THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT (1985)

 DIRECTED by Stewart Raffill

SCREENPLAY by Wallace C. Bennett from a story by William Gray,  Don Jakoby, Michael Janover with John Carpenter based on the book "The Philadelphia Experiment - Project Invisibility" by Charles Berlitz & William L. Moore.

STARRING  - Michael Pare as David Herdig,  Nancy Allen as Allison Hayes,  Eric Christmas as Dr. Jim Longstreet (Miles McNamara as young Longstreet),  Bobby Di Cicco as Jim Parker (Ralph Manza as Old Jim),  Louise Latham as Pamela (Debra Troyer as young Pamela).

PLOT - 1943. World War 2. Dr Jim Longstreet has perfected an experimental process that will render American ships invisible to German Radar. This is the key innovation which is hoped will secure the allies' victory over Nazi Germany. Now all is needed is to test the process.

The experiment is carried out on a destroyer named the USS Eldridge docked in Philadelphia harbour. However, something goes wrong and the ship dissappears.

Unknown to Longstreet and his staff, the experiment has ripped a hole in the fabric of space/time and the USS Eldridge and its crew are now trapped in the space/time vortex. Two crew members -  David Herdig and Jim Parker jump overboard the ship and find themselves transported to the far off future year of 1984.

Can the two frightened young sailors survive in this strange and hostile future world and can they find a way back to thier own time ? They better do it soon because something is coming through the vortex and it wants them...

DIALOUGE  - Major Clarke - "So what did you think of 1984 ?" David - "Television was great." Major Clarke - "You didn't see enough of it."

PERFORMANCES  - Michael Pare isn't an actor that I've seen in anything else, but on the strength of his performance here he seems to be pretty good, not outstanding, but he pulls off the role of time lost David well enough. Pare reminds me a little of a slightly less geeky looking version of Crispin Glover for some reason. Throughout the character of David seems to be pretty streetwise and tough but is - naturally - completely thrown off beam by finding himself trapped 40 years in his own future.

The scenes where David and his friend Jim (played by Bobby Di Cicco - who's a lot less resourceful than David and comes over more like a "kid brother" who David looks out for) are experiencing the strange, alien world of 1984 are pretty effective. 

You really do get the impression that these two young guys have arrived in a setting that has completely blown thier minds. Theres plenty of "fish out of water" scenes, some like David's encounter with a transvestite (which would never be ok'ed today) are played for laughs, others (like when David discovers his father died a few years back) are played for pure drama. All work well within the context of the story and its mainly down to the quality of the acting that it works so well.

As is usually the case in these things, David meets a girl who becomes his love interest as the story progresses. In this case, said love interest comes in the shape of Nancy Allen playing Allison Hayes.

Allison is a "girl next door type" striking out on her own for the first time. Initially David takes her hostage because he needs to get away from the police and doesn't know how to drive an 80's style car. From this initial fractious relationship a friendship and finally a full on romantic affair blooms.

This emotional relationship forms the dramatic tension in the last quarter of the film as David realises he must venture into the heart of the time rift to close it up once and for all (otherwise the entire world will get sucked in...or something). In doing this he may well become trapped himself, and consequently never see his new love ever again. Naturally, being the hero, David does the selfless deed and returns to the rift, saving the world in the process.

Allison is left distraught at this heroic sacrifice but she needn't have worried because David once more hopped over the side of the ship as the rift closed and finds himself back in 1984 again. The two reunited lovebirds kiss, and David jokes that the US Navy now owes him forty years of backpay (good luck getting that). The film ends. David and Allison are together and Jim is back in 1943 with his pregnant wife. Everyone is back where they have come to belong and (presumably) live happily ever after. Its a fairytale Hollywood ending for sure, but we have come to care about these characters so it does feel earned.

SFX  - Theres some very traditionally 80's style special effects put into play during the actual experiment scenes. Lots of neon looking lightning crackling over the ship and it's hapless crewmen.

When the ship is zapped into the void, the lighting takes on this psychedelic hue and adds to the overall unearthly feel of the moment (whilst also looking like something from an 80's pop video).

Upon arriving in 1984, the two boys are menaced with more 80's style animated lightning. This lightning seems to want to drag them both back into the void and eventually succeeds in zapping Jim back to the 40's. David doesn't realise this of course and believes Jim to be dead at this point.

There's also a pretty decent effect of the rift opening up in the gray winter skies as it increases in power and potential lethal effect.

A quick word about the time vortex itself which is straight out of 70's Doctor Who. In fact it looks so much like the 70's title sequence of Doctor Who that you half expect the disembodied face of Tom Baker to come zooming onto the screen at any minute .

Despite this, it still works OK and actually looks pretty good.

There's a pretty disturbing moment where the USS Eldridge returns from the vortex and we see (in a moment of pure body horror) that several crewmen have become bodily fused to the ship itself...

Nasty.

VIOLENCE  - Apart from the aforementioned ship/sailors bonding mishap, not a lot really. The odd military policeman gets punched in the face by David here and there.  At one point theres a car crash when a car chasing David tips over at not very high speed and inexplicably bursts into flames, but other than that it's not really that type of film - its more of a time travelling love story than an action film.

RATING  - This is a pretty solid little film all round really. Its nothing spectacular but its got a good pace, a decent cast and an emotionally involving and interesting story.

It won't blow your mind and doesn't really bring anything new to the time travel sub-genre of sci-fi but it will keep you entertained and engaged enough during it's run time, and really that's the most important thing you can ask of any movie.

3 and a half time tossed sea men out of 5.

Oh, by the way, this film is apparently based on a "true story". There really WAS an experiment that took place in 1940's Philadelphia with the aim of rendering ships invisible to enemy radar. There was also an actual USS Eldridge which, allegedly, did completely disappear for a short amount of time. The rest of the story (obviously) is complete fiction (I'm fairly sure there where no actual time travelling sailors sent to 1984), but SOMETHING happened back then (and nobody's actually saying what, face it - we'll never know). Thought provoking if nothing else...

ART -

Below is the cover of the original book which "exposed" the supposed "true story" of what happened to the USS Eldridge back in 1943.