Yesterday, a couple of friends of mine drove down from NorVA and spent the evening here in New Home in Richmond. They had previously seen both my old apartment and the outside of my new home, as I couldn’t very well ask the realtor to let me in a month before I owned it just so my friends could see what it looked like inside. Although he was pretty affable; if it hadn’t been a weekend, he might have done it. (If you need a realtor in the Richmond area, I highly recommend mine.)
So after we finished watching the new episode of BSG, I turned my DVR to a Sci-Fi movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth, thinking it would be some sort of halfway-decent remake of the classic Jules Verne tale (of which the James Mason version is my favorite, duck and all). We realized immediately that this would not be a good movie, because it started out with this team of six chicks in quasi-military gear (that would be they all wore the same t-shirts and pants that kinda sorta resembled a uniform). There was The Tough Chick. You knew she was tough because she grabbed The Scared Chick’s gun and threatened her with it. There was The Smart Chick, whom you could tell was smart because she was wearing glasss. There was The Reasonable Chick, who calmed down The Tough Chick, and who turns out to be The Scientist’s sister. There was The Hero, played by Greg Evigan, whose role, as far as I could tell, was to smile a lot no matter what. Probably couldn’t believe he actually got paid to be in this piece of crap. I am only going to describe four of the six chicks, for reasons that will become apparent later.
This was a really, really bad adaptation. See, the Chick Squad was apparently a group of volunteers for a science experiment in matter transportation. They were supposed to be transported to Stuttgart, and apparently, this matter transporter could only transport them directly through the center of the earth. Now, this plot device does not explain how you get to Germany from the United States by going straight through the center of the earth, as I’m pretty sure Germany isn’t on the exact opposite side of the planet from the U.S. But it did explain why they got stuck 600 kilometers inside the earth. And I am perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief for almost any Jules Verne story, because damn, they’re fun, whether it’s a man trying to go around the world in 80 days, shoot a rocketship to the moon, or build a submarine. Fun, fun, fun. This one? Not so much.
The Chick Squad—oh, I forgot. The movie never explains why there are no men on the Chick Squad. Perhaps the explanation was cut out of the script due to budget imperatives (“Hey! Let’s hire a known face like Greg Evigan and fire the scriptwriter. You don’t really need much of a script with this shit anyway, right?”). In any case, the Chick Squad arrives on a plain, where they promptly break Danger Rule Number One: They split up. Two of them immediately get eaten by a T-Rex, thus explaining why there were six chicks in the squad, but you didn’t get to know what the other two chicks’ cliches were. And by the way, unless you are dumber than a brick, I would think you’d be able to say, “Holy shit! They just got eaten by a T-Rex, and I thought dinosaurs were extinct!” instead of, “That THING ate whatshername and whosamacallit!” (sorry, I simply cannot be bothered remembering the names of two redshirts, even if they are part of the Chick Squad). It wasn’t until The Smart Chick called it a tyrannosaurus Rex that the chicks started calling it a T-Rex. You know, even a two-year-old knows it’s a dinosaur.
There were other pretty miserable moments that we mocked. There was the off-scene killing of the dinosaur by The Scared Chick (I think it was her; really, they just all blended together after a while into a single, four-sided chick) with, we think, a rock. No, it wasn’t her, because she was the one who was too scared to eat roast dinosaur at first, and yes, they did say, “It tastes like chicken,” but at least they had the decency to laugh at it. Maybe it was The Smart Chick who killed the dinosaur. With a rock. Really. A rock. Bashed its head in. The head was the size of a pony, but she killed it. With a rock.
There was the scene where The Scientist, who turned out, of course, to be Greg Evigan’s ex-wife, who was also currently having a thing with The Other Scientist, who turns out, of course, to value science more than human life. You will be shocked to hear that The Scientist clocks The Other Scientist and goes back to The Hero, I know. Also, that her baby sister survives. Also, that after giving Greg Evigan a schematic of the super drill that they’re going to take through 600 kilometers of the planet (including a sea of lava that had slugs in it, yes, slugs, and yes, in a sea of lava, and yes, they tried to eat the drill and the people inside it), she throws down a notebook filled with stuff and says “You have to learn this before we leave.” In, like, an hour or two. And that schematic? It was, um, a line drawing of the outside of the ship, with no technical specs whatsoever, but they were talking about it like it was an actual schematic. It greatly resembled a drawing that your special effects crew would use to, say, make a model of the drill so the computer guys can shoot it and then make their model of it for the special effects. Way to keep on budget, guys!
There was a giant spider, or maybe more than one. I had gotten bored by this time, and Janet seemd utterly intent on watching this movie to the bitter end, so I went into the kitchen to surf the net while glancing from time to time at the TV and making snide remarks. Chris fell asleep. Good man. Definitely a good comment on the movie’s quality. Just about all of our predictions came true. I told Janet that one of the four would die. “Why?” “Because someone has to die.” It’s for the sniffle factor, you see. So Scared Chick was apparently impregnated with baby spider sacs or something by the giant spider (I really wasn’t watching), and they hatched out of her just like a million little aliens, and yes, Janet got it so right when she predicted that one of the baby giant spiders was transported back with them. By the way, if you want to know why there were giant spiders in this movie, well, get in line. Maybe the scriptwriters had just seen The Fellowship of the Ring and said, “Cool! Let’s put a giant spider in the center of the earth. That’s like, Middle Earth, right dude?”
In any case. The ominous music indicated that the producers of this film (or maybe just the person who scored it) were extremely optimistic and think there will be a sequel. I’m going to have to go with: Not in a thousand years. It is, however, highly likely that before I die, I will get to see yet another wretched version of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Maybe someone will make a good one, too. After all, the Sci-Fi Channel’s version of Dune was pretty good. Too bad that team didn’t make this movie.
Wait a minute! What happened to the mutated atomic spiders? To be a truly cheesy sci-fi flick there must be some creature exposed to extreme radiation.
I liked the fact that the supposedly military trained chick-victim #1 immediately began firing on the massive T-Rex that was up to that point completely unaware of her existence and in fact passing her by, until she begged it to eat her by aforementioned stupidity… Yup, that was one weak movie.
The 1959 version with James Mason and Pat Boone is actually quite entertaining, although it also takes broad liberties with the novel.
Good point, Maquis. But I was also laughing at the Chick Squad, who were just chased by a T-Rex, setting up camp at a watering hole. Because gee, predators NEVER show up at watering holes to look for prey.