Journey to the Center of Time

Plot

Stanton (Scott Brady) has taken charge of a research company following the death of his father. His employees are scientists Mark Manning (Anthony Eisley), "Doc" Gordon (Abraham Sofaer), and Karen White (Gigi Perreau). Unless they prove that their time travel experiments can produce some results, their funding will be cut off.

Desperate, they push their operating equipment past the level of safety and travel 5000 years into the future. There, they encounter aliens led by Vina (Poupée Gamin) who are looking for a planet to colonize. The aliens find no welcome on Earth, which is in the midst of a global war that threatens the human race. She urges them to go back and warn humanity about the danger, then dies in a human attack. The time travelers retreat to their chamber and head back. On the way, they detect another time machine on a collision course. Manning tries to communicate with them; when that fails, they fire at it, but their weapon is too weak. Stanton takes charge, boosts the power and destroys the other vessel.

However, they overshoot the present and end up in the distant past, in the age of dinosaurs. Their giant ruby, a key component of the machine, is destroyed, leaving them stranded. When they explore a nearby cave, they find it studded with all sorts of jewels, including rubies. Overcome by greed, Stanton grabs handfuls of the precious gems, returns to the time machine, replaces the ruby and takes off without the scientists. However, on his return trip, he encounters another time travelling machine on a collision course. As he hears a radio broadcast from Manning, Stanton realizes with horror that he is racing towards the earlier version of the time machine. Then he is destroyed by the blast initiated by his earlier self.

Meanwhile, as the scientists leave the cave, Gordon stumbles and falls to his death in molten lava. Mark and Karen find the time machine gone; then it mysteriously reappears. They board it and return to the past, but arrive the day before their initial departure; as a result, they find themselves in a parallel dimension, witnessing their past selves living at a much slower time rate. Knowing that the simultaneous presence of their past and current selves in the same timeline could fatally disrupt the time-space continuum, Mark and Karen hasten back to the time machine to rectify the problem, ending up hopelessly lost in time and space. In the final scene, the machine, with the two scientists on board, is shown drifting among the stars towards an unknown fate.