“If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?” Stephen Hawking
Stanton (Scott Brady) has taken charge of a research company after the death of his father. Stanton is a dick. Three of the scientists working for him are Mark Manning (Anthony Eisley), "Doc" Gordon (Abraham Sofaer), and Karen White (Gigi Perreau). They are working on time travel experiments. They want to be able to view events in the future. They need to produce some results fast otherwise their funding will be cut off. They push their equipment to the limit. Past the level where it is safe. In the lab at the time are the three scientists and Stanton himself. They end up sending the lab five thousand years in the future.
They encounter aliens led by Vina (Poupée Gamin) who are looking for a planet to colonize. Unfortunately for the aliens, Earth is in the middle of a global war that threatens the human race. Vina tells them to go back and warn humanity about the danger. The scientists and Stanton go back to the lab/time machine and try going back to their original time.
While traveling back they see another time machine coming at them. They try to communicate with it but when that doesn’t work Stanton boosts the power and destroys the other machine. The resulting overload causes the lab to overshoot the present and the team goes hurdling back in time. They finally end up in one million years BC. They now have a new problem. The giant ruby, a major component of the devise, is destroyed. They are stuck in the past. They get chased by a dinosaur (lizard). They run into a cave to escape the dinosaur (lizard). They wander through the cave and find it is studded with gems. They search looking for a ruby to replace the one that was destroyed.
Stanton grabs as many jewels as he can and abandons everyone else. He steals the time lab and heads back to the present. On his return trip, he encounters another time machine on a collision course. As he hears a radio broadcast from Manning, Stanton realizes he is hearing the broadcast from the original time machine. The one he was on when he blew up the machine he is now on.
“Journey to the Center of Time” was released in 1967. The director, producer and writer was David L Hewitt. From my understanding, which I freely admit is abysmally little, the theory of the movie may be on the plausible side. The budget for the movie certainly doesn’t make it practical. It’s hard for low budget “B” movies to look like science fact. There are similarities in the ending to the 1964 “The Time Travelers”. But that is about it. Almost everything else it different. I did notice that briefly, on the monitor, before they start time traveling there is a picture of the rat/bat/spider from “Angry Red Planet”. Other stock footage was used for the on-screen visuals.
As for the other aspects the special effects are not that great. The prehistoric views were actually cool looking with stock footage of lava, psychedelic lighting in the cave and an overworked fog machine. Even the dinosaur-lizard was cool, even though it was your average everyday lizard. At least this one wasn’t tortured. The future stuff was rather comical. Lyle Waggoner looked more like “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” than an alien. As far as science fiction movies go this one was not great but it was interesting to watch. More amusing than interesting.