20 Years, Top 10 Posts: #5 The Return of Captain Nemo (1978)

[This is the fifth most-read post on this blog, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2025. This was originally published on April 25, 2009, and it has had twenty-two thousand (22K) views since then.]

"I am Captain Nemo. I have been asleep for 100 years aboard my submarine, Nautilus. I would probably still be left encapsulated had it not been for two intrepid agents of American Naval Intelligence...who quite by chance came upon my ship trapped by seismic underwater quakes..."

-Opening voice-over narration to The Return of Captain Nemo (1978)

On March 8, 1978, CBS began airing in prime-time the latest science fiction TV series from the master of disaster Irwin Allen (The Towering Inferno, The Swarm, etc.)

In essence, this new venture -- which represented Allen's final attempt at series work -- was an unholy hodgepodge of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968) mixed with a little Jules Verne, and with a huge helping of Star Wars, which was still playing in theaters and had become nothing less than a national craze. 

The extremely short-lived series was called The Return of Captain Nemo, though some viewers may remember it by its foreign, theatrical title, The Amazing Captain Nemo.

Only three hour-long episodes of The Return of Captain Nemo ("Deadly Black Mail," "Duel in The Deep" and "Atlantis Dead Ahead") were produced and aired, and the obscure, extremely rare series has mostly been seen since in an abbreviated compilation movie format. 

This strange broadcast and distribution history has resulted in some apparent confusion about whether or not the original production was a mini-series, a made-for-TV movie or simply a series. All the evidence suggests the latter, since the three 45-minute segments feature individual titles and writer/director/guest star credits. 

The series aired in prime time, drew terrible ratings, was unceremoniously canceled, and then exhumed from its watery grave as the theatrical or TV-movie that many nostalgic folk of my generation remember.

The first episode of The Return of Captain Nemo, "Deadly Blackmail" commences as a diabolical mad scientist, Dr. Waldo Cunningham (Burgess Meredith) blackmails Washington D.C. for the princely sum of one billion dollars from his perch in the command center of his highly-advanced submarine, the Raven.

Unless the President pays up in one week's time, Cunningham will fire a nuclear "doomsday" missile at the city. To prove his intent is serious, Cunningham destroys a nearby island with a laser called "a delta ray." 

The creature in charge of firing this weapon is a frog-faced golden robot in a silver suit and gloves. Every time the delta ray is fired (over the three episodes...), we cut back to identical footage of this strange frog robot activating the deadly device.

This introductory scene sets the breathless tone and pace for much of the brief series, proving immediately and distinctly reminiscent of George Lucas's Star Wars. Specifically, Cunningham's right-hand man in the command center is a giant, baritone-voiced robot/man called "Tor." This villain -- when not speaking directly into a communications device that resembles a high-tech bong -- looks and sounds like the cheapest Darth Vader knock-off you can imagine, right down to the rip-off James Earl Jones voice.

Tor even boasts psychic abilities not unlike the power of the Force. When intruders steal aboard the Raven, for instance, Tor can psychically senses their presence there; just as Vader could sense the presence of Obi-Wan aboard the Death Star. Yes, I know Darth Vader isn't actually a robot and his power wasn't actually psychic, but this is the kind of distinction that escaped the creators of The Return of Captain Nemo.

And speaking of The Death Star, Cunningham -- who essentially plays Governor Tarkin to Tor's Lord Vader -- the submarine Raven's deadly delta ray looks an awful lot like the primary weapon of that destructive imperial space station. 

Much more troubling for this fan, however, is the fact that the Raven, Cunningham's powerful submarine, is actually a just barely re-dressed Space:1999 eagle spaceship, replete with the four rear-mounted rocket engines, the dorsal lattice-work spine, the modular body, and the front, bottle nose capsule. 

Yep, it's all there. 

Many of the underwater sequences in The Return of Captain Nemo are incredibly murky and feature superimposed bubbles and dust in the foreground (probably to hide how bad the miniatures look...), but I've attempted to post a few photographs of the Raven here, so you can see for yourself that Cunningham's ship is an underwater Moonbase Alpha eagle transporter.

Anyway, while Washington D.C. puzzles over the nefarious threat of Professor Waldo Cunningham, two Navy frogmen, Commander Tom Franklin (Tom Hallick) and Lt. Jim Porter (Burr De Benning) happen upon an ancient submarine trapped on an undersea reef. From an exterior port hole, they detect a figure trapped inside a smoke-filled glass tube. They board the ship and find that this figure is actually the legendary Captain Nemo...in cryogenic freeze! 

