Roger Ebert: [reviewing "The Philadelphia Experiment"] Time warp movies always confuse me, because I'm sitting there thinking, if she's 41 years in his future and then if he goes back in time, what does he do? Grow old and wait for her and then come along and say "Would you mind marrying a man that's 41 years older than you are? We used to be contemporaries." Or if she goes back in time with him, does that mean that she was never born in the first place? Questions like that are just a little too subtle for "The Philadelphia Experiment", which turns Paré into a human cannonball and catapults him into the middle of the time vortex, hoping that he can find the missing battleship somewhere in the middle of hyperspace, turn off the generators, and stop that 1943 experiment. And of course, since this is 1984, we know that he DID. This movie does a little time traveling of its own. It feels exactly like a low budget 1953 science fiction movie that fell into a vortex at the box office and turned up years later, out of date and very confused. The movie is saying, "What year is this? Who won the Oscar?"
Gene Siskel: "How are movies made?" That's what the director is saying.
[Roger laughs]
Gene Siskel: "How do you make a good movie?"
Roger Ebert: This is amazing.
Gene Siskel: It is a shockingly bad film, and let's start right at the beginning. I mean, I was laughing when this happened: The experiment goes wrong, right, within the context of the movie, because the ship disappears. They're only trying to make it invisible to the German radar. Why doesn't somebody immediately say: "Hey, we've got a fabulous weapon here! We can make our ships disappear! Let's aim it at the German ships!"
Roger Ebert: And make all THEIR ships disappear!
Gene Siskel: The war's over!
Roger Ebert: Okay, I'll give you my favorite moment: The guy is standing on the deck of the battleship in the middle of the time vortex, right?
Gene Siskel: Right.
Roger Ebert: He turned off the generators, you've got all of this electricity going around. He takes off the helmet of his space suit, throws it away, and then says "I'm going back to meet that girl." And he jumps back into the vortex. Now, if I was gonna jump back into the vortex, I think I'd leave my helmet on.
[both laugh]
Gene Siskel: And then, the reaction shot of the two horses. In the sta- during a love scene.
Roger Ebert: A boy and a girl kiss, and the two horses go:
[turns head]
Roger Ebert: "Mmmm."
Gene Siskel: Horrible film. A cult possibility.
