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Steve D

A weak and forgettable version.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

09/06/23

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Audience Member

I got this movie on amazon for one reason: Emo Philips has a part in it. I figured, hey, even if it's a bad movie, at least I'll get to see my favorite stand-up comedian in it. I shouldn't have bothered. Despite plugging the film on Letterman back in the 80's, and being the first actor listed on the info page for the film on Amazon, Emo is onscreen for a whopping ten seconds with no dialogue. On top of that, I can say with all honesty that this is the worst film I have ever seen. There's barely a plot, the writing is ridiculous, characters disappear and reappear without warning (they enter the cave with a little girl, and later on the little girl is missing. Why?), the film leaves you with more questions than answers. Why is there unnecessary blackface? Toward the end, a white guard's skin starts to darken from listening to the nanny's stories about the surface (????????) and by the freeze frame ending (the nanny marrying the guard. Again, ??????) he's in full-on blackface, afro included. The movie is already terrible, let's just throw in racism while we're at it. The whole thing is like a bad dream, it's clearly unfinished and hastily thrown together. It was definitely not worth the ten dollars I spent on it.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

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Audience Member

not what i was expecting.....nothing like the front cover.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

02/26/23

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Audience Member

WTF this is a sequel to Alien in LA!! It's like they started to film 3 different films and then edited it all together. It's bizarre characters just disappear from the film then the end credits shows scenes that weren't in the film.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

01/23/23

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Audience Member

You can't get more of a convoluted mess than Cannon's version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. One would think from the title that this would be an adaption of Jules Verne's classic science fiction novel. HA! Just remember Cannon, though I love them dearly, can fuck any film up! This "version" of the story is actually has an interesting story behind it because believe it or not it is actually two unfinished films clobbered together. Cannon was going through some financial hell in the late 80's and two films that had already started filming got nixed. The first is of course was Journey to the Center of the Earth and the second was a sequel to their unfunny bomb Alien From L.A.. Cannon was notorious for making some dumbass business deals and they had already made agreements with foreign distributors for release of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Since they had to fulfill their agreement they decided to cut both of their unfinished films together. As you can tell from the interesting history behind this film the results came out completely incoherent! The story starts out in England with a Nanny having trouble with her job. She even admits that she isn't "nanny material" though all she "ever wanted to be wanted to be was a nanny." What a sad childhood she must have had when her biggest dream was to become a nanny! She gets sent over to a client in Hawaii to take care of his dog where she, very sloppily written I might add, ends up with a trio of children going into a cave in an active volcano (don't ask how the story ended up here!). While down in the cave we have some awful dream sequences and about 38 minutes into the film, they finally come to the city of Atlantis, which very few viewers will recognize from Cannon's previous disaster Alien From L.A.. This is when the film really gets bizarre for people who don't know the history behind this mess as from this moment on it is a sequel to Alien From L.A. with many characters returning from that film. Apparently the residents of Atlantis are training soldiers to look and act like Kathy Ireland (the heroin from Alien) so they can have a declare war on the top world! And people wonder why this film is so hated around the world! From what I have read in sources only about 8 minutes of the film is from the footage shot for Journey to the Center of the Earth directed by Rusty Lemorande and a majority of the rest of the film is from footage shot for the sequel to Alien From L.A. directed by Albert Pyun. It's mostly a sequel to Alien From L.A. yet Cannon still had to call it the Journey title to appease distributors! What's even more ironic is Alien From L.A. is a semi-spoof of the story of Journey to the Center of the Earth and now it's sequel IS Journey to the Center of the Earth. Excuse me while my head stops spinning! Like I have mentioned before this film is a MESS. It's two films very sloppily edited together. Cannon showed no mercy as they cut corners around every turn! Cannon even reused music from their other film productions, most notoriously American Ninja 2! They even use footage from The Delta Force. Yes when I think of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth I think of DELTA FUCKING FORCE! The film ends abruptly at an hour and ten minutes and the next ten minutes is a montage of footage from the rest of the film which even contains scenes not shown earlier! Cannon even seemed embarrassed by their cut and paste film as their company logo and producer credits aren't even shown! Being a Cannon film fanatic I only bought this film as a curiosity piece. I knew it's sad story but I had to see what a mess it really was. I can say it lived up its dire reputation. I really feel sorry for people renting or buying this thinking it is an actually Jules Verne adaption only to get a shit sequel to Alien From L.A.! I have a feeling Jules Verne's spirit kills a kitten every time someone pops this "adaption" of his classic story into their DVD player.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

01/17/23

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Audience Member

surprisingly entertaining

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/30/23

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Rusty Lemorande

Director

Nicola Cowper

Crystina

Ilan Mitchell-Smith

Bryan

Paul Carafotes

Richard

Janie du Plessis

Gen. Rykov

Jeff Celentano

Tola

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Bradley Gibson

Film Threat

It's bad. Whether it's "so-bad-it's-good" is down to the viewer's tolerance/ affinity for random '80s weirdness.

Rated: 6/10

Dec 4, 2020

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David Nusair

Reel Film Reviews

...it's clear that this movie shouldn't even exist...

Rated: 1/4

Nov 6, 2006

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Synopsis

An English nanny (Nicola Cowper) and one of two brothers (Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Paul Carafotes) fall down a Hawaiian cave, all the way to Atlantis.

Director: Rusty Lemorande
Executive Producer: Adam Fields, Avi Lerner
Screenwriter: Rusty Lemorande, Debra Ricci, Sandra Berg, Albert Pyun
Production Co: Golan-Globus
Rating: PG
Genre: Sci-Fi
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 17, 2017

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