Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

trekgeezer · August 22, 2005, 04:48:35 PM

I got up Saturday morning and my wife was watching the usual home improvement shows on HGTV. When she went to make breakfast I started checking my channel guide and I see that on SciFi they're showing Journey to the Center of the Earth so I flipped over there expecting to see that Hallmark miniseries from a few years back.

Well, lo and behold they were showing the classic 1959 version with James Mason and Pat Boone. I didn't get to see all of it, but there it was in all it's widescreen Cinemascope glory. It was a gorgeous print of the film .

What I did get to see was the giant mushrooms, the superimposed iguanas with the unwieldy fins glued to their backs, the ride up the volcano in the giant altar bowl, and Pat Boone wearing a sheep after unfortunately landing in a tree without his clothes at the monastery.

I was quite surprised and it made me wish they'd get back to showing more of this kind of fare.

Post Edited (08-22-05 16:50)

Flangepart · August 22, 2005, 04:53:44 PM

Yea verily! Man, i miss when Sci-Fi was a GOOD channel...

I believe Andrew knows how we define the word "Dinosaur", now!

And holding a sheep to avoid embarrissment , could lead to other less savory questions in the minds of some. Like shepards....
BTW...why to Scotsmen wear kilts? Cause sheep can hear a zipper at 500 yards.

Yeah...i like this flick. Bring it back, Sci-Fi!

raj · August 22, 2005, 04:56:08 PM

I can just hear them at Sci-Fi now "they liked the 1959 version so well, let's do a remake. . . With lots of big explosions. . ."

Ed, Ego and Superego · August 22, 2005, 04:59:17 PM

Ahh, I watched about this and was confused for a bit. I was looking for Doug McClure and Peter Cushing. But thats "At the Earth's Core". I think I liked this one better. Though the duck was a bit of a mystery. Not overly trainable, your average duck.
-Ed

trekgeezer · August 22, 2005, 05:14:52 PM

Yea, I was wondering about what the deal was with the big Swede and the duck???

Post Edited (08-22-05 17:16)

Flangepart · August 22, 2005, 05:33:15 PM

Ah...the duck. The film's equivilant of a "Bond Sacfifical lamb" i'm afraid...Et by a man soon to be et his own self.

Scott · August 22, 2005, 11:05:27 PM

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is like a classic compared to AT THE EARTHS CORE, but both are a pleasure to watch.

raj · August 23, 2005, 01:18:44 PM

I figured the Swede and his duck was just some sort of alternative lifestyle. Either that or the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

Gerry · August 23, 2005, 01:33:02 PM

I love JTTCOTE including the Duck! But that sheep thing at the end with Pat Boone really bothers me.

The only problem is it takes an hour before they get underground...too slow getting things started.

Ed, Ego and Superego · August 23, 2005, 02:56:46 PM

I agree, I was able to clean the bathroom before they had even made it to the mountain.
-Ed

Flangepart · August 24, 2005, 09:23:46 AM

See...another film they could have usaed for "MST3K : The movie!"...imagin the sheep and duck related riffing! "Krankor! Oh, wait..."

Just Plain Horse · August 25, 2005, 10:53:23 AM

trek_geezer wrote:

> What I did get to see was the giant mushrooms, the superimposed
> iguanas with the unwieldy fins glued to their backs, the ride
> up the volcano in the giant altar bowl...

You saw the best parts, believe me. I remember the "Dimetrodons" (the iguanas with makeup on them) and the volcano... the rest of the movie is a bunch of people wandering around with foreboding music playing most of the time. I like the part where the film decides the bad guy finally goes "too far" by killing and eating their duck for food; endangering everyone else's lives, no big deal... killing an annoying waterfowl for survival, an act punishable by death!

> I was quite surprised and it made me wish they'd get back to
> showing more of this kind of fare.

When the scifi channel first started, they showed all sorts of films... I can remember seeing The Monster from Peidras Blancas, The Monolith Monsters, King Kong Escapes, The War of The Worlds, most of the original Gamera series and a great deal of the unMSTied versions of their films (even Prince of Space, and I never wanna see that version again...). Nowadays, television stations like AMC (a channel that used to show back-to-back Hitchcock movies) think we're supposed to ignore the fact they're slumming the DVD section of Walmart and love the downright poor films of the 80's and 90's... TNT (a network that used to have Monstervision) has resorted to pretending to "know drama"... exactly were does Ananconda, Deep Rising & Jurassic Park 3 fit in there? The only time I still tune into TNT is for the occasional showing of Godzilla 2000 (I always catch the end to see how much they're going to advertise over the closing theme).

Sadly, TV is about selling us crap, so that's all we're ever going to see there... 100 channels, 200, 300... it makes no difference... it's all subpar crap.