DOPPELGGANGER aka JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN (1969):
One of the best things about getting older and having an immense stockpile of unwatched movies is that (increasingly) I stumble upon titles that I have no recollection of acquiring and positively no recollection whatsoever of ever hearing about or reading about in the past. JTTFSOTS - or its working title DOPPELGANGER, which I might as well use for the sake of (lol) simplicity - is one such amusing discovery. I just wish it was a better film!
Universal Pictures funded (and domestically distributed) this opulent UK production that can only have been greenlit in the wake of the success of Kubrick's 2001, which seems to have directly inspired at least a few moments in this DOPPELGANGER. Directed by Robert Parrish, who also helmed the attractive and totally nutty CASINO ROYALE '67, DOPPELGANGER truly looks like a million bucks, and I mean that in 1969 pounds sterling. The dialogue (by British kids-show creator Gerry Anderson) is generally intelligent and the acting is mostly solid, though leading man Roy Thinnes has about as much charisma as the marionettes that headlined Anderson's TV projects. So what's the problem?
The first problem is the pacing. I guess in 1969 audiences were still fascinated enough by space travel to potentially sit still for ten to fifteen minute sequences of astronauts flipping switches, pushing buttons, gazing out portals, and mostly sitting still. A decade later, I know for sure that tastes had changed, 'cause I remember (even as a small child) how folks would complain about the languorous and uneventful launching and docking sequences in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, and actually I still see people complaining about those scenes today, and yet DOPPELGANGER makes ST:TMP look like TETSUO THE IRON MAN. I don't have a clock on my DVD player and lost track of the time while watching DOPPELGANGER, and would swear to you it was no less than two hours long or longer. Nope - only 101 minutes.
The other problem with DOPPELGANGER
could have been an appealing feature: the premise is so daft it seems like a natural hoot. Following a lengthy prologue where Herbert Lom plays a man with one cybernetic eye who has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, a bunch of British eggheads (led by shouty jerk Ian Hendry) enlist Thinnes to fly "to the far side of the sun" and try to identify a previously unspotted planet that seems to occupy Earth's orbit. After a loooooooong trip (they don't call it "the far side" for nothin', I guess), Thinnes returns to Earth with the inexplicable ability to read handwriting in a mirror.
That's right. (Hendry is completed puzzled.) If you've ever seen an episode of anything Rod Serling created or wrote, you can probably see DOPPELGANGER's twist coming from half a running time away. Should I spoil it? Okay.
*SPOILERS*
Yeah, Thinnes doesn't "return" to Earth, he arrives at a parallel Earth on the opposite side of the sun, where everything is exactly the same, EXCEPT it's....... backwards. Yup. I mean literally reversed. It's Bizarro Superman's dimension, but less fun. Thinnes' bathroom is on the opposite side of his front foyer, the light switch is on the opposite side of the bathroom door, British people drive on the wrong side of the road and American drive on the right side ('cause it's a UK production, natch)....... scientists write in English
but backwards... ad nauseam infinitum.
*END SPOILER*
Okay, that could be fun, right? Nah. Anderson insists on taking the high road and denies us even a broad, schticky "You maniacs!" type reveal from the end of PLANET OF THE APES. The climax of DOPPELGANGER is understated to a fault. You ever watch one of the Shyalaman films that DON'T have a climactic "ah-hah" twist... like THE HAPPENING? Yeah, DOPPELGANGER feels like that: academic and deeply unsatisfying.
DOPPELGANGER has no sex or blood, but it does contain discussion of contraception and adultery; a fairly discreet scene of Thinnes joining his naked wife in the shower; Thinnes later slugging his wife in the face (!); and the kind of bleak ending that was de rigueur in the late 60s and 70s. It required cuts in the UK to avoid an X rating but it was rated G in the US! The MPAA ratings board never made any Goddamn sense.
2.5/5
The one consistent source of amusement here is that Thinnes' character is named "Glen Ross", so if you're not above doing Rifftrax in your living room, that's something.
