The Day Time Ended (1980)

The 2 stars are for the special effects; everything is pretty horrible. The actors? stink. The dialogue is unintentionally hilarious. and the production values, outside of the promising special effects are not even as good as Plan 9 From Outer Space. The actors are worse than Bela Lugosi. The Day Time Ended should have ended one hour or so before I saw this turkey. This was made in 1980? (1979). It looks like it was made much earlier. Before the inventions of scripts.

The Day Time Ended. That's right. Not "The Day The Earth Stood Still". It's "The Day Time Ended" (1980). I decided to pull one out that probably none of you reading this post have watched or remember. I'm a sucker for sci-fi and I definitely enjoy well-made B-movies, and I would watch almost anything with practical special effects just to enjoy the atmosphere and the visuals. However "The Day Time Ended" is a whole different story. I actually LOVE this one. It's one of the best flick that Charles Band ever produced and it features some pretty neat cast, most notably Jim Davis. I rented it from a local video store, because come on, who can resist THAT VHS cover! And it totally blew me away! It is about a family that gets together in a remote house and suddenly the whole location goes bananas, as if they are all in the center of some inter-dimensional whirlpool, a place where space and time get all mixed up. There is no explanation for what is going on, weird, fantastic, creepy, scary and beautiful things happen and the characters react in their own way, not knowing what is the meaning of it all. It is so chaotic and random that it actually feels real, like when you are just thrown in a situation beyond your understanding. And as a kid I really related to that. Various creatures, from tiny aliens to giant reptiles, UFOs, spaceships and artifacts appear out of the blue and I was just bewildered. The stop motion special effects are lovely and they are more than enough to make "The Day Time Ended" worthy of your time. Matte paintings take you out of this world. Maybe you need to be a child when you watch it for the first time, I don't know. But "The Day Time Ended" captures the imagination, makes you wonder and dream, makes you wanna curl up under a blanket and imagine what the light through your bedroom window could be... Give it a try! :)

The film is not good, the acting is so-so, the effects are cheesy but the story, the idea behind this film is good. There is something about this film I liked even though it's not grand high-dollar film - it's a fairly good and entertaining work of science fiction. The film surprised me that I would like it as much as I do.The family in the film are going through their everyday life but they hear on the radio of a triple supernova explosion that happened centuries ago that is now reaching Earth. The effects of the centuries old explosion are having an effect on the planet knocking out some of the power and disrupting some of the communications. BUT the aliens of another time and world are at their ranch house... and things get bizarre! A time vortex occurs at their ranch bringing all of time together at once, dinosaurs, futuristic aliens and other things.A fun movie for fans of B sci-fi films.6/10

When 'Charles Band Productions' comes up in the opening credits it gives a clue as to this film's content: Band's B-movies have always tended to focus on low-rent special effects over the necessities of plotting and dialogue. As it turns out, THE DAY TIME ENDED is one of the most plot less films I've ever watched; it tells a story via action with no real explanation as to what's going on. At the end you'll be scratching your head and wondering what you watched.What story there is begins with a rural family meeting up in a remote desert house. This reunion soon descends into calamity with the arrival of mini alien spaceships and even a few flesh-and-blood critters who seem intent on wreaking havoc. It's all to do with some strange alignment in outer space, but other than that I really had no idea what was going on...or, indeed, who the 'good' aliens and 'bad' aliens were.As is typical for a low-budget B-movie, hardly any attention is given to the performances, although there are a surprising number of familiar faces in the cast. Jim Davis and Dorothy Malone bring gravitas as the old-timers, Robert Mitchum's lad Chris shows up, and the little girl from THE ENTITY and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR has a major role. The special effects are pretty ropey, although I always enjoy stop motion no matter what, but it is all rather silly and ends up descending into farce at the climax. John 'Bud' Cardos made some great little films in the 1970s like KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS and THE DARK, but this ain't one of them!