The Day Time Ended

source: The Day Time Ended

This film hooked me early on with it's colorful special effects and eerie just around the corner hint of suspense, but even while watching it, I realized that it came two years after "Star Wars", at which point it's low budget origins started to make sense. The appearance of the stop motion monsters then took the film in a different direction, and I was almost sure Hercules or Odysseus might be coming around the corner to save the day. The biggest problem I have with the film is the Williams family non existent reaction to mind numbing events. When a little green alien appears on your bed, I think that merits some kind of response; instead wife Ana (Dorothy Malone) doesn't even mention it to her husband Grant (Jim Davis). Watching your house disappear in a swirling light storm would also elicit a bit more of a reaction than the "Oh, well" casualness displayed by both Grant and son in law Richard (Christopher Mitchum). That's why young Jenny's (Natasha Ryan) performance is all the more refreshing in the movie, at least she had a real world credibility and natural curiosity about her. Her "thank you, water" and "thank you, light" reaction to forces she didn't understand revealed a child's way of dealing with the unknown the only way she knew how. The movie could have used more of Jenny. I'm not quite sure how the film's title fits in with events of the story, other than the opening voice over narration describing a scientific theory that all of time exists right now. Overall, the movie has a made for TV feel that falls just short of delivering the goods. It's like watching a film in a time space warp.

Or 4 screenwriters for a total failure! Jim Davis(Jock Ewing from "Dallas") is not a bad actor. But poor man, in what he was involved in... You can not believe how stupid this is, I do not know how to call it... All the others, Christopher Mitchum, Dorothy Malone, Marcy Lafferty, are more than ridiculous, together with the old veteran of westerns, Mr. Davis. Alone, little Natasha Ryan is OK, because she has the innocence and the naturalness of a little girl. The pony and the horses are also OK, animals and children are always adorable. But the story of those 4, Wayne Schmidt, J. Larry Carroll, David Schmoeller, Steve Neill, and how it was made is more than a shame.

This is a movie with logic, no sense of cause and effect, and no real plot to speak of. Nothing here makes the slightest bit of sense, and the whole thing is like a hippie's acid trip. The last movie I saw that made this little sense was not only Japanese, but also intended to be surreal and experimental. In this case however, I suspect the weirdness has less to do with any design or purpose than with none of the people involved having any idea what they were doing or even trying to do. It seems they just threw every idea that was within their limited budget on screen and hoped for the best. I suspect many of these ideas were the result of acid and peyote. The dialogue certainly sounds like something you would hear at an alternative health spa in the California desert. That still doesn't explain how they found anyone willing to fund a project based on this screenplay, or a distributor willing to show the final product. But some things simply have no explanation, and this movie is certainly one of them. It should be seen - if it is seen at all- as a product of its time and place. And drugs. Lots of drugs.

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! :)

Normally I laugh uproariously when a movie of this fashion comes out. I normally am not thrilled by dodgy cinematography, flubbed lines, and the like. However, this film, despite its flaws, was great!! I really don't know how I can explain it. There were a number of loose ends, with parts of the movie not making sense, yet with all of this, it still seemed to work! The little girl, Natasha Ryan, really carried the movie and another aspect I liked was the "Close Encounters" type of feel to the movie. Also, the aspect I enjoyed the most was when the family is re-united and they are upon the hill looking upon the fabulous City of Light at the end. There was such a spiritual feel to this scene. Very well done. There were flaws in this film, yet the special effects and the interesting plot seemed to give it a redeeming quality. 7/10 stars.

