The Day Time Ended — The Day Time Ended(Blu Ray)
The Day Time Ended( aka Earth's Final Fury, Time Warp, Vortex) appeared in 1979- and was the 6th film directed John "Bud" Cardos- Kingdom of the Spiders, The Dark, Gor II, Mutant. It’s a nicely short, and often effects-heavy feature based in and around the Mojave Desert.
The film starts in a relatively sane/ predictable family film manner- with three generations of a family going out to stay at the grandparent's house for a holiday. Then the weirdness sets in first off the house- is seemingly in the middle of the desert, next it is ziggurat shaped…fairly soon things start to get weirder as young Jenny- played by Natasha Ryan, who in the same year turned up on The Amityville Horror- comes across a glowing green alien pyramid near the stables of the house. And before you know it the skies alight with rapidly darting UFO’s, tiny dancing grey aliens are appearing in the families bedroom, and the house is filling with green light and mist…and this is just the start of the madness. As things go on we get fighting dinosaurs, crazed psychedelic light effects, suddenly appearing airplane graveyards, threatening hovering robots with arms and laser beams, and more
Really the further the film goes on the less sense/ logic the whole thing makes- as first one thing then another is thrown at the family- all making for puzzling, surreal and at times crazed ride, where you don’t know what will happen next…all topped with a finale that is a trippy, as it is intergalactically crazed. I’ve seen The Day Time Ended several times over the years, and I still can’t really figure out what it’s exactly meant to mean, or what is truly going on…but that what makes it such fun.
Moving onto this new 40th anniversary special edition- and first off the print, for the most part, looks good, clear, balanced- which is pretty impressive considering the amount layers of effects/ filters/ect present- so it really looks the best it ever has. Next, we get a commentary from producer & writer Wayne Shmidt, and producer Paul Gentry- this is a chatty, informative, at times a little heavy on technical talk track. They go from talking about how the project first come into fruition, the way the script was re-written/ adjusted twice, how certain effects where created and by whom, and the various issues involved in the film production- all in all, a worthy listen.
We get around seven minutes of behind the scenes pictures, concept art, and effects set-up. Lastly we around two minutes of on-set footage. With the whole thing been topped off with Full Moon features trailer reel.
All in all, it’s great to have finally a tided up and digital remastered of this family fantasy oddity- and the commentary track, and other extras add up to great bonus. So if you enjoy wacked-out 70's-ness, it's certainly worthy of your time