This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

A piece of advice:avoid at all costs this piece of garbage and do pickthe wonderful "journey to the center of the earth" starring James Mason and featuring Bernard Hermann's impressive score (1959).This version is abysmal :the only real actor in it is Kenneth Moore and he acts as if he does not care :he seems to be wondering why he got involved in that business;the others' playing is amateurish,particularly the young lovers .The guide keeps on counting the sheep and (innovation) he can speak with the others!The special effects are cheap :cardboard set and cardboard characters .Probably made to capitalize on the success of "the land that time forgot" .Jules Verne must be turning in his grave!

This movie really takes me back as I remember seeing it as a not-so-wee lad of roughly ten or eleven or twelve(with age my memory has become increasingly hazy). It must have made a rather strong imprint on me as I remembered its title, Kenneth More, and the beginning and closing scenes involved with a man selling books. I knew I liked the film a lot and so sought it out and viewed it again - thirty years or so later. Well, the film was much better for an adolescent me than a more cynical, less-fun me. Though to be fair, I did enjoy watching this again and many scenes came to me as I watched. I had totally forgotten that it was a Spanish production and assumed it was English because of More. No way Jose. This is all Spanish EXCEPT for More. The sets, the acting, the costumes, and even many of the special effects are much better than you might think; however. Kenneth More really helps lend this film credibility as he was a very good actor with an ease about him. He seems very comfortable in the role of Professor Lindenbrock. I don't know any of the other thespians, but none of the actors is less than average for this kind of film. The movie is based on Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and does meander quite a bit away from the source material. We get some strange creatures, a sophomoric love between Lindenbrock's niece and her Prussian lover, and we get Olsen. Olsen is an inexplicable character and makes the plot of this film really stretch. Unfortunately for me, it stretched too far and snapped! What is with the box? How about that scene in the land of the fake King Kong "monster" that had us looking at some little alien-like village with cloned versions of Olsen? We never hear anything about it again. What was the director trying to achieve here? More importantly the screenwriter? Putting these unanswerable queries aside, I still will have a soft spot in my heart and memory for this film. It did awaken an interest in Verne for me. Where Time Began(the title by which I always knew it) is a fun, very flawed film with adventure and little else.

"Where Time Began" is an adaptation of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth", with some variations to make it more salable (such as a love interest). It seems to have been aimed at a juvenile audience and is in the same vein as the Kevin Connors/Amicus Studios adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Like many genre films, "Where Time Began" has very hokey characters and dialogue. The ineptitude with which the journey to the center of the earth is conducted is quite startling, in fact. The stupidity of their dialogue (especially the exchanges between Glauben and her idiotic fiancee Axel) gives the film a strong tone of campiness and unintentional humor. When Olsen shows up to rescue them midway through and complains that he's had to listen to their stupid chatter for the past ten miles, the viewer can commiserate. However, given the fact that it is a low budget film, the sets, photography and giant creature special effects are actually pretty good, and they manage to maintain some atmosphere throughout the production. Once the characters arrive in the pseudo-prehistoric world at the center of the earth, the film especially picks up, and the revelation of the origin of Olsen provides an interesting twist. For this reason, "Where Time Began" is a reasonable entry in the journey-to-a-lost-world genre.

This movie is one of the worst adaptations of the Jules Verne book "Journey To the Center Of the Earth". The 1959 movie with the same title, starring James Mason, is much better. The cast of "Where Time Began" is very uninspired - especially Kenneth Moore (usually a very good actor) is very disappointing. The sets are look cheap, and one can almost smell the paint and rubber the prehistoric monsters are made of. Besides I didn't really figure out where this 'Olsen'-character came from and disappeared to. He seemed to have figured out a way to travel through time, as well as through space. Overall, this movie is a big disappointment - I wouldn't even recommend it for a rainy afternoon.