The two men immediately free Captain Nemo (Jose Ferrer) from hibernation and he steps out heroically, wearing a cape and ready for action (after exclaiming "my experiment worked!")

Turns out Nemo has been asleep for one hundred years, and it is now April 9th, 1978. The spry captain reveals to Tom and Jim that Jules Verne was no mere novelist, but actually his biographer...and that all his adventures are true. 

Furthermore, Nemo wants to resume his search for the lost continent of Atlantis immediately. Jim and Tom, meanwhile, are astounded to see that the 127-year old Nautilus is a nuclear-powered submarine, one equipped with all the latest technology...including radar scopes. Interestingly, it is not just any radar device Captain Nemo has invented (along with cryogenic suspension and nuclear-powered submarines...), but rather radar devices that are identical in shape, mode and design to ones we have now on board our state-of-the-art ships. 

Incredible coincidence, no?

Jim and Tom help free the Nautilus from its perch and convince Captain Nemo to return to their headquarters in San Francisco. There, they all report to the leader of an Elite Navy Group commanded by a man named Miller (Walter Stevens). Miller promptly recruits Nemo as a secret agent for the government, and in return the Nautilus gets a refit (though it clearly doesn't really need one...) and a full Navy crew.

At this point in the story, I must admit, I nearly lost my lunch. 

The independent, head-strong, world-weary Captain Nemo of Jules Verne is -- without much argument or debate -- transformed into a dedicated agent for the U.S. government?! After a history of decrying war? After a history of sinking warships? After exiling himself to the "liberating" world under the sea? After leaving the world of man permanently behind? 

This man of science just becomes...a tool of one particular government?

Methinks Irwin Allen (along with Franklin, Porter and Miller) never actually read any Jules Verne.

Instead, Allen must have been secretly screening recent episodes of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman Man from Atlantis (1977), since the series premise (fish-out-of-water individual becomes government agent) of The Return of Captain Nemo shares more in common with those seventies superhero TV series than it does the literary work of Jules Verne, or any previous screen incarnations of Captain Nemo, for that matter.

Regardless, here we are presented with the most bizarre film interpretation of Captain Nemo imaginable: as genius creator of suspended animation (!), and as dashing, adventurous secret agent (!) for the United States Navy. This iteration of Nemo boasts not a whit, not a scent, not even an iota of a dark or even melancholy side. 

Instead, this Nemo is an exuberant man of action.

In fairness to Ferrer, he's quite charismatic and physically capable in this leading role, even if the writing (and the entire scenario...) is ridiculous to the point of inanity. One wonders what Ferrer might have accomplished playing the character in a more faithful incarnation of Captain Nemo's world. 

This Nemo gets to voice some flowery language ("We must stroll through this orchard without bruising the fruit," he notes metaphorically of an undersea waste dump, in the second episode), and this Nemo does seem "above" worldly concerns (like Star Trek's Spock), but Nemo almost never asks Tom and Jim any questions about the new world he has arrived in. 

He shows no curiosity about the 20th century or its customs, which seems odd. Wouldn't Nemo the scientist wish to see what man has accomplished? Or does he just assume he's already accomplished more?

Captain Nemo's first assignment as a government agent is to prevent Waldo Cunningham from firing his doomsday nuclear missile at Washington D.C. 

The Nautilus hunts the Raven at the bottom of the sea, and Nautilus evades destruction by delta beam when Nemo activates the Nautilus's protective electric force field. 

Deciding he needs to understand his nemesis better, Nemo boldly boards the Raven and is promptly taken hostage by Tor and Cunningham. Together, Nemo and Franklin escape custody and run down an advanced corridor that also appears to have been lifted directly from the Death Star construction blueprints. 

Captain Nemo -- now equipped with a hand-laser, destroys a bevy of Cunningham's storm-trooper-type robot goons in this very corridor, and the music actually sounds remarkably like a sped-up Star Wars theme. Again, I kid you not. The imitation is just...brazen.

Eventually, Nemo destroys Cunningham's nuclear missile by firing a laser beam weapon he invented(!), and the Raven slinks away under the sea to fight another day. In case you don't detect the pattern here, the writers left themselves an easy out. 

