (I was surprised by the set design here, which was beyond the $50 I'd been convinced had been spent up to this point). I give this more than one star due to the unique manner in which Brady manages to kill himself. But anyone should be forewarned by the credits in the beginning, which introduce a 'Poupee Gamin' as 'Vina.'