From my main man director Paul Ziller we have
his latest… as of today… SyFy Channel Original 'The
Philadelphia Experiment'. Of all the movies we've seen
here at the FCU, Paul Ziller's films are the most represented
with around thirteen or fourteen of his films littered around
this site. It's not that Mr. Ziller is our favorite film
director or anything like that, just that we tend to eat where
he cooks at, even though we might not find the food all that
tasty most of the time. Nothing but mad love
though. Today's film is a little different however as
this version of 'The Philadelphia Experiment' is among the
best of the Ziller's that we have seen… which some might
translate into meaning it's still not very good, but we're not
mean spirited like that.
hell. After the test, in the middle of
an airstrip in Pennsylvania I think, the USS Eldridge appears
out of nowhere. Odd, considering the Eldridge
disappeared some seventy years ago. There is one
survivor on this ship, the rest of crew fused into the ship,
in Lt. Bill Gardner (Nicolas Lea) who phases off the ship and
runs around town all discombobulated and stuff.
But just as he gets off the ship, super dumb local cop Carl
Reed (John Reardon) touches the glowing, electrified
battleship that appeared out of nowhere and gets sucked
inside. This is relevant because his girlfriend is Super
Hacker Molly Gardner (Emilie Ullerup). You catch
that? Her name is Gardner… The Lieutenant's name is
Gardner… right?
How did this happen? Well Dr. Falkner explains it all in
detail and shockingly it actually makes sense in a fantastical
way. The problem with the Eldridge is that it keeps
materializing from place to place, crushing stuff, emitting
death pulses, killing citizens, and that looks bad for the
Mega Corp that has funded this experiment.
Solution? Kill them all and nuke the rest! To
accomplish this task, the crazy evil Kathryn has dusted off
Michael Pare, a holdover from the 1984 movie, to find Lt.
Gardner, his hacking granddaughter, and some wacky scientist
played by Malcolm McDowell to clean this mess up by shooting
people in the face. It makes very little logical sense
to do this, but we are forced to roll with it.
All of these things are bad, as Dr. Falkner explains because
if the Eldridge doesn't make it back to 1943, the entire time
space fabric continuum will be ripped to shreds and reality
will cease to exist. Or something. And the key to
this is getting Gardner back on the ship. He has
superpowers by the way. Is Kathryn hearing any of
this? Nope, because obviously her bonus / stock option
package is at stake, and that's far more important than saving
the planet Earth.
There are issues of logic that do plague the version of 'The
Philadelphia Experiment' a little, beyond the fact of
battleships materializing out of thin air and landing on
skyscrapers, because we buy into that stuff pretty
easily. The hacking hottie was a bit on an issue,
considering it's a pretty lazy plot device used to make things
slide by much easier, and we were curious what kind of science
Malcolm McDowell's character was developing for the last
seventy years, but still hadn't finished yet. And who
was funding it? But the main issue was the concept of
killing people to cover up something that everyone knows
you're already responsible for. Without getting too much
into the details of it, our 'super hacker' knows who owns the
technology, the government knows since our evil Program
Manager is controlling the F-15 fighter pilots (!) since
everyone knows middle managers have carte blanche over armed
forces fighter jets. And if the two super smart guys who
developed the time space continuum busting cloaking device
tells you that it's important to send the ship back to 1942 to
save the Earth, considering there's no conceivable personal
gain for them if this happens, then maybe we should listen to
them and not shoot them in the face. Plus sending the
ship back to 1942 effectively gets rid of all of the evidence
I'm thinking. But I'm not a murderous middle manager so
what the heck do I know?
But while 'The Philadelphia Experiment' might not be the
brightest bulb in the box, it wasn't too terribly painful to
sit through, despite what I may have said earlier. It
moves along pretty quickly, Nicolas Lea is a veteran at this
kind of thing and was solid as the lead, even though he spent
most of his time in this movie screaming in pain, Gina Holden
is tall and pretty, Emilie Ullerup is not as tall but still
pretty, and the special effects were sparse and a little old
school, but still effective.
It's a SyFy Original, it will have its limitations and
challenges, but most of us who watch this stuff know this
going in. With that as a baseline does 'The Philadelphia
Experiment' rise up far enough to at least make it worth
watching? I think it does.
Super smart scientist Dr. Falkner (Ryan
Robbins) has developed some super duper tech. Kind
of. Actually he's refined the tech that the Navy was
working on back in '42, that being a cloaking device.
Eat that Klingons! He shows off this fancy tech to his
sizzling hot program manager Kathryn Moore (Gina Holden) who
in addition to her wildly inappropriate choice of haberdashery
items, has a set a huge set of blue eyes that never
blink. I think that means she's evil. Also, we
have to send a special shout out to actress, and FCU favorite,
the absolutely lovely Marsha Regis who plays one of the
scientists in yet another SyFy Original. Since she plays
a scientist so often in these movies we think she must be
smart in real life.
Anyway, Dr. Falkner shows off this
tech, it's awesome… just ask him… Kathryn is impressed and the
corporation that has funded this tech will move up in the
ranks of the one percenters. Then it all goes to