Whenever threatened with destruction, Captain Nemo has a new invention up his sleeve that saves the day. A suspended animation device, a radar, an electric force field, now a ship-mounted laser beam. Not only is Nemo a genius, I guess, he's a super duper uber genius. There's nothing this guy didn't invent a hundred years ago. Nothing.

Because Star Wars is ripped-off so dramatically in the opening episode of The Return of Captain Nemo, the series changes tactics in its second episode ("Duel in the Deep") and rips off the premise of Space:1999 instead. Here, Waldo Cunningham (again!) threatens the safety of the world when the Raven begins ripping up (with grappling hooks...) the radioactive nuclear waste containers at the bottom of the sea, 35,000 feet down, at the Mindanao Trench near the Philippines. 

Just think the dark side of the moon, the atomic waste dumps, and the inaugural 1999 episode "Breakaway."

The Nautilus and Captain Nemo are assigned to repair the breaches in the nuclear waste dumping ground before a wave of radioactivity leaks to the surface, destroying all life there. Two nuclear physicists come aboard to help out, the beautiful Kate (Lynda Day George) and the duplicitous agent, Cook (Mel Ferrer). If you've ever seen any episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, you know that Irwin Allen really loves his submarine saboteurs (secret spies show up in every other episode during the early seasons of that series...) and here the Nautilus is drawn off course by undersea magnets, surrounded by sea mines, and Nemo's bathosphere is also sabotaged. 

Fortunately, Kate helps Nemo save the day, defeat Cook, and joins the Nautilus crew, becoming a regular on the series. At the end of the day, Cunningham escapes again and the breach in the nuclear waste dumps is repaired by a lucky rock fall.

The third -- and mercifully -- final episode of Return of Captain Nemo boasts the name of Robert Bloch as one of its writers, but one has to assume he was heavily re-written, or had little to do with the show's development. 

"Atlantis Dead Ahead" also features Horst Bucholz as Atlantis's King Tibor and a very young Anthony Geary (General Hospital's Luke of "Luke and Laura" fame) as an Atlantean retainer named...Bork. In this adventure, Captain Nemo easily locates Atlantis (did I mention he's a super duper, uber genius?) but finds that Waldo Cunningham has already beaten him to the lost continent and enslaved the underwater people there with dastardly mind-control head-bands.

Cunningham captures Nemo and Tom Franklin and paralyzes the crew of the Nautilus (including Kate) with a "z-ray" that freezes the unlucky crew "in time," whatever the hell that means. Tom is fitted with his own individual brain-washing head-band (which makes him look like he's ready to participate in a Jane Fonda aerobics video...) and forced to torture Nemo.

Nemo himself is attached to a brain-sucking device that will reveal to Cunningham all of his one-hundred-year old secrets, including the formula for Nautilus's laser ray. Since Cunningham already has a death ray, why he needs Nemo's death ray is a bit of a mystery. 

Anyway, Nemo outsmarts Cunningham by re-playing in his mind (and broadcasting his thoughts on the view screen...), information about the Navy and U.S. government that re-activates Tom's sense of patriotic loyalty. They escape together and there's yet another shoot-out between Cunningham's robot storm troopers and our heroes in the very same Death Star corridor. Still, Cunningham proves more dangerous than ever because he posses twenty pellets of a poisonous element called "Crosar" which he plans to release in 20 world cities.

After an undersea battle between Nautilus and Raven -- in which the Raven is apparently destroyed-- Captain Nemo decides to leave the freed Atlantis behind, "untouched by our progress." King Tibor thanks him and then jumps into the water, never to be seen again.

Then, apparently with nothing left to accomplish, Nemo turns to Kate (a possible love interest...) and suggests they head back to San Francisco and have a meeting with Mr. Miller, so the boss can give the Nautilus new orders. Yep, the inventive and brilliant captain Nemo can think of nothing else to do with Nautilus, and just wants a new assignment from a government bureaucrat. 

A sad end for a sad re-vamp.

I was nine years old when Return of Captain Nemo first aired on CBS, and I have to confess...I loved it at that age. It had lasers, submarines, evil robots, Captain Nemo, underwater adventure...everything a young, imaginative mind could ask for. 

As an innocent, impressionable youngster I had no inkling just how nonsensical, how ridiculous, how vapid, how inane and how derivative the Allen series was. Seeing the program today, I'm amazed but just how craven it remains: how desperate and frenzied it is to latch on to the latest trend in the pop culture (Star Wars) and artlessly exploit it.

