The Day Time Ended (1980)
I think at the end of the last post I made some promise about covering a good movie next. Well I sort of lied and I sort of didn’t. In any event at the time I didn’t mean to lie. Regardless, let’s get this over with.
The Day Time Ended was produced by Charles Band, who is responsible for the Full Moon line of B movies. I actually enjoy quite a few of those, so I’m not entirely surprised that this was a lot better than my usual crap. It was directed by John Cardos, who’s main accomplishment seems to have been directing the 1977 horror movie Kingdom of the Spiders with William Shatner. I’ve never seen that movie, so I can’t really vouch for the credentials, but it was nominated in the Saturn awards for Best Horror Film. That might count for something, I suppose. My gut feeling is the main appeal of this film comes from neither of those people, but rather the special effects crew. The major name here seems to be Paul Gentry, who has worked on a myriad of things including Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Lost. The vibes I got from the effects work in The Day Time Ended most echoed Laserblast and the Josh Kirby direct to video serial/series/thing, both of which he worked on.
It’s hard to summarize the movies for which I question the existence of a cohesive plot, but I try anyway. The movie centers around an extended family on vacation in a solar-powered house in the desert. All kinds of strange things begin to happen, and the movie follows the family as they try to puzzle out just what’s causing all the weirdness around the house. That’s basically it. It’s not a bad little movie, in my opinion, and you could do much worse, believe me. It’s available on Netflix and Amazon. If you’re buying, I’d suggest checking out the “Time Travelers” boxset by BCI Eclipse, since it comes with three other movies and I hear the video quality is better than the standalone DVD anyway. Not really worth my time to check it myself as I own all the movies contained in various other sets. For the record, I watched and capped the standalone release put out under the “Cult Video” label.
Now I get to do the spoiler thing. Cover your eyes children, it’s not pretty.
The movie begins with some semi-ominous narration that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but hey. The family is introduced, they get to the house, and then the fun begins. The little girl of the family, Jenny, gets a pony because her grandpa is awesome like that. While she’s hanging out with the pony and possibly contemplating making it look even cuter through some heinous machination, a green, glowing pyramid shows up and the pony disappears. Relatively unphased she asks the pyramid politely to give her pony back. And it does. I gathered from this movie that the pyramid was a decent sort.
Various alien objects go zooming about the place, generally causing all sorts of fear and confusion among the adults, but delighting the lone child. Another movie was obviously necessary to let us know how dumb we are not to listen to our kids when they tell us craziness. This generally goes on for pretty much the length of the movie. One of the best parts is a random scene where two stop motion creatures duke it out in front of the house. Later on one of these creatures gets an especially funny scene where they knock on the door before menacing the grandmother.
The funny moments and interesting special effects really are the reason to watch this movie. The characters and plot were only so-so. There’s no way I can call much of this movie bad because I’m more-uh-”cultured” than that. I know from bad. My only regret is the plot didn’t make a tidge more sense so the ending didn’t feel like it happened out of the blue. The characters’ reactions vary from smart to stupid to way too smart. For an example of that last one you need look no further than the Grandfather’s cryptic line, “You know what this is, don’t you? It’s a time warp.” How does he know this? His grandson says, “I don’t even know what that is.” Grandfather sagely replies, “Maybe none of us do.” I sure don’t, grandpa. I sure don’t.
I said before that the special effects were quite enjoyable-and they are. The only downside is they weren’t blended into the film very well. This is especially noticable in one matte painting shot where the line between actual footage and painting is so glaringly obvious it hurts. Very little effort seems to have gone into matching the live action and painted parts of the image, even right down to the colors.
They use a tricky technique of finishing parts of the set in matte painting, but don’t follow through with actually making it believable. For examples of excellent uses of this technique look no farther than the older 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and fellow 80s movie, Blade Runner.
The ending hurt because it didn’t make sense. I wanted it to make sense. I felt it could easily make sense. It didn’t make sense, though. After being horrified the entire movie, the whole family suddenly stops being horrified with such suddenness that I was given cinematic whiplash. The mother appears at the end talking like she knows all what’s what. “I know what’s going on and everything’s going to be all right.” I wish she’d let me in on it if she knows what’s going on. Alas she doesn’t tell, and we never find out. They go off to live with aliens or some such thing, and that’s the end of the movie. My own little lingering question is simply: What happened to the pony? I thought they took all the horses with them at the end, but there’s no sign of the pony after the beginning of the movie. I can only conclude a clay monster ate it. Poor pony.
Since it’s not really either bad or good, it’s hard for me to figure out how I stand with this one. I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it, but it just doesn’t reach that last little bit into the low tier of good movies. I’d still check it out, if only for the fair number of laugh out loud moments and fun late 70s/early 80s effects.
I’m going to try to write up something on The Road Warrior next. I might not get to it before starting in on my Godzilla stuff, but I’m going to try. I’m all set to start the Godzilla series, but after writing this I need to take a bit of a break. I also need to eat something today. You people and your demands (who?) have kept me away from sustenence long enough. Jerks.
