Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Based on others' reviews, I was prepared for something very schlocky. Yes, the acting is hit and miss. The special effects are basic. However, it's not bad at all! I enjoyed it in all its low budgetness. Not having a lot of money for production doesn't always mean a subpar movie. I got a kick out of the ways they compensated during killings, procedures, etc. Each story had its own feel and it was fun seeing some of the same actors playing totally different characters in the different segments. I will probably watch it again and recommend it for anyone who enjoys horror anthologies.

This queer quintet of intended black humor isn't funny in the way the creators apparently envisioned, but funny it is. And, if any of its five tales of the preternatural were a mere one-fourth as good as the intros by John Carradine indicate--well, the viewer could at least stop sighing long enough to allow a slight shiver of trepidation, if not a shudder of laughter. But the only impulse likely to replace the yearn to yawn is indeed the urge to cackle as the sorry scripting and stilted performances grow incredibly worse. The sets and sound quality are reminiscent of early soaps, and a couple of the reoccurring actors carry their early-sixties coifs into nineteenth-century roles. The dialogue at times isn't consistent with the direction, as when one character states that coffee is brewing while pouring it into a cup. (Maybe the director figured that the audience would notice nothing but the busty actress's increasing cleavage!) The accidental humor reaches a crescendo in a Frankensteinesque story in which Lon Chaney Jr. slips into near slapstick as the disjointed dialogue has his mad doctor character babbling like a senile sot. Satire and parody are utterly impossible to achieve when the script for a scene sounds as if it were formulated by two writers, independent of one another. But it does sometimes result in hilarity, as in this film.

Okay, there's one thing about the 80's that I miss. At 4AM, one used to be able to see Grade Z gems like this on TV. Now it's nothing but those rotten Infomercials. You could say that Ted Turner killed film culture, but I would argue that it was Anthony Robbins. In fact, during that golden hour of the day/night, one could see many films unleashed by the maverick no-budget director David L. Hewitt. THE MIGHTY GORGA, WIZARD OF MARS and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME used to tickle many a bad-film lover (or torture an unsuspecting insomniac) who tuned in.This film, which I saw under the title RETURN FROM THE PAST, is a gloriously inept, amazingly miserable cash-in on the then-popular trend of horror anthology movies (in which a few short, separate tales of horrific irony are strung together by an onscreen narrator). All the hallmarks of Hewitt's unmistakable authorship are in abundance here.First, there is the hiring of once-great, "anything for a buck" actors; in this case, John Carradine (naturally) and Lon Chaney Jr, in small roles which nonetheless gave the theater owners a name to put in the marquee. Secondly, Hewitt once again fills the cast with his oddball stock company of dreary, nasal-sounding "actors" (who is this Roger Gentry, anyway?). As well, the director's sterling use of half-finished sets, or plain black backgrounds (when there were none at all!) is such a feat that would even make Ed Wood blush if he worked under such insane conditions. Add to this, the surprisingly ambitious writing (for bargain-basement cinema, anyway) which paradoxes the miserable attempts at mise en scene. For such a bottom-of-the-barrel project as a Dave Hewitt film, one wonders why he bothered with such an adventurous screenplay (like WIZARD OF MARS or JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME, especially), when the insultingly bad production values would work against the ambition of the writing anyway. Thus, therein lies the strange dichotomy of Hewitt's work as a director. With a thrift-store budget, he really tried to make something out of nothing. Who can blame him if he didn't succeed?Add some haphazard dubbing, some great juvenile cartoon blood dripping on the screen, and you have a truly beguiling piece of work. Anyone who insists on making tired, threadbare projects like this has to get a medal for bravery alone.

Look, I'll be brief. If you have ANY taste for the so-bad-they're-great classics (Plan 9, Robot Monster, Brain That Wouldn't Die), hunt down a copy of this, the most overlooked member of the club. Amazingly, this was put out in letterboxed form; but anyway you can find it, WATCH THIS MOVIE. It is fantastic