I've blogged many, many TV movies and series here -- and if you read my blog often, you know I endeavor to highlight the positive -- but off the top of my head, I can't recall another TV series so regularly, so routinely, dreadful. The Return of Captain Nemo is so bad, so confused about itself, that it's actually baffling at points.

Tor, for instance, is not only a robot sidekick with psychic powers (why? why?), but also a xenophobic bigot! For some reason, he is constantly seen railing against "aliens." 

Only problem, there are no aliens on the show. Tor keeps blaming aliens for everything...and there aren't any aliens around.

Why would Cunningham program a robot with this weirdo tic? If Tor is not a robot, what the hell is he, and why is he working for Cunningham in the first place? 

He can't be an alien and hate aliens, can he? 

It's clear the character was just thrown in to the mix, apparently at random, to appeal to the demographic that thought Darth Vader was super cool. But no real thought was ever given to Tor as a character. No thought was given to his background, his creation, his very nature.

Tor's not alone, either. The two Navy officers, Tom and Jim, continually play second fiddle to Nemo and have absolutely nothing of interest to do but issue orders from the bridge of Nautilus in Nemo's absence. In Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Captain Crane suffered from some of the same issues (always proving far less interesting than his boss, Admiral Nelson), but Tom and Jim are approximately a million times more uninteresting even then Crane.

And for Cunningham to act as the primary villain of all three episodes, escaping and returning, forever escaping and returning, makes the series seem repetitive and dull. And that's being polite. 

Imagine if The Master were the only villain the Doctor ever encountered, and you'll understand what I mean. Some essential sense of jeopardy is lost because you just know here that Waldo is always going to get beaten, always escape, always return, always gets beaten and always escape, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Burgess Meredith is a good actor, of course, but at times (particularly in one view screen exchange with Nemo...) you can see the veteran glancing down out of shot and then back...apparently to read the off-screen lines.

A talented writer could probably tell a Captain Nemo story with a flavor of Star Wars thrown in and get away with it if he or she had an airtight narrative, interesting characters and some sense of style. But The Return of Captain Nemo is bereft of all those ingredients. It is poorly-written and seems dashed off from the Irwin Allen assembly line in order to exploit Star Wars before the craze wore off.

Again, you have to feel sorry for Jose Ferrer. He's got the gusto, the presence, the intelligence, the wit, the attitude, and the physicality to make an excellent Captain Nemo, but the scripts here require him to speedily race from one crisis to another, saving the day like a campy superhero, and the result is that he never seems like a fully-developed human being.

Many genre fans of my generation have -- like me -- spent an inordinate amount of time seeking out The Return of Captain Nemo. It's an item of nostalgic remembrance, something that appeared on a major network (and remember, in those days of the disco decade there were only three networks...) and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. 

The pull of such a production is tantalizing. Did I really see that? Did it really exist? Have I lost my mind? Was I dreaming? Was it any good? 

Indeed, this is the very journey I undertook.

Unfortunately, in the case of The Return of Captain Nemo, this is but a dismal voyage to the bottom of the barrel. 

Go ahead and watch it if you dare, but sometimes old memories -- like Captain Nemo himself -- are best left in stasis. 

I'll always cherish my memory of watching (and loving) the show as a nine year old kid, but I dare not re-visit this series again as an adult. Not trying to be mean here. Believe me, I'm being as charitable as possible. The great Captain Nemo deserves so much better than this travesty.

40 Years Ago: Godzilla 1985

Godzilla: 1985, or Return of Godzilla (1985) is the first and only Godzilla movie I was fortunate enough to see theatrically in my youth.  (I saw Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster in a drive-in theater, but I was so young, I don't really remember the experience).

Godzilla: 1985 showed at the Center Theater in Bloomfield, New Jersey, close to my home in Glen Ridge, and my best friend Bob and I went to see it together.  I don’t believe I liked the film very much at the time. It seemed cheap and overly-sentimental.

All I knew was that I really liked Godzilla himself. 

Always did.

I can write definitively -- after a re-watch and four decades later -- that I admire Godzilla: 1985 and now consider it to be one of the most underrated films in the entire Godzilla canon. Many critics and audiences at the time were only able to view the film in terms of its special effects, which in America were considered primitive.  

Like my teenage self, those critics missed the forest for the trees.

