1204-The Day Time Ended

Film Year:  1980

Genre:  Science Fiction

Director:  John Cardos

Starring:  Jim Davis (creator of Garfield?), Dorothy Malone, Christopher Mitchum, Scott Kolden, Marcy Lafferty, Natasha Ryan

MST Season:  12

The Movie

From Charles Band, producer of the Puppet Master franchise and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan favorite Laserblast, and John Cardos, director of another MST fan favorite Outlaw (as well as Rifftrax features Kingdom of the Spiders and Mutant), comes this odd little sci-fi movie about a family residing in a farm out in the middle of nowhere, that stumbles upon a glowing green object behind the house.  Strange occurrences then begin to happen on the property, as aliens both small and large start appearing and flashing lights surround the house.  The family soon deduces they have been transported thousands of years into the future into a world unknown.

There is a low budget indie movie called Timetrap from a few years ago that I watched recently that works with a similar premise to The Day Time Ended, featuring a group of kids who go spelunking in a cave and discovering that time passes much faster within it.  The journey is fairly similar to this film though Timetrap kept things a bit simpler and was more straightforward than The Day Time Ended.  What was going on in Timetrap could easily be deduced by paying attention to the film, while The Day Time Ended just throws items at the viewer without ever really giving any of them meaning.  The stop-motion aliens and special effects in The Day Time Ended are fun, but at it's heart they're pretty random things that just wind up showing up, though events in Timetrap served a purpose to the story.  The Day Time Ended has a good story, it just doesn't have a plot.

Because of this, The Day Time Ended comes off as events to provoke a reaction.  Something weird happens, the family reacts.  Then the next weird thing happens.  To an extent it's kind of charming to see weird happenings that aren't easily explained from the eyes of people who can't conceive of them, only wishing to dodge them and get out with their loved ones safely.  It only becomes a real issue when the movie finds itself without an actual direction.  As we get to the end, the movie gives up on a climax of any kind and characters just "feel" that it's over, walking to a futuristic city in the landscape.  It's the anticlimax that eats away at me in this movie.  I feel the movie wants to make me believe their journey is just beginning, but at the same time, I feel cheated out of an ending.

The Episode

"Close Encounters of the Turd Kind!"

When the episodes of the Gauntlet were first announced, The Day Time Ended was the one that excited me the most.  It seemed like an old-school movie choice with a wacky premise and it felt like something they could really work with.  Ultimately, the episode wound up being one of the weaker episodes of the season, wasting a high concept 80's genre pic with lackluster commentary, similar to Being from Another Planet from the fourth season.  This episode has a few laughs (I love the line "Let me check my Tamagotchi.  Yep, still dead." at any rate), but ultimately the movie's lack of narrative coherence makes the jabs feel like wild stabs than precision work.  There are some fun moment with the aliens, especially a little one that reminds them of either a nude Cillian Murphy or Mr. Hankey from South Park.  There are also quips that are more clever than funny like the rescue attempt on a little girl's doll with "How ironic, the chance to prove that I am a man has to do with a little doll."  There is some worthy stuff here, but while the movie is fun to watch, it's too all over the place to take aim at.

This is also the inspiration for one of the more memorable host segments of the episode, where Jonah and the Bots put on a musical number about screenplays that just throw "Concepts" into it rather than a story.  It has a fun beat and a cool vaudevillian vibe, and the cast is having a blast (and I like Kinga's little hat).  Other segments are barely there, with Jonah and the Bots acting like rugged outdoorsy guys and Jonah trying to hide his escape plan from a nosey Max.  The Invention Exchange features the cute Fortune Meals (including Jonah's last words and a lot of Friends reruns) and Spray-On Mustard Gas for Max's TUBE MEAT!

But the big moment of the episode happens at the very end, as the great J. Elvis Weinstein drops by, reprising his role as Dr. Lawrence Erhardt for the first time in twenty-eight years!  Turns out when he went missing all those years ago, he just went on a journey of self discovery.  Here he is abiding by the final wishes of Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank and taking their ashes across the stars, he just needs their favorite song from Kinga, Idiot Control Now (from Pod People).  I love seeing Dr. Erhardt again, and it's cool to finally conclude his story.  I'm not too crazy about the inclusion of Dr. F and Frank in the segment, not only because it feels like the series closing hope on Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff ever returning to the show (which they probably won't, but I can dream) but the whole Idiot Control Now angle is random and gets very silly.  That being said, the return of an original Mad mostly agrees with me.

The return of Dr. Erhardt is really the only reason I remember this episode at all, as the rest of the episode just limps out with a movie that's all over the place and middling commentary.  The Day Time Ended is pretty okay, but there isn't anything to recommend it on either.  And off the back of the previous episode, the mid-portion of the Gauntlet really sags.  Maybe six movies in a row CAN drive a man insane.

Average

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Shout Factory released this episode on their Season 12 box set on both DVD and blu-ray.  My edition was a reward for donating to the season 12 pledge drive, dubbed the Pledge Drive Edition with a bonus disc.  The Day Time Ended features no extras, but the episode shares a disc with the previous episode, Lords of the Deep.