I found the picture quality a little on the dodgy side for a film that is supposed to have been made in 1980 (!!!) but a part from that the film was most enjoyable and the special effects very impressive, notably the "City of Light" that we see at the end ( absolutely beautiful ). One feels that this was a film primarily made for kids and there are some funny moments, especially when they send out a horse to distract the prehistoric monster. I don't claim for one minute to have understood all of the story, and I dont suppose the scriptwriter did either, but the juxtaposition of a very earthy desert and occasional and effective special effects is a good recipe for fun. I think I'll have to watch it a few more times to understand all the details but my impression on first viewing is a very positive one, except for picture quality ( unfortunately I am over obsessed with image quality and expect on DVD to have a superb image - alas this is not always the case, and I often wonder who is at fault in this case - the original film or the quality of the transfer to DVD ) Now there's a million euro question !!!!!!!!!!!

The Williams family live on a ranch located in the middle of the remote desert. They find themselves in considerable peril when the place is suddenly thrust into a time vortex where the past, present and future collide in a wildly chaotic and unpredictable manner. Director John "Bud" Cardos begins the film on a compellingly mysterious note and gradually allows things to get stranger, crazier and more exciting as the loopy story unfolds. Moreover, Cardos fills the screen with plenty of dazzling visuals and does a nice job of creating a genuine sense of awe and wonder. The admirably sincere acting from a game cast qualifies as another major plus: Jim Davis as hearty patriarch Grant Williams, Dorothy Malone as his cheery wife Ana, Christopher Mitchum as the concerned Richard, Marcy Lafferty as his lovely wife Beth, Natasha Ryan as sweet little girl Jenny, and Scott C. Kolden as the gutsy Steve. The funky special effects offer an inspired combo of gnarly miniatures, neat stop-motion animation monsters (said creatures include a tiny spindly hairless guy, a big, lumpy, fanged beast, and a scrawny lizard dude), and nifty matte paintings. Richard Band's rousing full-bore orchestral score really hits the stirring spot. John Arthur Morrill's crisp, sunny cinematography likewise does the trick. A fun flick.

Hurray, this film exists. I always remembered a film from my childhood that had two stop motion monsters fighting outside a house and there being strange lights. For years I wondered if it actually existed at all, and then I happened to get it on a pack of 50 films! I was not even trying to find this one, I just always wanted to see a couple of the films on this pack and figured a lot of extra movies would not hurt. So I ended up finding this one, and it only took the first time seeing the house in the middle of nowhere for me to recall the film I saw as a child. The story in this one is just about nonexistent. People drive out to their solar powered ranch home and they come under attack from aliens and other weird things. Every description says they are transported to prehistoric times, but I have never seen the monsters this film features in any science books as dinosaurs. The aliens are sometimes friendly, sometimes play with your mind and sometimes fly around in vacuums that emit death rays. The acting in this thing is kind of bad. The grandfather is okay at times, but his facial expressions do not fit the situation and the daughter's fretting was getting on my nerves. The grandmother looks like she is in genuine pain when she and the grandfather go to bed and the father trying to get back home is an obvious plot padding device for an extremely short film. To bad no one gets killed in this one. So no gore, no nudity, basically no nothing. A bunch of cheap effects and a couple of interesting scenes here and there. There is a scene that reminded me of Kingdom of the Spiders, and it turns out there is a tie to that film. It also has a Laser Blast feel to it, but I could not find any ties to that film. The ending is way to happy, the whole thing has a television vibe to it as it almost seems to be a pilot for a television show that never made it beyond its pilot. Still, it is nice to know it exists as an actual movie and not just in my mind. A kid may enjoy it, I remember liking it, but that is because of the monsters that are not dinosaurs.

According to the opening credits for "The Day Time Ended", four writers are credited with developing the story and writing the screenplay. And none of them apparently were able to make the movie's story make much sense. I'm not sure even if you can call what's in the movie a story - much of the movie seems to be just a series of random supernatural events, and even the resolution at the end doesn't answer what the intents of the creators of the events are. Though the problems of the movie go beyond the bad script. Director John 'Bud' Cardos makes much of this theatrical movie have the feel of a made-for-TV movie of this period. Is there anything positive to say about this movie? Well, some of the special effects aren't bad for a movie that had a pittance of a budget. But I'd rather have a good script with bad special effects than a movie with good special effects and a bad script.