Cheap Philadelphia Experiment: Has Time Travel Been Discovered? (Video) (Michael Paré, Nancy Allen) (Stewart Raffill) Price

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Customer Reviews of Philadelphia Experiment: Has Time Travel Been Discovered?

An Experiment in Good Film Making
THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT is a pretty good, solid piece of B-Movie sci fi. Loosely based on actual events during World War II, the U.S. government tests a naval battleship to see if it can disappear from radar by using high powered electromagentic energy. The writers, producer (John Carpenter i.e. HALLOWEEN), and director, have used these events to create an entertaining time travel story in which during the experiment, two of the crewmen are transported through time to 1984 and must find their way back. At the same time, the experiment in 1943 is affecting a similar experiment in 1984 Nevada conducted by the same scientist, Dr. James Longstreet, (Eric Christams as the elder Dr. Longstreet in 1984 Nevada, and Miles McNamara as the young Dr. Longstreet in 1943 Philadelphia) creating a vortex and distruption in the space/time continuim. There are characters you care about, decent if not conventional time travel plot devices, just the right amount of special effects, the usual government personnel chasing the innocent time travel victim(s), and a love story thrown in for good measure. Michael Pare shows some pretty good emotional depth as David Herdeg, one of the crewmen sent into the future and he and Nancy Allen as Allison Hayes have pretty good onscreen chemistry. Bobby Di Cicco has a great supporting role as the other crewmen sent along with Micheal Pare. He practically reprises a role he played in the Steven Speilberg WWII comedy film "1941" as he uses the dancing skills he learned during the filming of that movie and uses it in the opening scenes of 'EXPERIMENT (Perhaps it was an in-joke?). Overall, an entertaining sci fi, time travel film that delivers.
Movie should be noteworthy because released the same year he produced this movie, John Carpenter wrote and directed STARMAN with almost the same kind of pathos and romance/road trip film. Instead of a a man far from his time period (PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT), we have an extraterrestial far from home (STARMAN).

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Excellent B Movie
I remember seeing this movie for the first time when I was about 9. It certainly piqued my interest in the paranormal, but at the time, I was unaware that the movie was based on alleged experiments by the US Navy. It's a B-sci fi movie complete with silly exaggerations, decent special effects, general cheesiness and the inevitable romance that ensues - in this case between a skeptical Nancy Allen and a confused Michael Pare. This movie is not to be taken very seriously.

If you are looking for mindless entertaiment, this is an excellent movie to satisfy your craving. It may even spark an interest in reading further about the allegedly real Philadelphia Experiment.

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A nice little twisted time travel tale (that is not true)
"The Philadelphia Experiment" is supposedly the about an experiment the U.S. Navy conducted in 1943 to make the U.S.S. "Eldridge" invisible to radar. However, the experiment goes (surprise) horribly wrong and the ship is contaminated with a deadly dose of radiation. Two of the sailors, David Herdeg (Michael Paré) and Jim Parker (Bobby Di Cicco), jump overboard as their crewmates are catching on fire and getting trapped in bulkheads and end up traveling through a rift in time to 1984 (i.e., the present in terms of that being the year this movie was made). One of them gets sent back but the other does not and not only are the authorities after him but it seems that pesky hole in time is wrecking havoc with the climate (not as bad as "The Day After Tomorrow," but serious enough).

This is a fun little B-movie that most science fiction fans can enjoy as long as they do not take it too seriously. The reason it is considered to be based on a "true" story is that it is based on a 1979 "non-fiction" book that claimed the Navy was fooling around with Einstein's Unified Field Theory and sent the "Eldridge" from Philadelphia to the harbor in Norfolk, Virginia, and then back again. The story is based on some dubious evidence and apparently since the U.S.S. "Eldridge" never ever docked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard the title appears to be suspect as well. The Navy has offered an official explanation that what happened was a routine degaussing of the ship, which meant it was surrounded with electrical cables to negate the magnetic field (the idea is that it would render the ship invisible to radar but not to human eyes). Of course to some people this explanation just screams cover up.

Ultimately this film is not concerned with the "science" of the so-called experiment because that is all just an excuse for a more traditional time travel story and within that genre there are few interesting things going on here. There are some fun moments as Herdeg encounters the brave new world (Orwell's "1984" did not come out until 1948, so he does not know that the future is brighter than people had thought in the 1940s). Herdeg hooks up with an airhead, Allison Hayes (Nancy Allen), who eventually comes to believe that he is not lying about when he is from and tries to help him get back home. It is just as well because there is really no chemistry between these two. After "Eddie & the Cruisers" and "Streets of Fire" we all thought Paré was going to have a career, but this film seems to have derailed it. Come to think of it the same can be said for Allen, outside of the "Robocop" movies.

The special effects are rather simplistic, but quite effective for the time. They were certainly good enough to lure more than a few people into seeing this film from director Stewart Raffill ("The Ice Pirates," "Mac and Me"). Plus you have the standard lesson than there are some things scientists should not be messing around with otherwise a wormhole will destroy the world as we know it, which was not really an omnipresent science fiction plot line at that point (CGI made destroying the planet much more fun). There is a 1993 sequel to this film, but try to forget about it because it belongs on everyone's short list of worst science fiction sequels ever. This one at least gives you some things to think about, not all of which are about how to poke holes in the story.