In the wake of the dreadful 1980s mistreatment of the Jules Verne classic by Cannoon, next few years, several other studios considered making movies of Journey to the Center Of the Earth, but the only result was further mishandling. On February 28, 1993, NBC premiered a new two-hour television movie entitled JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, which had even less relation to the novel than the Cannon duo. The modern plot related how an enthusiastic university professor, Harlech (F. Murray Abraham), dreams of discovering enormous caverns beneath the surface by traveling into the shaft of an active volcano. However, after entering the nuclear-powered craft he has invented for such travel, it apparently explodes upon the first attempt to descend. His nephew carries on with the idea, forging an uncomfortable alliance with a wealthy industrialist to build a new, improved craft, which succeeds in arriving underground and conveying its passengers through mysterious domains. This JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is, in fact, more of a remake of UNKNOWN WORLD, building on Edgar Rice Burroughs's mole concept to solve the most problematic notion of the Verne story for modern audiences--how explorers could walk to the Earth's center--by offering an outer space-style craft to expedite their journey, while still pausing outside the ship for the encounters with early humans and primitive animals that Verne had included.
Direction by William Dear was capable, especially considering the trite script by David Mickey Evans and Robert Gunter; producer was John Ashley, with Dear, Evans, and Dale De La Torre as executive producers. Actually, the new television picture, hastily completed and broadcast with a minimum of publicity, consisted of two pilot episodes of a projected series. As a result, the film concludes in an open-ended fashion, as the craft goes forward to continue finding new realms (in episodes presumably never filmed).
Many of the elements contained in JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH were conventions of science fiction. Pollution threatens to render the surface uninhabitable, and the subterranean world offers the possibility of a new home for humankind. Horrific crawling manta-ray style monsters and a missing-link race of early man called troglodytes provide further danger. In an update of 2001--A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), there is a Hal-style onboard computer that not only has a personality, but a holographic face of its own as well. An evil Darth Vader-type creature, kept alive through artificial means and reminiscent of the STAR WARS trilogy, tries to thwart the explorers. (A brief shot as he falls into the lava shows him wearing the same ring as the nephew gave Harlech before his apparent death, perhaps indicating Harlech was transformed.) Both this creature and the expedition's scientist, played by John Neville (in the only dignified role), are trying to complete a lost computer chip puzzle that forms a book of knowledge from the time of Atlantis. A lovable Tibetan abominable snowman joins the group, which also includes other stereotypical representatives meant to form a microcosm of humanity: a strong female spelunker, two women scientists, an explosives expert, and an angry African-American.
Direction by William Dear was capable, especially considering the trite script by David Mickey Evans and Robert Gunter; producer was John Ashley, with Dear, Evans, and Dale De La Torre as executive producers. Actually, the new television picture, hastily completed and broadcast with a minimum of publicity, consisted of two pilot episodes of a projected series. As a result, the film concludes in an open-ended fashion, as the craft goes forward to continue finding new realms (in episodes presumably never filmed).
Many of the elements contained in JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH were conventions of science fiction. Pollution threatens to render the surface uninhabitable, and the subterranean world offers the possibility of a new home for humankind. Horrific crawling manta-ray style monsters and a missing-link race of early man called troglodytes provide further danger. In an update of 2001--A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), there is a Hal-style onboard computer that not only has a personality, but a holographic face of its own as well. An evil Darth Vader-type creature, kept alive through artificial means and reminiscent of the STAR WARS trilogy, tries to thwart the explorers. (A brief shot as he falls into the lava shows him wearing the same ring as the nephew gave Harlech before his apparent death, perhaps indicating Harlech was transformed.) Both this creature and the expedition's scientist, played by John Neville (in the only dignified role), are trying to complete a lost computer chip puzzle that forms a book of knowledge from the time of Atlantis. A lovable Tibetan abominable snowman joins the group, which also includes other stereotypical representatives meant to form a microcosm of humanity: a strong female spelunker, two women scientists, an explosives expert, and an angry African-American.