Godzilla: 1985 kicks off the Heisei period of Godzilla film history, a deliberate un-writing all Godzilla movies post-1954.  And while I don’t think it was necessary to reboot the franchise quite so aggressively, I certainly understand the desire to get back to basics, or to tweak beloved material so it remains current, and vital.

In terms of metaphor, Godzilla: 1985 works very effectively indeed because it was produced at a time that might be considered a corollary for the 1950s, the era that shaped King of Monsters. 

In the eighties, the Cold War was burning hot following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, and President Reagan was a right-wing hawk who called the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire” and joked on an open mic about “bombing” Russia in five minutes.  

These points are important because the fears that had given rise to Godzilla in the first place were so blatantly rearing their heads again as the Cold War grew hot. Other genre films from this era including The Day After (1983), Dreamscape (1984), Testament (1984) and Threads (1984), and they all obsessed on nuclear war and the environmental fall-out that would follow.

Accordingly, Godzilla returns in Godzilla: 1985 to threaten Japan at this important historical juncture, when nuclear tensions were as high as they had been since the early 1960's and the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

A key character in the film is Japan’s Prime Minister, a man who must balance the aggression/agendas of the United States and the U.S.S.R. as they pertain to Japan and its involvement in its own defense.  He must decide if he should stand by a principle -- no nuclear weapons to be used on Japanese soil, ever -- or kowtow to the demands of international partners.

I have read that some fans consider Godzilla: 1985 too “political” an entry in the series because of this plot l, but I believe the Godzilla films always  work best when they play off of specific real life fears or dreads, and react meaningfully to the dangers of their era.  Godzilla: 1985 certainly qualifies on that front.

Boasting surprisingly artful compositions and a screenplay that explicitly understands why Godzilla is “tragic” and “innocent,” but not evil, Godzilla: 1985 is actually a smart, well-crafted entry in the franchise.

Raymond Burr returns to his role of Steve Martin from the Americanized film, Godzilla: King of Monsters, and his character notes trenchantly here that “when mankind falls into conflict with nature, monsters are born.”  

Those portentous words not only define the spirit and purpose of the kaiju films in general, they comment on the 1980s Cold War period, a period that threatened to very quickly spiral out of control if tempers were not controlled.  

“One lizard is down for the count.”

The great monster Godzilla, not seen in Japan for thirty years, is learned to be near the beleaguered country once more.  Godzilla attacks a fishing boat, Yahata Maru, and also a Russian submarine, precipitating a nuclear stand-off between Cold War enemies East and West.

Armed with evidence that Godzilla is responsible for the sunken submarine, the Japanese Prime Minister, Seiki Mitamura (Keiju Kobayashi) announces the truth to the world.  Before long, both the Americans and the Russians are eager to destroy Godzilla using nuclear weapons, but Prime Minister Mitamura is unequivocal. There will be no nuclear weapons used on Japanese soil, no matter Godzilla’s destruction.

After absorbing the energy from a nuclear reactor, Godzilla lands in Tokyo Bay, and is confronted by the new military weapon, Super X. The plane’s cadmium missiles knock Godzilla out, but an accidental detonation high in the atmosphere of a Russian nuke soon brings him back to life.

While American Steve Martin (Raymond Burr), the “only American to survive” the disaster of 1954 consults with the American military, a scientist in Japan, Dr. Hayashida (Yasuke Natsuki) realizes that Godzilla -- whose brain is apparently like that of a bird -- responds to bird calls.  

Hayashida plans to lead Godzilla to the lip of a volcano, where controlled explosions will destroy the ground beneath him, and send the monster careening into the magma below…

“Sayonara, sucker…”

In Godzilla: 1985, Godzilla destroys a Russian nuclear submarine, and tensions between Cold War enemies escalate.  The Japanese Prime Minister, Mitamura, quickly makes a statement affirming Godzilla’s responsibility in the matter.  

After doing this -- to defuse nuclear war -- the prime minister, however, must deal with two nations that want him to act in a specific way.  Specifically, the matter of using nuclear weapons on Japanese soil is raised, and the prime minister expressly forbids it.

Impressively, Godzilla: 1985 sets up a nice visual framework here, suggesting the nature of the pressure the prime minister faces.  

In two separate compositions, we see the fluttering flags of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. on diplomatic cars as they speed their representatives to a diplomatic conference. The impression is that these two states are rushing to an answer, but not really considering the problem. Nationalism is the overriding concern, as represented by the flags, and the issue is accelerating towards a boiling point, as represented by the fluttering, wavy flags.

