Continuing my time travel theme I managed to see The Philadelphia Experiment online.
Made in 1984 fours years after The Final Countdown the Philadelphia Experiment is a much more complex multi-dimensional film.
Reversing the direction of travel The Experiment sends two US sailors from 1943 to 1984 America. The fact that they are out and about in society makes it immediately more complicated and their interactions cause confusion and alarm on both sides.
One of the sailors is utterly fascinated by a TV remote, the speed of a Porsche sports car and sexuality on TV. The other sailor is dogged by the wormhole they fell through and eventually vanishes.
The central idea of the film is the notion that simultaneous radar-invisibility experiments by the US Navy in both 1943 and 1984 unwittingly create enough linked energy to open a portal.
I find the concept of energy surges from the past emerging in the future fascinating. I suppose the cosmic microwave background radiation from the Big Bang causing snow on our TV screens is a potent example.
If I remember my basic science then energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred. This would suggest that today's energy is the energy of the past anyway. Energy appears to be travelling with us in time but can it travel through time in either direction as the Philadelphia Experiment suggests and cause a wormhole?
As with the Final Countdown someone was left behind in the Experiment. Love keeps him in the future. More interestingly for me, two characters from the 1943 incident are shown to grow old naturally over the proceeding 40 years and know all about the wormhole when it appears in 1984, they being old men by this point. One of them is the Chief radar scientist, the cause you might say.
This device of fixing observers into time-travel stories seems important to our enjoyment and understanding of the films. We can relate to them somehow since like us watching the tale unfold on the screen they are simply bystanders burdened with the weight of their own histories.
I've stopped making sense so I'll re-enter the portal now and find a big plastic Aircraft carrier to mess with!
Have you seen the Philadelphia Experiment treaders?
I didn't see this film but there was a sequel involving a stealth fighter, a nuke and an SS officer that loved Hank Williams! - Mark J
ReplyDeleteA sequel! Really MJ! I shall have to take some time to find it online. But not too much time. I don't want to slip through a wormhole!
DeleteI was just in Philadelpia last week.I have been dating a lovely lady that works in one of the Center City Skyscrapers and I enjoy meeting her for lunch.You can see the Tall ships in the boat yard on the Delaware River.Thats where a bit of the movie was filmed
ReplyDeleteSounds very romantic Bri. You'd be amazed how few skyscrapers there are in the UK. Mostly London.
DeleteWhats that one you have there?They call it The Pickle or The Gherkin or something.Very interesting architecture.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Gherkin. We have a tall building in Leeds near us nicknamed the Cheesegrater!
DeleteI was super disappointed in the 1984 Phila Experiment movie. Having read the Berlitz/Moore book on the supposed actual experiment, I thought it would make a great spooky SciFi horror thingie, but not the drippy teenage love story which the movie was. Also disappointed in The Final Countdown. I don’t think the Phila Experiememt can be successfully filmed. It should be a very dark and grim thriller, recounting the terrible fate of the soldiers that were trapped between dimensions. Just my two cents.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't realised it was a book Zigg. I will have to get hold of a copy and read it too!
Delete