Childhood movie memory

April 17, 2008 1:38 PM

A childhood memory of two science fiction films has been nagging me lately. I have just a little to go on...

Movie One: is in colour, probably mid-sixties. The plot involves a "mirror image" of the Earth, orbiting 180 degrees from us, so on the other side of the Sun. Some astronauts from Earth discover it and land there. Everything's the same as our (future) world, but flipped left-to-right (they shot on the same sets and simply printed the film "flipped"). The "other Earth" may have been called Nemesis.

Movie Two: is in B&W, probably early sixties or very late fifties. There's something of a thriller aspect to this one. I recall a man sneaking into and office look at some files. Later, he goes into a darkroom in his apartment (office?) and removes one of his eye balls: it's a camera, concealed in a glass eye. He develops the pictures of the documents that he's snapped with his fancy eye.

Both are probably American productions.

I saw them on television, of course.

I will continue to function as an adult and a human being if I don't find out what these films are, but I'd really like to scratch this mental itch.

posted by I, Credulous to media & arts (11 comments total)

The first one sounds like Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.
posted by amyms at 1:40 PM on April 17, 2008

Oops, the official title of the movie above is Doppelganger.
posted by amyms at 1:41 PM on April 17, 2008

bingo!

the second comment (spoiler alert!) suggests that both of my movie memories are from the same film.
Strange. I'd thought that eyeball guy was in B&W...

And I'm not surprised this came from Gerry Anderson...

thank you very much.
posted by I, Credulous at 1:45 PM on April 17, 2008

jeezus! I thought I'd flip over to amazon to pick it up for nostalgia's sake:

Amazon.com, minimum price for the DVD is US$50...
Amazon.ca, minimum price is C$165 (and going up to C$225!)

no notation that it's out of print.

wow. bummer.
posted by I, Credulous at 1:50 PM on April 17, 2008

I, Credulous, if you have an American friend with Netflix, they have it.
posted by MasonDixon at 1:58 PM on April 17, 2008

thanks for the suggestion!
posted by I, Credulous at 2:02 PM on April 17, 2008

or, Turner Movie Classics is apparently about to re-issue it:

http://turnerclassic.moviesunlimited.com/product.asp?sku=D12394++
posted by I, Credulous at 2:15 PM on April 17, 2008

Or, if you don't trust Americans these days, Zip.ca has it...
posted by Naberius at 2:37 PM on April 17, 2008

Or, if you are nifty with a BitTorrent client, it looks like you could snatch it from here:
posted by SimonSays at 3:16 PM on April 17, 2008

doh - click here for link (click on small arrow icon right side of green box to download torrent).
posted by SimonSays at 3:20 PM on April 17, 2008

Just downloaded it and watched a little of it from SimonSays' link. I haven't seen it in thirty years but it still looks pretty cool. The mod-sixties decor and clothes has gone from being futuristic to retro-cool and most of the special effects hold up pretty well. The music a little over the top though. Thanks for reminding me of this movie, Cred.
posted by octothorpe at 3:55 PM on April 18, 2008