A few minutes later, Prime Minister Mitamura is lobbied by both an American and Russian representative at the conference.  The very shots here reveal the kind of pressure he faces.  His face is seen in the corner of the frame, edged-out, virtually, as the representative in question makes his point, literally taking center stage. Then we see the same shot, but with the other nationalist.

Taken together, these two compositions suggest that the Japanese official is actually caught between a rock and a hard place. If he doesn’t satisfy both suitors, as it were, nuclear war could be the terrifying outcome.

Godzilla: 1985 also suggests that, born of nuclear or atomic power, Godzilla craves it as a form of nourishment or energy.  He absorbs a Japanese nuclear reactor and goes on his merry way, but the metaphorical implication is that once nuclear power is used, the door on its use can’t be easily closed.

Godzilla isn’t a one time “event.”  

Instead, he constantly craves the nourishment that reactors provide, and we can parse that idea to mean that once we incorporate nuclear energy into our regular usage patterns, it is impossible to remove it easily.  

Godzilla -- and the civilized world – is “addicted” to the power that nuclear weapons and nuclear energy provide.  And nuclear energy is, by its mere nature, dangerous.

The nuclear tensions between the Russians and Americans actually strengthen Godzilla, as we see in the film. A detonation over Tokyo -- caused by the Soviets -- provides the energy the goliath needs to overcome the cadmium missiles of Japan’s flying weapon, the Super X.  

I also admire the subplot in Godzilla: 1985, largely brought forward in the American version by Raymond Burr’s character, Martin.  It states, essentially, that to conquer Godzilla, one must not use weapons of war.  

Instead, one must seek to understand his nature.  “He’s looking for something…searching,” Martin tells the military.  “If we can find out what it is before too late…”

That line may sound silly in the cold light of day, but it’s an important expression about understanding – and listening -- to nature.

Although I am a big fan of the colorful and mostly kid-friendly Godzilla movies of the 1970's, I also admire how Godzilla: 1985 attempts to maintain the menace and mystery of Godzilla.  

Almost every scene involving the big green lizard is set at night, in darkness. Somehow, under an impenetrable, ebony sky, Godzilla looks all the more real, and terrifying. His landing in Tokyo Bay is a great set-piece, and the miniature work of his destructive stomp through the city is a great improvement over similar scenes in the 1970s. 

I also dig the moment at the reactor when a guard spots Godzilla, and the camera pans up and up and up and up, to his roaring mouth. This moment does a fine job of suggesting Godzilla’s sheer size.

Similarly, there are more moments here than in previous Godzilla films wherein the camera is tilted up, gazing at the beast from a low angle, thus demonstrating his massive scale.  In many cases, Godzilla really looks “huge” and not just like a man on a suit, stomping through a miniature sound-stage.  The right angle and the right point of view matter.

Finally, Godzilla: 1985 does a terrific job of walking the line about the monster’s contradictions.  Godzilla is a terror, to be certain, and yet he is also in Martin’s words “strangely innocent and tragic.”  

This description is a knowing and sympathetic way of acknowledging that Godzilla is both a monster, and, in a weird way, a beloved character to the audience. My biggest complaint about the American Godzilla (1998) is that it never decides how the audience should feel about the monster. Should we love him or hate him?

Godzilla: 1985 makes a choice in that regard, and a good one. It reminds us that Godzilla is a terrible natural threat -- a hurricane or a volcano with thunderous thighs, essentially -- but that we can still feel sorry for him as a living being out of his time, and out of his place. We can have empathy or him, because we made him what he is…

40 Years Ago: My Science Project (1985)

If a movie-goer desires to seek out a perfect time capsule of the year 1985, he or she should be immediately directed to Jonathan R. Betuel’s My Science Project (1985), a science fiction film that very strongly reflects the age in which it was made...right down to a scene of high school typing class and electric typewriters.

Described broadly, My Science Project is a “teens meet science fiction” action-adventure from the same year that gave audiences Weird Science (1985) and Real Genius (1985). All these films combine raucous teen humor and juvenile characters with sf imagery and concepts.

My Science Project is also, specifically, a teenager time travel adventure that landed smack-dab in the age of Back to the Future (1985) and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1988). 

Again, young characters are suddenly faced with scenarios out of H.G. Wells, and must contend not only with denizens of other times, but, often, temporal paradoxes as well. At the same time, they are concerned about flunking their classes.

