JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967)
Tagline: Caught In A Fantastic Time Trap!
(Sci-Fi, Adventure, Susan’s Hair Is Far Out) [PG].
Denning, how long does my father have to be dead before you bury him?
In this one, a scientific research company has a new boss named Stanton after his father died. He is prepared to cut the funding for a time travel experiment that hasn’t yielded expected results in 24 hours if scientists White, Gordon, and Manning can’t show signs of significant progress. As a result, they decide to push their experiments far past what they were designed to do. Stanton doesn’t realize he is about to become an unexpected part of the tests and is thrown to the distant past and unfathomable future.
One thing that really stands out about this movie is the crazy orange set they are on. It looks like it was made for a kid’s science-based TV show, not a movie. A ridiculous amount of the movie is spent looking out a rounded window on the way just showing images. So essentially for a lot of this film, we are watching a movie within a movie and other people monitoring the situation are watching another screen in another room that also looks shockingly like the set of a kid’s science-based TV show.
Acting wise Tracy Olsen (TERRIFIED) is probably the biggest standout in this movie and she isn’t even really one of the main characters. She plays Susan and she is part of the team monitoring the time travelers. Her hair is also far out, so you’ll want to be sure to keep an eye out for that. I also think it’s kind of funny that there are four or five ladies in the monitoring station that were clearly told to just stand by the machines in the background and look busy. None of them has a single line in the entire movie. Scott Brady plays Stanton in this and is good at playing a jerk. He is best known for playing Sheriff Frank in GREMLINS. Gigi Perreau is just okay as Karen White. She has a very successful career though that was still active as of 2020 and started back in 1943. Anthony Eisley (THE WASP WOMAN) is solid as Mark Manning. The rest of the cast overall is fine.
The vast majority of this movie is made up of clips from earlier films including INVASION U.S.A., THE ANGRY RED PLANET, and THE TIME TRAVELERS. We do get a scene where they end up getting off the time travel machine after it’s attacked by prehistoric dinosaurs, so that is probably the coolest part of this thing. Mostly because in sci-fi the future almost always sucks. I mean, when they get to the future you just want the scene to be over because it’s nothing but bad news. The planet is dying, a lot of the women are bald, everyone lives in a couple buildings, and the rest of the planet is stricken of any plant life or Sea Food Buffets. Can’t we just get one movie where the future is so bright that we have to wear shades? Just kidding.
Unfortunately, in spite of some decent performances, this movie just isn’t any good. There is really no part of the script where we get to know the characters to care enough about what happens to them. There are also parts of the plot that don’t even remotely make sense even for a sci-fi flick from the ’60s. I also pretty much hated the ending.
This is a rough one guys and gals. Best I can do is give it a 2 out of 7.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF BOREALIS ENTERPRISES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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