ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Originally filmed in Czechoslovakia in 1954, the American Museum of Natural History filmed new scenes in 1967 for this remarkable study of prehistoric life using high-quality stop motion animation.

A group of young boys rent a boat at an inner-city park and enter a small cave. When they come out the other side of the cave they find themselves on a river in an uninhabited area. As they float down the river, they travel progressively further into the past, encountering wooly mammoths, prehistoric rhinoceros, and then dinosaurs -- all of which are extremely well animated, photographed, and matted.





This rare and amazing film was written and directed by Karl Zeman, the man who brought us The Fabulous World of Jules Verne.

During the 1960s, "Journey to the Beginning of Time" was shown in serialized form on television in some areas, amazing animation fans with this unexpected treat.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Butch sent me the url for a trailer on Youtube!

__ Journey to the beginning of time (1955) Trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Zackuth]

Growing up in the Chicago area, the serialized version was shown on Garfield Goose and Friends once a year. I couldn't wait for it to come on. I found the full version a few years ago and got two, one for me and one for my brother.

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's a copy with a good picture, but the audio is missing during the opening credits.
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____________ Journey to the Beginning of Time


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Nice box art for the VHS tape . . . except that I would have painted the boys watching the dinosaur battle going on right in front of them.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[trekriffic]

This reminds me of the Primeval World ride at Disneyland which I saw as a youngster. Instead of a boat you rode in the train that circled the park before going into the cavern. I loved dinosaurs, in particular the T-Rex, and the final scene of the Rex and Stegosaurus facing off while surrounded by lava flows just blew me away with excitement and wonder. The Family Goodtimes Theatre poster above reminds me very much of the scene depicted on the ride.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 8 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text.
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~ Most of the prehistoric animal reconstructions have been modeled after the artwork of renowned Czech painter Zdenek Burian. This is perhaps most apparent on the Brontosaurus, which is standing in almost the exact same pose as in Burian's famous piece and has the exact same detailing on its body. Strangely, the prominently-featured Stegosaurus and Ceratosaurus were not based on Burian's art, even though he has painted both animals, including the promotional paintings for this very film.

Note from me:Here's examples of Zdenek Burian's dinosaurs paintings.





I'm not all that impressed with the pictures above, but the two below are terrific!


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~ The serialized version of this movie was shown on television children shows. The most famous being Garfield Goose and Friends (1952) would often show this version during its run in five minute increments. This was the version that began with the boys in the USA.

Note from me: This serialized version was also shown by an Atlanta TV station in the 1960s, and I discovered them one morning before going to school! As a life-long fan of stop motion, I was stunned and delighted.

I watched them each day until the completion of the serialized version, but I didn't find what they were from until much later.

~ At the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague, Czech Republic, there you can see how the FX were created and see some of the props used in this movie.

Note from me: We can only hope that somebody as done a professional photo study of the exhibit and we'll get to see it someday.

~ The US release version features newly-shot opening and closing sequences that were filmed at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Four New York boys were cast because they vaguely resembled the Czech boys who starred in the original foreign version.

Note from me: This, I think, is the serialized version I saw each morning in the 1960s.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[DonM435]

[Pow]

I enjoyed watching the stop-motion animation in this film. The movie poster at the top of this page is terrific looking.

[Pow]

Wikipedia.

Released on August 5, 1955.

Filmed on the Morava River near Bzenec Town, Czech Republic. The Slovak River.

Winner of awards at the Film Festivals of Venice and Mannheim.

The plot shares similarities with the 1915 novel Plutonia written by paleontologist Vladimir Obruches.

In the novel, a team of Russian explorers enter the Earth's crust via an enormous Arctic portal created by a massive asteroid millions of years ago. Numerous dinosaurs entered this depression. The explorers follow a river that leads them through sequences of past geological eras.

Stop-motion scenes are nine minutes & forty-three seconds.

[Bud Brewster]

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The premise of Plutonia seems a bit unrealistic.

An Arctic opening, created by a massive asteroid millions of years ago, somehow acquires dinosaurs who wander in and set up housekeeping . . . somewhere beneath the surface.

And then "the explorers follow a river that leads them through sequences of past geological eras."

The Czechoslovakian film doesn't try to explain how the river which the boys travel down manages to carry them into the past — thereby proving that "no explanation" is actually better than a "bad explanation".
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)