Beyond these touches, My Science Project is packed, wall-to-wall, frame-by-frame with self-reflexive jokes about pop culture, evidencing a protean trend that would fully come into its own in the 1990s, particularly in the horror genre. 

In the mid-to-late eighties,  however, some young filmmakers who had grown up with television and film as constant background noise began utilizing allusions to those media as “touch stones” for an aging generation. My Science Project is at the tip of that spear.

Finally, My Science Project even attempts -- in the Reagan Era, no less -- to grapple with the divisive legacy of the 1960s and, among other issues, the Vietnam War and the anti-war counter-culture.  

Again, this was precisely where the culture soon headed in films such as Platoon (1986) and Casualties of War (1989).

With all this happening during its 95 minute confines, My Science Project should be nothing less than wall-to-wall excitement and invention. And though it’s true that the film’s pace is generally frenetic, My Science Project -- a box office bomb -- never fully manages to fully succeed on its own creative terms.

The movie is loud, busy, and buoyed by occasionally effective imagery (especially for the 1980s), but no single scene or set-piece really stands out, and none of the characters are entirely memorable, either.  Some scenes really fly, and other simply never take off.

But succeed or fail, this cult Betuel film will make you nostalgic for 1985.

“Do something special…do something original…”

At Kit Carson High School, grease monkey Michael Harlan (John Stockwell) meets with an ultimatum from his science teacher, Bob Roberts (Dennis Hopper): If he doesn’t submit an amazing final science project, he will fail the class.

While out on a pseudo-date with nerdy school reporter Ellie (Danielle Von Zerneck), Michael visits a Department of Defense Disposal Depot. 

There, in a subterranean storage facility, he discovers a strange unearthly "gizmo," an engine, or energy generator. Unbeknownst to Harlan, the instrument hails from an alien flying saucer that President Eisenhower ordered destroyed in 1957.

Michael, his wise-cracking friend, Vince (Fisher Stevens) and Ellie return to the high school with the device, which promptly absorbs energy from any technology nearby, including flashlights and car batteries.  Mr. Roberts is fascinated by the device and hooks it up to a power outlet in his science lab, an act which gives the extra-terrestrial machine access to almost infinite power.

The machine creates a vortex or warp over the school and sucks Mr. Roberts inside of it. Then, epochs from the past appear inside the high school itself.  

Michael and his friends soon encounter Neanderthals, Roman gladiators, the Viet Cong, and even a hungry T-Rex (in the school gym) in their efforts to shut down the alien generator.

“My ears are ringing like The Gong Show.”

Perhaps the biggest reason that My Science Project remains largely obscure today involves the characters.  

Not one of them is particularly memorable, or played with a lot of color. Fisher Steven’s quipping Vincent is the obvious candidate for break-out status here, but his character quickly wears out his welcome with a constant stream of pop-culture allusions and wise cracks. He seems so determined to reference TV shows and movies that it is not clear he is ever a real "person."

John Stockwell -- a fine actor (and now, director…) in films such as Christine (1983) and Top Gun (1986) -- leads the cast ably, and does a good job, but the script does him no favors. The scenes between Michael and his father and new step-mother go nowhere and have no emotional pay-off. They may be important thematically (as we'll see later in this review) but they are given no punctuation.

Worse, the “romantic” angle with Von Zerneck is never compelling or convincing (see Joe Dante’s Explorers [1985] for an innocent teen-romance that seems a bit more natural).

Additionally, the frenetic nature of the story requires the actors to run back and forth a lot, attempting to deal with surprises around every high school corridor. This approach leaves little time for character-based humor, or even a sense of a story arc. The overall feeling is of racing from one scene to the next, so that none carries any more weight than another.

The film also appears to have been heavily tampered with in the editing stage. The great Richard Masur is introduced as a Texas detective with great fanfare, and then has almost zero impact on the narrative.  

Visually, the film is hampered -- and made to look ugly at times -- by the near constant use of fog machines and neon strobes. 

Still, some moments are genuinely impressive in terms of imagery. The visual effects involving the vortex (and the dance of energy around Hopper’s character…) are really solid, and hold up nicely today. 

And for a pre-CGI age film, the sequence with the T-Rex in the gymnasium is particularly well-rendered.  In fact, it is well-rendered enough that it should be the highlight of the whole movie, except for the fact that the teenagers gun it down with Vietnam Era army rifles.  

