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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.

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!!

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.'

Scott Brady is the star and villain of Journey To The Center Of Time, a rather cheaply made science fiction work that compromised mostly of one set and a bunch movie clips to show the past and future on planet earth. Brady is a rich industrialist who wants to shut down an experimental lab where scientists Anthony Eisley, Gigi Perreau, and Abraham Sofaer are working on time experiments. Brady thinks the experiments are a waste of time and his money.

So imagine when things go a bit haywire and Brady finds himself on a rapid journey to our distant past and distant future with the others.

This independent film was apparently something none of the major studios would touch. The usual time travel conundrums are here and the players give rather dispirited performances like they were anxious their salary checks wouldn't clear.

Not the best of the genre, not even close.

David L. Hewitt's American General Pictures strikes again with 1967's "Journey to the Center of Time," following on the heels of cofeatures "The Wizard of Mars" and "Gallery of Horror" but lacking the presence of John Carradine, whose agent did manage to provide Scott Brady and Anthony Eisley for the project, something of a remake of Ib Melchior's "The Time Travelers" from 1964, made to coincide with Irwin Allen's teleseries THE TIME TUNNEL. Call it a waste of time, but with another quartet of scientific adventurers venturing into Earth's future (6968 to be exact) before going way back to 1 million B.C. (complete with giant lizard from "One Million B.C."), whatever hoped for thrills are dashed by excessive talk and virtually no action. Scott Brady's self centered industrialist is strictly out to make a quick buck, while Anthony Eisley, Abraham Sofaer, and Gigi Perreau are forced to prove that they can travel further than 24 hours into the future if the project is to maintain funding. Only a single shot from "The Time Travelers" is used (the rocket ship ready for takeoff), the actual arrival coming only at the half hour mark, the tale of alien invasion lasting but 15 minutes in front of a black backdrop before moving forward into the past (endlessly represented by footage from war movies, Westerns, and gladiator entries), a typical low budget jungle/cavern set with only the threat of molten lava keeping viewers awake (there's a very brief shot of the bat-rat-spider creature from Melchior's "The Angry Red Planet" flashing by on the viewing screen so fast one might easily miss it). Ray Dorn's Hollywood Studios still give off the same barren feel as in "Gallery of Horror" or "Blood of Dracula's Castle," but at least it proves better than Hewitt's "The Mighty Gorga" a sad reunion for Brady, Eisley, and Kent Taylor.

This is definitely one for the books - the book being "Bad movies to laugh and point at." It's simply an endless fountain of badness; bad acting, writing, plot, sets, dialog, special effects - and how wonderful to find all that in one place.

It's quite possible this movie has some redeeming features but who really cares?

Oh an the best line from any movie ever!

Says the handsome, plastic looking scientist guy to the scientist girl in the impossible heels:

"You're very pretty. For a girl."

After that - how can you not love this marvelous mess?

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?

I wouldn't say this movie is "bad" because I was entertained for the most part though probably not in the way the director intended. The cast is pretty hilarious. Just watching these four "characters" wandering about is a sight for sore eyes. I liked the Kissinger-look-alike Scientist, the white-machinist-looking businessman Stanton (reminds me of the guy who does/did the horoscope for The Onion), and especially his buddy who stays behind looking over the shoulder of "Dave" while making the most inane comments and looking cheerful throughout. The memory of the women standing by the computers out in back brings tears to my eyes. There's also an pseudo-intelligent little twist towards the end - and the ending was cool.

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.

A movie that starts out boring you to tears with a conference room sequence where the main scientists are trying to explain the technical aspects of time travel to a narrow-minded corporate exec. Turns out the audience ends up more confused by all the verbal masturbation than Jim Brady as the exec.

The budget here is so small that the time machine seen in long shots looks like a model of a metallic sphere. But when we see the cast of scientists moving in and out of the thing, it is merely a vault door! Clearly the production team was influenced by Star Trek's Enterprise Bridge (classic series) when they built the interior set of the time machine: it is round with a lowered floor, complete with a railing that runs around the edge of the upper platform, with a large viewing screen at the other end of the room.

After landing thousands of years in the future we're greeted to Lyle Waggoner and some other actors looking rather goofy as 'men from the future' wearing vests, silver 'Hammer Time' pants and over-sized boots. In the future, for some reasons, people stand around and orate on pedestals of varying heights.....very odd, that scene.

The only scenes that included anything CLOSE to 'production values' were the prehistoric jungle, and cave sequences. Looked to me like Producer/Director David Hewitt got permission to film those scenes at 20th Century-Fox where TV series like "Lost in Space" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" used fairly impressive cave sets extensively. Likewise, I suspect the jungle scenes were filmed on the "Land of the Giants" set as the JTTCOT similarly had a foggy-type look to it. Otherwise, this film featured schlocky, minimalist sets (aka Limbo sets).

The movie had too many gruelingly long scenes where the crew of the time machine (and the audience) is looking at various periods of time (mostly footage of wars) through the main view-screen. This movie just dragged on and on and on. Finally ending with a twist on the story of 'Adam and Eve'.

