Journey to the Beginning of Time

MOVIE #1,957 • SCORE 7/10 • 09.11.24
SERIES: MY KAIJU DECADE

The central idea behind this dubbed Czechoslovak film isn't even considered enough to be called half-baked: four boys leave “New York City” by boat and are almost instantly transported back in time to stop-motion dinosaur world.

Of course this is because the movie I watched was the repurposed US release which filmed new footage to bookend the picture at the Museum of Natural History in NY (these boys were shot entirely from the back because they're different actors then the children whose voices were subsequently dubbed, duh). That being said, this is kind of a wonderful document featuring spectacular color stop-motion. The kids travel continuously backwards through time, encountering wooly mammoths, cavemen and eventually the dinos. Look at these guys…



The movie is packaged as an educational film with factoids about the different eras and animals…


There's also some 2D animation, stock footage, puppets, miniature and large-scale models, matte paintings and other wonderful tricks in the mix and the whole movie is really quaint and delightful…






There's still twenty minutes left when they reach the point in history BEFORE the emergence of the giant lizards and it takes a religious left turn at the 11th hour, but it's still a worthwhile watch.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,956 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,958 ⫸

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Journey to the Beginning of Time (Czech: Cesta do pravěku, literally "Journey into prehistory") is a 1955 Czechoslovak science fiction adventure directed by Karel Zeman. Produced in color using a combination of 2-D and 3-D models, the film uses a documentary style to show extinct animal species behaving naturally in their own environments. It was the first of Zeman's productions to include actors in conjunction with stop-motion and special effects. It won awards at the International Film Festivals of Venice and Mannheim. In 1966, Cesta do pravěku was dubbed into English and partly re-filmed, creating the US version, Journey to the Beginning of Time. It was released on August 5, 1955.