d-millhoff A clever, if implausible, premise with some trite dialog and an abundance of plot holes and goofs - not to mention numerous bad guesses on future technologies. You definitely have to suspend disbelief here, but the storytelling is good enough this isn't a huge issue.Some impressive production design and miniature effects foreshadows Gerry Anderson's later cult classic series 'Space: 1999'.Special effects hold up quite well - this movie looks better than many CGI-riddled features made decades later.And the climactic destruction of the launch complex is spectacular - miniature effects involving smoke, liquids and fire tend to suffer, it's even distractingly noticeable in Titanic, and troublesome enough that Terry Gilliam doesn't even attempt realism in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But the explosions in this movie definitely don't look like miniatures, they're utterly convincing, comparable to footage I've seen of propane facilities and oil fields blowing up. The miniatures must have been quite large, and I can't imagine how they could have kept this under control in a closed indoor set. A jaw-dropping technical achievement.

inspectors71 KHQ isn't showing Carson reruns. Instead they show old movies (where I saw Mirage, Sink the Bismarck, and The Truth about Spring). Because in junior high and high school I had no life--and I loved to wriggle out of going to Mass on Sunday morning--I would watch the old flick on the weekend.Tonight's offering is Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a production of dubious quality because of its origin, ITV or ITC or some British studio that gave us the syndicated series UFO and Space: 1999. Although those series were idiotic, JTTFSOTS (try writing that three times fast!) was just confusing, frustrating, and dull. The premise was great--there is a mirror image Earth on the other side of ol' Sol, and we send a mission (we being the European Space Command or something) to investigate--and the high concept held the viewer captive for a good part of the movie.Unfortunately, as I remember, the whole thing starts to creak and dreer its way toward a cop-out non-climax. I vaguely remember how the sound and special effects and Roy Thinnes' non-acting all dragged on the thing to an unsatisfying conclusion. I remember watching it on video tape in the 80s, and I know it hadn't improved with age. Some movies have a camp value that sustains them past their best-used-by date, but I recall that the movie just curdled.And yet, I generally have a positive feeling about the movie because I loved watching old flicks late in the evening, alone and quiet, sometimes in the family room, back in the early 70s.And then the National Anthem and a test pattern.

flingebunt Do I like this movie or not? Here is a special effects movie full of futurist sets, futuristic cars, futurist security and of course space ships. The story talks about a planet found on the far side of the sun in the same orbit as Earth. So of course we get to sit through a lot of meetings and international politics and other boring stuff that would make George Lucas proud. Then all that futuristic technology is mostly stuff that wouldn't be out of place in the 1960s, with endless tape reel computers and flashing lights. No objection to the fact that the girls only wear mini-skirts.So anyway, they go to the far side of the sun and come back, but something is wrong, and so we get the actual plot. It is great to know that in every era there were movies with pointless high budget special effects that had no impact on the story.

bmears-1 You know those films you see as a child, the ones that stick in your memory and really make an impression, the kind of movie that when you watch it again, years later, all the original thrill and magic suddenly comes rushing back to you? This movie isn't one of those.OK, that might have been a little harsh. 'Journey to the Far Side of the Sun' certainly DID make an impression on my when I first watched it as a child, on television back in the early 1970's. The idea was--and still is--intriguing: that an Earthlike world lies on the far side of the sun, traveling in the same orbit as our world, forever hidden from our sight. And the convention of this film, that this other world is the mirror-image of ours, and possesses a double for each person here, is quite a thought-provoking notion. I'm sure that this idea really captured my imagination back when I first watched 'Doppelganger' so many years ago.But the problem with this film, is that it is sooo slow and tedious; it takes soooo long for the astronauts to get to the other world; and when we do finally discover that the other Earth is a mirror-twin of our own, not very much is really done with it. Of course, that's my feeling today as an adult viewer, after many years of watching more modern science fiction films. As a boy, I suppose I was more of a blank page, and sadly, perhaps, more willing to appreciate a film purely for its intellectual virtues. I also think the detailed minutia of spaceflight depicted in the film was probably much more interesting to viewers of that time; as a modern viewer, all I could think was "Please--just get ON with the story!" All that being said, 'Doppelganger' does have some redeeming features. The basic premise of an exact mirror-image Earth is a clever one. Many of the technical details of the future society were pretty insightful--and the model miniatures were quite nicely done, given what had to be the film's limited budget. And, certainly, as another reviewer has said, the sad and downbeat ending does actually give the film an emotional jolt, and is probably the main reason it made such an impression on me as a child. The final scene, in particular, where a broken Patrick Wymark deliberately rams his wheelchair into his reflection in the mirror, still has a haunting quality to it.But when I think of 'Journey to the Far Side of the Sun', I can't help but compare it to an episode of The Twilight Zone, called "The Parallel." That episode shows us an astronaut who returns to an Earth that's slightly different than the one he left; and rather than the idea of an reversed, mirror world, uses the idea of an alternate reality where events and history are slightly different. Although it's not one of the better Twilight Zone episodes, I think, it still carries more emotional power for me than Doppelganger, because it carries less extraneous cinematic baggage. You quickly get the concept, the story, and the protagonist's situation--and that's all.So, all in all, watching 'Doppelganger' again (through Neflix) did bring back some of the same feelings of wonder it originally inspired in me as a boy, but if you're a first-time viewer, be warned that it's tone and pacing is much slower than most modern science fiction films.