Journey to the Center of the Earth

Fans of Jules Verne's timeless adventure story should take heed of early signs of impending danger in this train-wreck of a movie and immediately turn back: Journey To The Center Of The Earth '88 is extremely tough going and many pitfalls lie in wait.

The first indication that this is going to be a disastrous expedition into the unknown comes with the introduction of the film's heroine, British nanny Crystina (Nicola Cowper), an unappealing, androgynous looking young woman with a very nasty haircut. Things get worse when Crystina takes a job in Hawaii, looking after a dog for wild rock singer Billy Foul (Jeremy Crutchley), and her path crosses with two irritating, American teenage boys, Richard (Paul Carafotes) and Bryan (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), and their younger sister Sara (Jackie Bernstein). By now, it's perfectly clear that this film bears little resemblance to Verne's novel.

When the kids go exploring volcanic caves on the island, with Crystina following (having had her dog basket put in the back of their jeep by mistake), the group find themselves plunged into a subterranean world where they discover Atlantis, home to a Brazil-style dystopian society of bizarre 80s punk-styled characters.

This charmless mess of a movie was started by writer/director Rusty Lemorande, but when Cannon films refused to cough up the cash for his intended special effects, the film was eventually completed by tacking on material shot by B-movie legend Albert Pyun, whose abysmal Atlantis based footage ostensibly serves as a sequel to his earlier movie Alien From L.A. (which was also loosely based on Verne's classic).

The diabolical, incoherent narrative, cheap sets (complete with polystyrene rocks), and wooden performances from Cowper and Mitchell-Smith make the whole sorry affair difficult to endure. After much aimless Atlantis-based action in which the youngsters (minus Richard, who mysteriously vanishes) try to avoid capture by the villainous General Rykov (Janie du Plessis), who plans to invade the Earth's surface, the film ends abruptly with a completely pointless montage of earlier scenes set to a crappy 80s pop/rock tune.

Sequel to the campy, much maligned Kathy Ireland vehicle, "Alien from L.A." This time Nicola Cowper (dressing like a 1980's Cyndi Lauper/Madonna clone) stars in the lead (Kathy has a cameo) doing an "Adventures in Babysitting goes to the Center of the Earth" type of thing. Whatever you liked (or hated) about the first film, be assured there's more here. 1980's punk rock version of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" can be taken for what it is but the plot at the end is very difficult to follow and ultimately falls apart. I liked the Brady-Bunch-goes-to-Hawaii theme at the beginning but the creeps at the center of the Earth (about 300 feet below the surface actually) were boring if anything at all. Looking like a live-action Saturday morning TV show from the early 1970's (think H.R. Puffenstuff) this is the type of film best watched while doing something else with a bunch of other people. Maybe a better title would be "Is This Still On?"

One of many many adaptations of the Jules Verne classic Journey to the Center of the Earth it's also the sequel to Alien from L.A (1988).

It's easy to make it randomly a sequel to some dodgy film as it has about as much to do with Verne's work as E.T (1982) does with Alien (1979)!

It tells the story of three young people who find themselves trapped in a cave system when a nearby volcano erupts. Forced to go further in to try and find a way out they come across the lost city of Atlantis and all the drivel that came with the previous movie.

To its credit it does follow Alien from L.A fairly well, but that's pretty much all it has going for it. It's yet another cheesy mess that lacks in pretty much every area of entertainment value.

To make matters worse there is a dream sequence that has nothing to do with anything and the scene that builds up to the finale seems to have been removed entirely!

If you can get past these issues and so very much more than you might find some level of enjoyment watching the two movies as a pair but as a stand alone it's devoid of anything and everything.

The Good:

Follows on from the previous movie well

Some neat pop culture references

The Bad:

The application of bioluminescence is still stupid

Not even remotely an adaptation

Pointless dream sequence

Very dishonest cover art

Ending feels unfinished

Journey to the Center of the Earth is the story of some tourists of Hawaii, three of them siblings, and one of them a young British nanny babysitting a dog. When the siblings accidentally drive off in their jeep with the basket of dog biscuits, the nanny follows them (it might've just been safer to purchase more) all the way to the cave the siblings intended to explore (I guess). For some reason, they actually go in the cave and then, when the place starts caving in, they try to get out to no avail, except for the six-year-old sister who they tell to go get help. Meanwhile, the more they move around in the cave, the more they continue to plummet further and further towards the earths cavernous core. And behold, it is here where they find the City of Atlantis and its bizarre alien habitants who are living under the oppressive rule of one alien that doesn't want them asking to many questions about the worlds external to their own.

I see that Rusty Lemorande, the named director of the film has provided comments on this film, in which he explains that part of latter half of this film is actually the sequel to Alien in L.A. Well, whatever it was, it was an amazingly cheap movie that I would rank only slightly higher than City Limits (a 1988 sci-fi film also made on a non-existent budget) because at the least ending of this dreadful piece of mostly incoherent film-making that cuts corners where it can aims for some humor and amusement in the last 20 minutes when we finally see what life is like in the alien world at the center of the Earth. I also give it a two star rating rather than one because it was at times, funny, even if only in its subtleties. For example, the aliens asks the British girl if she's an alien and she explains that the Ministry should be sending her work visa shortly. Or when the alien girl finds Bryan and explains that he is in the city of Altantis and he mistakes this for Atlantic City, New Jersey. Little things like that make the idiocy of the first hour or so tolerable. Imagine how great the film could've been though if they had 1) actually intended to make it, and 2) actually had money to make it.

I do like how in the end, no one wonders what happened to the little sister who was sent away in the beginning to get help. She'd just be wandering around the Hawaiian caves and not too far from the erupting volcano, mind you.

Just when I thought I seen it all here comes this nonsensical movie arriving on its bull crap. This is just a tangled up mess and I am still waiting for someone to tell me this is a joke.