Sure, the dinosaur is dangerous, but the scene has no sense of awe, no sense of majesty, and doesn’t build to anything beyond a quick “high.”

The explicit fun of teen movies like Explorers or Back to the Future is their comical interludes with danger, but somehow the presence of grenades and machine guns here (used against -- let’s face it -- a confused dinosaur) isn’t fun in the slightest.  

A better outcome would have been to see the T-Rex somehow trapped in the gym instead of gunned down.  All sense of fun disappears, after all, when viewers are left to gape at a dinosaur's blown-up chest cavity for a sustained length of time.

This is a prime occasion when the movie needs a light touch, but settles for flashy pyrotechnics.

Certainly, My Science Project is ahead of its time in terms of its post-modern or meta-approach to its story. 

Vince is a constant font of pop-culture information, referencing Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, The Gong Show, The Twilight Zone and even McCloud.  

It’s possible that these allusions were meant to welcome viewers and let them know that the movie shares their language and cultural history.  But the references don’t amount to much overall, except perhaps for the clip of the Morlocks from The Time Machine (1960).  

That (great) film spearheaded time travel adventures in the cinema, and warned of the downfall of man in the distant future. Here, the preoccupied teenage kids learn about an impending (neon) apocalypse, replete with mutants, and yet can’t be bothered to think about it, or try to stop it, even.  

The downfall of man has begun in earnest, perhaps.

My Science Project’s negotiation of 1960s issues is worthy of examination too. Good laughs are drawn from Hopper’s ‘hippie’ teacher who drives off, at one point, to “an anti-war alumni meeting.”  

He goes on the greatest trip of all, thanks to the alien machine, reliving his days at Woodstock, and so forth.  Hopper is a perfect casting choice, given his participation in Easy Rider (1969), not to mention The Last Movie (1971)

But implicit in these Hopper-based scenes is the sense of closure: the professor is an old guy living, resolutely, in the past, looking to relive past glories.  He is not a person of the present, or dealing with present concerns. The conflicts of the sixties are behind us, My Science Project suggests.

My Science Project puts the Vietnam Era -- and the deep-seated psychological fear it spawned of America military adventurism overseas -- behind us by thoughtlessly arming its citizen protagonists, and having them gun-battle their way through hordes of future mutants, as well as the aforementioned T-Rex. 

The under-the-surface message seems to be that it is okay for America to love guns and militarism again; that the diffidence that came with the Vietnam Era is gone in the Age of Reagan.  We all know how well this so-called "New Patriotism" eventually turned out (see: The Iraq War).

Writing at Tor.com in 2010, critic Jacob Steingroot offers audiences another intriguing (and, I think, valid) way of reading this Betuel film. 

He suggests that Harlan’s unsettled life (dealing with a break-up and a changing situation on the domestic front), is paralleled by the energy generator’s time/hopping alterations of reality.

Steingroot writes:

“Betuel depicts the nebulous feeling of being a teen. Things that seem concrete one day change dramatically the next. Harlan’s relationship with his girlfriend ends for reasons he can’t understand. He comes home to find that his single dad has remarried and their house has been refurnished with pink pillows and drapery. Vince, because of his parents’ divorce, is forced to leave Brooklyn for New Mexico....The confusing uncertainty of being a teen, the feeling that the world is out of control is echoed and expanded through the notion of the space/time warp.”

I appreciate Steingroot’s explanation of the film's leitmotif or modus operandi, here, and feel that it holds up well. Space/time does seem to operate in strange ways when you’re a teenager.  Life either moves too fast, or too slow, right?  Friendships change, perceptions change, and even bodies change, day-to-day.  Steingroot's thesis makes a re-watch of My Science Project much richer and much more thought-provoking.

Hailing from the age that brought us Back to the Future, Real Genius, and Explorers, to name just a few, My Science Project doesn’t earn an automatic “A,” perhaps, despite such a  worthwhile (and thoughtful) attempt to fully rehabilitate the picture.

Why? Well, for much of its running time, My Science Project lacks the visual and narrative classicism of a Spielberg or Dante film, missing that mark by quite a margin. 

But perhaps the movie deserves some extra credit all these years later for its self-reflexive approach to culture, and its (not-always-successful) attempt to put the sixties squarely in Harlan’s rear-view mirror. 

And if we accept the time warp as a metaphor for turbulent adolescence, perhaps there’s even more to like and appreciate in My Science Project than meets the eye.