The Bubble 1966

[Teddybear]

Help me! I am trying to find a movie that I watched on a late Saturday night on a local Detroit TV station in the very late 70's or 1980 or 1981.....people were trapped in a dome or a force field and couldn't get out. I was pretty young and remember very little about it. I think it was this movie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bubble_(1966_film)

But my question is: I remember a scene where there were people who kept trying the radio only to discover that it was the same broadcast playing on a continual loop.

I know that this is vague - does The Bubble have such a scene when people are listening to the radio broadcast? If so, this is the movie I am seeking. I think.

[Stalvern]

I found some identifying details in the IMDb reviews. Maybe you'll recognize something in them.

When the young couple and the pilot put down in the small American town, they find all the townspeople are in a near-catatonic state. The three explore and find fallen Roman columns. They try to drive out of the town but run into an invisible barrier surrounding it. Is there anything left alive on the outside, or is this the last town on Earth? The pilot is plucked from above, is a giant alien collecting specimens? The couple find a small factory producing alien food for the townspeople. Will the baby survive if the food source is destroyed? Is there a limit to the barrier, and can it be surmounted?

At one point in the film, the two protagonists have been running from all sorts of horrible goings on, through forests, rivers, and caves. At one point the action slows a bit, things get a tad quieter, and the girl, who is stretched to the edge emotionally and started to break down says, "Do you know what today is?" Her male counterpart, who is holding her as they sit in mud in a cave somewhere, says, "No ... what?" She says, "Today is ... (sob sob) ... my ... birthday!" Then she starts to cry.

What I really remember is the 3D. Even Grandma was amazed, excited and laughing like a kid (along with everyone else in the theater) at the way things really came out of the screen at you. At one point, a tray of beer glasses floats off the bar and into the audience, very slowly. It gets closer and closer until it looks like you could touch it if you stood up and reached over. Many people in the theater did just that (myself included).

For over 20 years all I could remember about it was a giant dome and the haunting words "Kill the baby, kill the baby" echoing over and over from when I first saw the movie probably on Big Chuck and Lil John's late night show in Cleveland.

Where this movie shines is in 3d. This is the type of movie where the plot and acting were incidental. It's entire theme is to show off 3d. You'll be treated to things like a guy raking thin air, with the garden rake filmed to be coming out at you.

You have two scenes of a bucket of dirt being lifted towards you, solely included because it looks somewhat cool in 3d.

This blog post has a fairly detailed summary of the film. There's no mention of a radio, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one, especially since the scene you described wouldn't have affected the plot.

Searching for specific references to a radio in regard to this movie is fruitless because it just pulls up mentions of the director's radio work.

Edit: Any of this footage (from a re-titled cut) ring a bell?

[Teddybear]

Childhood memories can be funny things......I still am not sure if this is the movie I'm seeking and that radio scene is the only thing I am sure of. But seeing how cheesy it appears to be I think I'm going to take a gamble on it.

Thank you for your efforts Stalvern.

[Stalvern]

Childhood memories can be funny things......I still am not sure if this is the movie I'm seeking and that radio scene is the only thing I am sure of. But seeing how cheesy it appears to be I think I'm going to take a gamble on it.

Thank you for your efforts Stalvern.

No problem, it was a fun little rabbit hole to wander down. I'm pretty confident that this is the movie; I saw a lot of comparisons made to The Twilight Zone (the show in general, not a specific episode) and Stephen King's Under the Dome, but nobody mentioned any contemporary films with similar premises, so it's unlikely that you're confusing it with another like it.

If you're going to buy it, be sure to get the right cut. The version released by Kino is the intact original cut, while the Rhino release is the drastically shortened TV cut. The first is obviously a better way to watch the movie, but the second might have more nostalgia value for you specifically.

[Teddybear]

An update: while this wasn't the movie I was looking for it certainly was a "it is so cheesy-bad that it is actually pretty interesting" type of flick. I did get the Rhino version and was very impressed with the 3-D effects.

Thanks again for the input Stalvern.

[Teddybear]

Just for my own personal closure I feel the need to update this thread.....I finally found the movie I was looking for by pure accident on Tubi...it was called Invasion from Inner Earth.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071666/

I was off about the the people being trapped in a dome or force field but the radio scene was there and as I watched it I became satisfied that this was my long-lost movie that I was seeking. And what a piece of crap it is! An alien plague wipes out humanity and a few survivors are stranded in a desolate winter wonderland.

Awfully cheap on special effects, horrid acting and scripting but truth be told there is decent framework of what could have been a winner. The presentation of isolation of the survivors in the cabin was pretty well done but everything else just works against this film. The ending was nonsensical as well.

I watched this originally as a 8 or 9 year old on my local "Saturday Night Dead" show that usually aired at 1:00am. Oh well, I can check off another of my life's mysteries as solved.

Anyone out there seen this unfortunate flick?