Hewitt actually stole a cue from Irwin Allen's "Time Tunnel" series by having a band of young people back at "Time Central", a sort of mission control for the time machine. Funny thing: it was never included in the early scenes prior to the launch of the time machine, making it appear as though director Hewitt shot the 'Time Central' scenes later, as an after thought (or perhaps because he saw Allen's "Time Tunnel" and decided to copy the 'back-at-the-lab' setup for his film). Interesting that similar reel-to-reel type computers seen in "Time Tunnel" appear in JTTCOT.

I guess Producer/Director David Hewitt wasn't thrilled with 'The Time Travelers' and so did this film in 'retaliation' against his former partner, Ib Melchoir. Either that, or perhaps Hewitt wanted to 'cash in' on the time-travel theme since "The Time Tunnel" TV series was in production at the time this movie was being filmed. Whatever the reason, this movie fails on so many counts that -- to me -- it's probably THE WORST movie I've ever seen. It sucks on (1) Acting, (2) Production Design (?), (3) Special Effects (?), (4) Screenplay, and (5) Music. It literally has NOTHING to offer. And yet both Brady and Abraham Sofer are true character actors that have done much better before and since this turkey.

I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would actually ADMIT to sitting through this garbage when it was originally run in theatres.

Sadly, I can only recommend this celluloid monstrosity to a true insomniac.

I like old sci-fi movies, even the bad ones, which were numerous. Some are bad enough to be good. But this one is so bad it hurts to watch it. Dialogue is worse than a middle school play, as is the acting. I tried to love this for being so bad it's funny, but it's not funny, just sad. Watcher beware!

This is the worst movie ever made. I don't want to hear about any of Ed Wood's pictures. This is it, this is the one. Right here. The bottom of the deepest pit of cinema hell. To watch it is pure anguish from beginning to end. You are in too much pain even to be able laugh at it.

Timeless - plotless - pointless - Journey to the Center of Time. Gigi Perreau was a child star; this was one of her last films.

Researchers discover that their experimental time 'window' can actually transport their entire diving-bell shaped lab into the far future or the distant past. The brightly-coloured film was clearly made on the cheap and uses a lot of filler (e.g. stock footage, repeated scenes, borrowed material (such as the alien 'starship' from 1964's 'The Time Travelers' (1964), of which 'Journey to the Center of Time' is considered a remake) to pad its running time, but otherwise is an OK time-travel story. The characters, especially the weapons-obsessed, penny-pinching, 'corporate boss' (Scott Brady) are simplistic (and are played that way) and the script border-line amateur (especially the romantic repartee, the pseudo-technical chatter, or the time-passing explanations of terms such as LASER). The film opens with a pretentious voice-over prologue that concludes with a predictably portentous uttering of the title but the following credits-sequence, presented over images of historical time-pieces, is eye-catching. At times, the film has an odd chiaroscuro look, with a brightly lighted and colourful foreground against a featureless black background, that is almost surreal and reasonably effective (and, I suspect, cost-saving), and there are some clever details in the lab set (such as the four-piece sliding door). The 'lost in time' plot doesn't make much sense and primarily serves to link the 'future' and 'past' scenes with time-filling shots of fretting lab-technicians trying to rescue the drifting time-space travelers. I first saw 'Journey to the Center of Time' on TV in the early 1970s and, while most of it is decidedly unmemorable, I never forgot the scenes in which the time machine encounters itself travelling along the continuum. I'm a sucker for time-travel stories (which my rating likely reflects), so despite the film's limited production values and occasional lapses into ludicrousness (such as the giant gemstones in the prehistoric volcano), I still enjoyed it. Boomers will spot 'The Carol Burnett Show' (1967) regular Lyle Waggoner as one of the pasty-faced aliens. The film's poster is a classic example of unfulfilled promises (so don't expect to see "Alien death rays turn Earth into a dead planet!").

Directed by David L. Hewitt Featuring Scott Brady, Anthony Eisley, Gigi Perreau

Science fiction. Wow! A journey to the very center of time itself! Wait... what the hell is the center of time? I guess that'd be the point in between the beginning of the universe and the end of it... I guess.

A group of scientists are thrust into the future and then into the past when they experiment with time travel.

A 100% 50s atmosphere, an overly ambitious script and a low budget feature clearly watched by cult interest for which I am a fan. The best way to deal with the film is to let go of thoughts and concerns that may affect unconditional viewing and delivery of the cheesy show by David L. Hewitt. and his company. And just enjoy the ride.

It may not be a particularly memorable piece of work, but at least JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME is a film more intelligent that it has a right to be.

Statistics by Nathan Decker:

5: Number of times we hear a full "10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1" countdown.

2: Number of cigarettes smoked by our cast.

1: Number of big scary lizards.

45,862,154: Number of times the technobabble is so dense and incoherent that you want to throw a brick at the television screen.

To say this was a low budget would be too kind. The stereotype acting is not stereotyped enough. The stereotype actors are not stereotyped enough. Let's face it; this whole stereotype project is not stereotyping enough. If the budget was just a tad lower maybe this would never have been made.

The basic premise is an attempt to look into the future and into the past forces the lab to go into the future and the past. The lab is stuffed with the good guy, bad guy, and screaming girl. The good guy does good things. The bad guy does bad things. The girl screams a lot. While back at the ranch, they talk a lot about how they've lost the lab.

This DVD is perfect for testing the fast-forward option.