JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

Though David L. Hewlett wrote and directed nine or ten movies in the sixties and seventies, his standout accomplishment would seem to be co-authoring the script for 1964's THE TIME TRAVELERS, which blew my young mind in some second-run theater in the late sixties. To be sure, co-writer Ib Melchior is said to have substantially revised Hewlett's contribution, with the result that Hewlett later recycled his time-travel ideas into JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME. It's easy to see what JOURNEY took from TRAVELERS, probably with just enough alterations to throw off accusations of theft.

TRAVELERS concentrates on a group of researchers who accidentally open a portal to a future era, The scientists are taken in by one of the last civilized redoubts in a decaying world, and the displaced travelers end up saving their future heirs from destruction via time-travel.

JOURNEY injects a nasty new corporate boss, Stanton (Scott Brady), into the mix. Stanton orders three scientists (young Mark, young Karen and old Doc Gordon) to make a breakthrough in their time-travel project or he'll fire them all. Mark pushes the project to its limit, with the result that the whole lab travels to the far future. As in TRAVELERS, the future world is in the midst of a war between two parties, but this time, the displaced technicians learn this from a group of aliens. The aliens (one of whom is played by Lyle Waggoner) came to Earth hoping to colonize it, but the ongoing war discourages this plan. They basically exist to serve the same purpose as the future-Earth people, explaining how Earth has gone to pot but that the travelers may be able to fix things if they return to their own century. 

After this dimestore dalliance with Earth's cosmic fate, the time-lab jaunts off again, trying to return home. The major part of the story shows them getting bounced around to different eras of the past, mostly represented by stock footage. They end up in prehistoric times, Stanton and Gordon die, and the two young scientists become the world's new Adam and Eve. (Ugh.) The only slightly clever scene in this low-budget mishmash involves Stanton, the villain of the piece, accidentally bringing about his own doom via time-paradox. Everything else is just a bunch of actors standing around reading technobabble. Now I may have to watch one of Hewlett's other offerings, such as THE MIGHTY GORGA to see it excels JOURNEY in mind-numbing mediocrity.