The Philadelphia Experiment

This Stewart Raffill-helmed sci-fi snooze is based on a true hoax, or rather an urban legend known as the Philadelphia Experiment. The mythos held that the USS Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer escort ship, was rendered invisible by a cloaking device in 1943. The film imagines two Navy sailors aboard the USS Eldridge during the fateful day when the top secret scientific experiment went terribly wrong. David Herdeg (Michael Paré) and Jim Parker (Bobby Di Cicco) are thrown forward in time from 1943 to 1984, where the scientist behind the first experiment is trying again. The two men attempt to survive the future and race against time to end the experiment that threatens the fate of the entire world. Along the way, they take a hostage played by the great Nancy Allen.

The film is based very loosely on the book by UFOlogist William L. Moore and paranormal phenomena chronicler Charles Berlitz, founder of the Berlitz Language Schools. These two also wrote The Roswell Incident, which popularized the belief that unusual debris recovered in 1947 by Roswell Army Air Field personnel was a government cover-up of an alien spaceship landing. John Carpenter wrote an original screenplay, calling the book a "great shaggy dog story. Absolute crap, but what a great story. While I was writing it, I couldn't figure out the third act. A friend suggested the revenge of the crew against the people who put them there, but I thought it was too much like The Fog."Wilderness adventure film director Stewart Raffill claimed that the script had been rewritten nine times by the point he became involved with the film, and they still hadn't gotten it right. This is a true statement. The movie could have been perfectly watchable if the two male leads had the screen presence of their female co-star. But Paré, who also stars in the same year's overwrought Walter Hill/Larry Gross "musical fable" Streets of Fire, just never lights up the screen, and Di Cicco barely registers. Nancy Allen isn't given nearly enough to do. With just a little better character work, a decent love scene in a movie horse trailer, and special effects that are at least on par with Raffill's other '84 picture, The Ice Pirates, The Philadelphia Experiment would easily be at least a two-star film. But as is, it barely qualifies as a Saturday afternoon TV movie.