Review: The Philadelphia Experiment

Sailors Michael Paré and Bobby DiCicco take part in a US Navy experiment in invisibility (i.e. Make ships undetectable to foreign radar), but something goes screwy and they have to abandon ship as the ship is contaminated with radiation. Somehow, this results in the pair of 1940s sailors ending up being transported to 1984. Now in a future America that is somewhat foreign and scary to them, in addition to the fact that they just frigging travelled through time, the duo find themselves trying to get back home, enlisting the aid of a random woman (Nancy Allen) to help them flee authorities who are after them. Eric Christmas plays the elderly version of the scientist behind the experiment...and he’s still trying to perfect it!

 

Well, here’s a fun little B-movie I was quite pleasantly surprised by. Directed by Stewart Raffill (the notorious “Mac and Me”, which I kinda liked as an 8 year-old idiot), this 1984 sci-fi movie is a perfectly enjoyable time travel yarn, only slightly sullied by some frankly scheizenhausen FX work, even for 1984. I mean, they look like something out of an 80s-era David Bowie music video (No, not ‘Dancing in the Street’ with Mick Jagger. Let’s all forget that was ever made, OK?), and are apparently the result of budget cuts. Also, even if time travel were possible, I’m pretty sure the film’s ending is completely impossible. It’s based on a story by the film’s EP, John Carpenter (“Halloween”, “Big Trouble in Little China”), who might’ve handled the FX scenes a bit better. Apparently little of Carpenter’s story ended up on screen and he wasn’t terribly happy with the film (Well, he called it an ‘awful film’, so I guess I was being euphemistic). Still, it’s an irresistible movie in many ways, especially if you like “The Twilight Zone” or “The Outer Limits”.

 

The fish out of water elements, that normally annoy the crap out of me in films about time travel or aliens, are handled rather well here, too, probably because only 40 years have passed in the story. Nancy Allen’s character is your clichéd modern woman roped into helping the crazy-talking guy from the past, but she’s actually really good in the role. Michael Paré is one of cinema’s laziest actors, but he has always had a “Rebel Without a Cause” meets “The Punisher” vibe about him that works in playing a displaced sailor from the 40s. It’s not his best work (that would be “Streets of Fire”), but it’s among his most likeable roles, certainly. It’s his typical lack of emotion that’s the problem. He suffers a bit from Mark Wahlberg syndrome, though at least Paré has movie star charisma. Hilarious in-joke, however, when Paré recognises Ronald Reagan...as an actor!

 

I feel sorry for co-star Bobby DiCicco, his is a rather thankless task here, but he’s fine enough. He never quite made it through the 90s, it seems (a role in “Ghoulies IV” from 1994 tells it all, really), while at least Paré still slums it in B-movies quite prolifically (including a TV movie remake of this very film), DiCicco apparently retired to work for a limousine company according to what I’ve read online (and the interwebs are never wrong, right?). Eric Christmas is a disappointing, and presumably cut-rate casting choice for the chief scientist role. A hundred other more high-profile or talented actors could’ve filled the part, such as Herbert Lom, Donald Pleasence, Aubrey Morris, Freddie Jones, Patrick Macnee, or even Kevin McCarthy. Look for a young Stephen Tobolowsky (Ned Ryerson!) in a medium size role as a scientist (apparently his first film role), and an even younger Glenn Morshower (that guy who always plays military brass or Secret Service guys, like on “24”) as a mechanic.

 

Are there logic loopholes here? Yup, you betcha, but most time travel stories don’t get the science right anyway, forgetting about the ‘butterfly effect’. I mean, if you go back in time, you’ll likely change things so that you never actually went back in time at all. Or in this case, went forward. Take out the dodgy FX and you’ve got a perfectly enjoyable sci-fi yarn with an irresistible premise. Nothing you can’t get on TV these days, but so what? It deserves to be more well-known, and I bet it’s the FX and 80s-era casting that have caused it to fade somewhat into obscurity.

 

John Carpenter’s script, based on a book by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore (whose connection to fact is dubious, to be charitable and the film further fictionalises it), was then re-written by William Gray (“The Changeling”, “Black Moon Rising”) and Michael Janover (Jerry Lewis’ “Hardly Working”), the latter of whom came up with the time travel element. There is also a story credit for Don Jakoby (the overrated “Arachnophobia”) and Wallace Bennett, but Carpenter (presumably disgruntled) merely has an EP credit.

 

Rating: B-