The Day Time Ended

No movie has more scenes of people flipping light switches than THE DAY TIME ENDED, executive producer Charles Band’s (very) low-budget take on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

It also has a lot of driving and slow walking, but precious little of anything resembling action or even anything interesting. It isn’t for lack of ambition — Jim Danforth, David Allen, Greg Jein, and other notable effects artists contribute imaginative visuals, but they don’t have the budget to match their ideas. They also don’t have much of a story to back them up, even though four writers contributed to it.

The Williams family’s first night in their new solar-powered desert house coincides with the appearance on Earth of a rare triple supernova. While dad Chris Mitchum (BIG JAKE) is away on business, mom Marcy Lafferty (KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS), grandparents Jim Davis (DALLAS) and Dorothy Malone (PEYTON PLACE), and kids Scott Kolden (SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS) and Natasha Ryan (THE ENTITY) are awakened by a little green man, glowing lights, and a flying device that can freeze bullets.

Then some prehistoric-looking monsters show up and either fight or mate, I couldn’t tell which. And then a storm whips up and transports the whole house into — I dunno — a time vortex, maybe. The whole movie plays like an eight-year-old boy telling a story. Stuff happens, but nothing happens, if you get my drift. And during all this, the film occasionally cuts away to Mitchum dialing a telephone and trying to buy gas. Riveting.

Aside from a typically sharp score by Richard Band, THE DAY TIME ENDED feels not like a Charles Band production, but one of Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler’s sci-fi cheapies from the same period. Director John "Bud" Cardos, whose previous picture was the much better KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, lucked out in landing a leading man like Jim Davis, in between seasons as Big Jock, who could almost make you believe this bunk. Nothing is explained, we never know where the family ends up, and Band denied us the obvious sequel.