Space 1979: The one that's REALLY weird

 

Title: The Day Time Ended

What Year?: 1980

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: For Crying Out Loud! (2/5)

 

From the time I came with this feature, I have had a definite plan to end it sooner or later. As I’ve looked ahead, I have tried very hard to narrow down what movies I would definitely cover if I had to make a choice. For this review, I’m back with another movie that’s been on that “list” from the beginning, or nearly so. I didn’t get to it before in large part because I wasn’t sure what I could say about it. As I finally get to it, I find I still don’t know, but I’m at least ready to try. With that indeterminate endorsement, I introduce The Day Time Ended.

Our story begins with a shot of the darkness of outer space, or the murky gray-green of a malfunctioning Game Boy depending on the quality of the copy. After the credits roll, we get a meandering narration on the nature of time from an unseen speaker who casually mentions that he “used” to live on planet Earth. We then transition to several generations of a family driving out to a vacation home in what looks like southern California. They quickly realize that strange things are happening. Mysterious flying objects appear in the sky, a green glow flares up in different rooms of the house, a little girl sees a tiny humanoid creature in her room, and a menacing mini-UFO flies in right through the window. Meanwhile, radio broadcasts announce earthquakes and fleeing refugees elsewhere. As the night continues, the house is besieged by giant monsters and even stranger visions, and the family soon realizes there may not be a way home.

The Day Time Ended was a relatively early effort by Charles Band, who previously appeared here with Laserblast and remarkably hasn’t appeared till now. (Don’t worry, I still have several of his works in the lineup.) The movie included extensive stop-motion effects by David Allen. The cast included Christopher Mitchum (son of Robert Mitchum) and television actor Jim Davis as the grandfather of the family. There is no serious dispute that the movie received a theatrical release, but no tale tells how wide or successful it was. The movie’s soundtrack was released on vinyl, an unusual move for a low budget film, with enough apparent success that copies can still be purchased for about $20 (more than can be said for Krull!). The movie was released on VHS in 1997 by Band’s latter-day Full Moon enterprise, and found further popularity after being featured on the revived MST3K series in 2018.

My personal experience with this movie began a couple years back, when I bought it online as a two-pack. I have watched it exactly twice, including a viewing for this review. (I still haven’t watched the other movie in the set.) My foremost conclusion is that I simply can’t get through this movie without losing track or tuning out. This has a lot to do with my own issues, but I don’t buy that this means I have somehow missed something; I could follow Zardoz, after all. That leads directly to my further impression, that this film is simply incomprehensible. What is all the more striking is that it is really quite simple in its premises; on top of that, the whole run time is just under an hour and 20 minutes. What story there is could be summarized in a few sentences, even more concisely than my spoiler-free account above. The strangeness all comes from the execution.

On any further analysis, what stands out is how completely random the movie is. In that respect above all, the movie feels like it belongs to the 1970s rather than 1980. There are any number of movies that people joke feel like a bad acid trip, but this one is absolutely the real deal, and I say that as someone who can get the “stoned” experience just by going off my meds. What seals it is not the strangeness of what is shown, but how much of it has little or nothing to do with anything else. It would be easy to assume that the movie was created by shooting the effects sequences first and building a story around them, which would be entirely on brand for this crew. However, the stop-motion sequences in particular are in fact very well-integrated with shots of the human cast and their environments. If the film feels like a grab bag of bizarre imagery, it’s because those involved from Band on downward decided to do it that way.

What becomes all too clear is that even on these terms, the film struggles. To begin with, the best effects sequences, particularly the fairy-like humanoid, come relatively early in the film, leading to a major slowdown in the final act that only picks back up with a visionary cityscape at the very end. The episodic and disjointed use of the effects sequences, and even their uniformly good quality, leaves the whole feeling less than the sum of the parts. It must be added that the only especially novel sequence is a stop-motion monster brawl a little past midpoint, and then mainly for surprisingly graphic violence (complete with a surreal “arrow through the head” sight gag). A further problem is that only this and a few other sequences give strong sense of the human characters being in danger. The very limited character development greatly contributes to these and other problems, with only the girl and her grandfather making enough of an impression for a viewer to care what happens to them.

For the “one scene”, the sequence that stood out to me is at around the hour mark. After the swirling lights envelope the house, the grandparents find themselves looking out at a daylight scene instead of night. The grandfather steps outside into a landscape that looks like an elephant’s graveyard for spacecraft. Most of the scenery is clearly a matte painting, with the already “retro” feel of a Robert McCall illustration, but the composite is convincing enough to track the old man’s progress as he examines the vehicles. The pseudorealistically detailed machines are all mockingly dilapidated, with many already clearly wrecked, stripped or simply falling apart. He investigates a noise from one of the craft (I’m absolutely sure a DC3 fuselage), but finds only a flapping rag. As the wind rises, he looks back and finds the lights have enveloped the house again. He scrambles back to the porch, seemingly just in time… and just before he hears his granddaughter call out behind him.

In the proverbial light of day, what this film really represents is a style very specific to the 1970s of weirdness for its own sake. The problem in hindsight is that this brand of strangeness was far too often a sheep in wolf’s clothing, hiding not only a lack of further conceptual development but also a lack of emotional involvement and depth. This movie in particularly had the best chance of getting something more interesting out of the format, with ideas and themes that evoke anything from the cosmic terror of Lovecraft to the far-future “sense of wonder” of Van Vogt. In my judgment, it does succeed enough to rise above otherwise more competent films like Zardoz, which is the chief reason I don’t give it an even lower rating. But it came out at a time when films like Star Wars and Alien were already proving that science fiction could do and be more than this. In fairness, Band and his crew did learn their lesson, which is why most of their work has so far fallen outside the scope of this feature. Let this one count as a useful experiment, even if it is a failed one.

For links, the image credit goes to Discogs.  I also recommend a review at Something Awful. The ratings and classification system can be seen in the feature Introduction.