zumo-16908 Contrary to other reviews here, I would say that this film is vastly over rated given its current IMDb score.When I read the IMDb description, I could imagine so many interesting ways such a plot concept could unfold, and I was excited to watch this film. But the plot adoption is very, very thin and just straight out disappointing. A good amount of time is spend on the characters, but it never gets to any kind of depth or reveals any kind of relation to the plot at all. There seems to be little point in showing us most things they do actually. I am not even sure if there is a point anywhere in this film at all.It is very obvious that the film tries to mimic the tranquil space/tech scenes of 2001 that came out just months before it, but it completely misses the point of how and why those scenes are used. In Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, mundane and completely irrelevant scenes are dragged out to the point where concentration and interest vanishes completely. Half way through the film, I was very close to switching it off or go watch something else due to boredom. Even a lot of the effects are quite obviously copied from 2001, but also very poorly so. Even if you skip the obvious 2001 comparison, the effects are still rather unimpressive even for their time. There are films from the 50s with more convincing miniature model scenes for instance. The soundtrack is nothing worth writing about either.If I had watched it as a child, I could probably have ignored its many short comings and liked it due to the sci-fi setting of the film. As an adult I find it hard to recommend it though. There are some interesting props and beautiful 60s fashion, but that is about the only good thing I have to say besides the awesome plot idea (that is very poorly executed).

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.

sol- 'Journey to the Far Side of the Sun' or 'Doppelgänger' as it is sometimes known, the latter title arguably gives away too much of the film's plot, but this is an intriguing little film either way. The plot involves scientists discovering a planet ostensibly identical to Earth and in the same orbit, just obscured on the "far side of the sun"; some twists and turns result when two astronauts are sent there. The film's big revelation about the planet provides more questions than answers and the space race thriller elements of the film's first quarter of an hour feel out of place with the overall meditative tone of the motion picture, but 'Journey to the Far Side of the Sun' is always engaging to view and very competently made. The film's futurist sets are among its best assets. There is nothing ostentatious with all furniture and room designs coming across as logical and practical. There is also a nifty prosthetic eyeball camera gadget and the rarely seen newfangled cars are remarkable too. Some have commented that the film would have worked better as a 'Twilight Zone' episode or more compact short film, which may well be true, however, the fact that the second half of the film is not rushed or paced like a fast action thriller works to its advantage. The film fully basks in the protagonist's confusion and uneasiness upon encountering the planet and as such it becomes a testament to the mysterious of outer space and all the wonders it beholds, not unlike Tarkovsky's 'Solaris'. Yes, the plot may be scientifically improbable, but if not dissected too deeply, it makes for a worthwhile experience.

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.