JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is another stinker from The Asylum released to cash in on the success of the Hollywood film of the same name. This one bears no relation to the Jules Verne story and instead involves a bunch of modern-day characters who accidentally travel to the middle of the Earth, which looks remarkably like the kind of open countryside that often stands in for alien or fantasy terrain in Asylum movies. While there, they get pursued by a CGI dinosaur and emote and scream a lot. The film is a bog-standard cheapie, make with little in the way of technical prowess or skill, content instead to go through the motions throughout.

Maybe I expect just a little too much science in my science fiction, particularly as we are in the 21st century. Light, sure, some sort of rock phosphorescence or plasma glow, but clouds? I think patten5, however, pointed out what is really missing in this film; if the team had shed their black bras (except for the Captain who wears flesh-tone) early in the movie, it would have held MY attention better. (Okay, okay, I'm a sexist pig, but aren't women in skimpy clothing de rigeur for cheesy SF?) So, what do we have here? For one thing, a movie that has no shame in ripping off just about anything else: title, transporter malfunctions, Core-squelike machine to drill through the Earth's crust, CGI T-Rexes. All things considered, even though I could have spent the 87 minutes in more uplifting ways, I was entertained. I would like to have seen more of Goth Girl.

By every account this is a terribly bad movie. Why do I give it so many stars (well, 4 out 10)? Because the cheese factor kind of works in it's favor ... for me. It's got some sort of sick charm that appeals to 1 out of every 50 people and I guess I'm that 1 person.Given that in 2008, 2 other Journey to the Center of the Earth movies were made (one Theatrical, one for the Hallmark TV channel) ... what spin could this one take? An all-female cast for starters (well, there is one slightly older middle-aged guy present, but he doesn't count), and teleportation to add a little novelty.Here's the setup: a military team of women are using a relatively new teleportation machine to zip over to Germany. Their path takes them through the center of the Earth (well, only 600km deep) ... and something goes wrong and they get stuck in said location. The hot female scientist who designed the machine is now just finished work on a nuclear-powered, laser-blasting deep digging machine. This is what's used to rescue the lost women.Part of the cheese factor for me is that in spite of a low budget, ridiculous cast and idea and clear special effects goofs (I don't think we're meant to see clouds underground) ... everyone in the movie tries to be serious. The result is a kind of offbeat amusement. In fact, I'm actually pretty impressed that the film makers didn't go the "T&A" route; the girl with the lip-ring in the beginning almost gets you thinking otherwise.Anyway, I do not recommend watching this movie. However, if you believe that you may happen to like knucklehead adaptations of "Journey to the ..." movies, then by all means check it out. I kind of liked it.

I don't usually post... but had to on this one. I'm guessing the marketing pitch went something like this, "Okay... we release this piece of roughly cobbled together footage from the cut-room floor from an old sci-fi flick that was killed for good reason 20 years ago at the exact same time as Brenden Frazier's 'Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D', call it by the exact same name and hope nobody notices. Who wants in?!" My wife kept jokingly asking, "Is this a 'Sweded' version of a 'real' movie?" (see "Be Kind, Rewind" for concept of "Sweding"). Honestly. An all female combat unit who is neither on a combat mission nor behave like soldiers. Poor whip-cams and badly edited cut scenes. Special "ship effects" that have repeat-cells (remember Scooby-Doo cartoons? Remember how the background kept "repeating" when the gang would run down a hallway). Horrific dialogue, audio mixing (it was like watching old Kung-Fu movies... lip flaps don't match the dialogue... crap, the Japanese Anime we watch does a better job than THIS movie did!), acting, direction, photography...honestly, the only thing even remotely redeeming was the lame attempt to give Homage to Aliens (pirated dialogue "Hey... you look just like i feel...", an easily identifiable "Hudson", and even a gratuitous "chest bursting" concept), which would have been mildly funny if it wasn't attempting to take itself seriously.