Journey to the Center of Time (1967)

This is a dreadful waste of opportunity.We have a group of scientists who have developed a time travel machine and then proceed to travel through stock footage of whatever bit of b/w film the director was given. Because of the total lack of soul on the director's part the film doesn't even have the quaintness of some of the awful 1950s sci fi. There is no plot and it seems like it was made up as they went along.Lack of budget is no excuse - watch "The Rhythm thief" which was made recently for under $1000 and is excellent.Ed Wood would have done better.

I really liked two unique gimmicks of this movie.First, when they are traveling back in time, they discover they are on a collision course with another ship traveling forward in time. They try to hail the other ship, but it never responds. Finally when collision seems unavoidable and immediate, they fire on the other ship, destroying it. Later they suffer damage so they can't transmit, and then as they are traveling forward in time they discover they are on a collision course with another ship traveling backward in time, and on radio from the other ship they hear their own voices warning them, but with the radio out they can't respond. A perfectly consistent causality loop, well staged!! Near the end of the movie, the controls are damaged, and suddenly they go back into their own time, repeating the time-travel part of the movie at high speed. This is actually the part that I remembered fondly from when I was a kid, and yearned to see the whole movie again, but didn't know the name, until by chance I caught it on TV a few years ago and recognized it as that old lost movie, and this time I was prudent to learn the name of the movie!! I think the movie was totally hokey, but really nice, fun, unique, original, well worth watching if you like to see sci-fi that isn't just a clone of the standard themes of sci-fi. One of my two favorite sci-fi TV series was Blake's Seven, for the same reason, the Federation is *bad* not good, and the totally cheap special effects are exactly right every time, and unlike most such series, the end is **different** (I won't spoil it for you).

I just saw this movie today. What a delightfully schlocky movie with deliciously cheesy special effects and wonderfully tacky, minimalist sets. I thought Anthony Eiseley was better used in "Navy vs. The Night Monsters" though he did give a believable performance. Scott Brady was gruff and menacing. I'm not sure what his character was thinking in attempting to return the ship back to it's original time. He didn't seem to scientifically inclined. Gigi Perreau was sweet, but just a bit of window dressing. I think a stronger female would have been more suitable and created some tension with the men.The end of the story left me just a bit confused as to how the ship managed to meet itself twice, get blown up twice and still return to the future. Overall, a decent movie in it's genre and budget.

In the future all doors slide - this is a given fact of all SF movies from the days of Flash Gordon (possibly before that, it's a while since I've seen Metroplis) but this piece of junk goes one better than having the standard elevator sliding doors... the door of the "Time Vault" opens vertically as well as horizontally! it's the grooviest SF movie door since the The Monster from Morbius' Id came through the 'Krell metal' door in Forbidden Planet. I wonder where they stole it - because more time, effort, and invention went into making that door than into the whole of the rest of the movie put together and believe me it's the only reason to watch this really stupendously awful film.Having said all that I am giving it a 9 because it deserves more recognition as a classic bad SF film. It is up there with the Ed Woods. If you are in the mood for a masochistic do-it-yourself trepanning /lobotomy type movie then this is the one for you. It's great. I have drool coming from the corners of my mouth. Why do I do this to myself?