The Philadelphia Experiment
Short description
The Philadelphia Experiment is a 1984 science fiction adventure set during the Second World War, when the United States Navy tests equipment meant to make its warships invisible to enemy radar. During one trial aboard a destroyer escort in Philadelphia, the experiment goes wrong and two sailors, David Herdeg and Jim Parker, are thrown roughly four decades forward into 1984. Stranded in a world they do not recognise, the two men attract the attention of the authorities, while the scientist behind the original test believes the rift in time can still be closed. The story draws on the long-running legend that such an experiment really took place in 1943.
Stewart Raffill directed the film, which sits between The Adventures of the Wilderness Family and The Ice Pirates in his filmography. William Gray and Michael Janover wrote the screenplay, and Joel B. Michaels and Douglas Curtis produced it for New World Pictures and Cinema Group Ventures. Michael Paré plays David, with Bobby Di Cicco as Jim, Nancy Allen as Allison Hayes, Eric Christmas as Dr. James Longstreet and Kene Holliday as Major Clark among a credited cast of 53.
Made for about 21 million dollars, the film took in roughly 8 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.1 out of 10 from around 18,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.1 from just under 500 votes, while a critics' rating of 5.1 from 10 reviews is lower than both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film was released in Soviet distribution under the title "Secret Experiment".
- The filming of the building destruction was organized in one of the cities in the state of Utah. The city administration needed funds to build a new sewage system, so director Stuart Raffill bought an entire block of old, abandoned buildings and allowed his crew to blow them up on camera.
- The film was created without any support from the US Navy, as the Navy did not want to be associated with the supposedly real events of the "Philadelphia Experiment".
- It is commonly believed that the film is based on a real experiment involving the use of force fields to achieve invisibility, which was conducted in the 1940s and ended in failure. However, according to known facts, no such experiments were ever carried out, and the whole story is allegedly attributed to the eccentric Carl Allen, who informed the US government in the 1950s about his "experiment," news of which leaked to the press. Despite the complete lack of evidence to support this, the story has become an urban legend and is very popular among conspiracy theory enthusiasts, who claim that the absence of evidence is the best proof of a carefully planned and executed cover-up operation.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
