BY HANK REINEKE
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from half-a century or
more of watching Hollywood films, it’s this; the distant future is no place in
time I wish to visit. This pandemic of 2020-2021 aside, the future Tinsel Town promises
is made up of things far worse: robots gone crazy, desolate landscapes, warring
hordes of mutants and an assortment of post-nuclear zombies running amuck. And that’s not to mention, of course, the bland
and unfashionable unisex leotards we’ll all be expected to wear as uniforms. So I stand firm in this conviction and, truth
be told, Ib Melchior’s The Time Travelers
(American International Pictures, 1964) does little to convince me that I’m
wrong.
Melchior’s story is OK. A laboratory accident allows a team of scientists to be catapulted from
5 July 1964 to one hundred and seven years in the future. This event is the result of an overzealous
technician pushing the already overloaded circuit board to maximum power. In doing so, the fuses spark and give
out. This turn of events is unfortunate as
it allows a free floating, collapsible portal to suddenly appear. If you are stupid enough to walk through the
portal… Well, it’s a one-way trip. Once entered,
the awkwardly hanging portal does not allow anyone to return to the humdrum
existences of the present day. This, we’re
told, is due to the presence of a circular electrically-charged force field
barrier that prevents such return.
The scientists soon learn that the desolate, bleak and
rocky landscape they’re walking through is planet Earth. The only difference is that it’s now the year
2071 and Earth is dying, the remnants of mankind huddled together for their own
safety. We’re told that this unfortunate
situation was caused by “man’s own folly,†and the spliced-in stock footage of
atomic-bomb blasts pretty much explain how the handful of remaining humans found
themselves in their present situation. The survivors have spent most of their time living in subterranean caves. They pass the time by fighting off
radiation-scarred mutants who continually try to gain entrance to their
shelters so they can rip them to pieces.
Actually, they do little of the fighting themselves. To defend themselves from the
mutant-barbarians, the survivors have engineered a race of androids with
inverted football-shaped heads to battle it out for them. Sure, they might have committed themselves to
take up arms in their own defense. But they’ve
been pre-occupied with other matters. They’re building a big starship that – if all goes well – will jettison all
of them - sans-mutants - to another solar system and the planet of Alpha
Centauri. They reckon it will be a long
flight, but Alpha Centauri is the best they can hope for, gas being the price
it is. It’s the only other planet – that
they’re aware of, at least - that can sustain human-life due to its Earth-like
atmosphere.
The problem is one less altruistic and self-serving member
of the survivor community is convinced that the starship - as presently designed
- will be unable to handle the additional weight of the four time travelers who
arrived at an inopportune time due to a stumble through a time portal. So he has plans to leave behind the new and
uninvited visitors from 1964 to fend for themselves.
I like bad vintage sci-fi as much as the next guy, but The Time Travelers isn’t a particularly
riveting film. Even with a running time
of some eighty-four minutes the film seems much longer. You’ll likely be hitting the “Pause†button a
few times for a run to the kitchen for a hot snack or a cold beverage. Unless you’re on a strict diet, of course,
whereupon you will be glancing incessantly at a clock while pondering if the
minute hand is broken. Time seems to be
passing by much too slowly. On the
surface, The Time Travelers seems a late
starter to the glory days of Silver-Age 1950’s sci-fi which – all things
considered – should be a good thing. Except
in this case it’s not.
Melchior’s screenplay is, at best, workmanlike and the
film’s direction is pretty listless (His co-written script for another 1964
film, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, in far
more intriguing). The camera of Director
of Photography William Zsigmond frustratingly lingers over long-shots of protracted
length as people and mutants lumber through the desolate stone canyons of Barstow,
California. No one could ever confuse
the editing of Hal Dennis to be hyper-kinetic since the completed film’s pacing
is, to put it mildly, pretty sluggish throughout. Out of curiosity – and a guilty sense that my
own opinion of Melchior’s film might be overly harsh and unfair - I decided to look
up the original November 1964 Daily
Variety review of the film. I have
to say, I can find no fault or hold an opinion contrary to that journal’s own critic: “David
Hewitt’s effects are stagey and William Zsigmond’s camera work and Hal Dennis’
editing is so-so.†(Zsigmond would
ultimately redeem himself and go on to become a legend in his field.)
There are far too many moments in this film where we wish
– and wait – for anything interesting
to happen. Melchior’s screenplay, from a story by David Hewitt and himself, is ponderous
and predictable. There is a sense that the
story might evolve into something
when a non-mutant survivor of the nuclear holocaust tries to find refuge in the
caves with his brethren. Instead of
being welcomed and rescued, he is turned away due to a suspicion of “outsidersâ€
and plain ol’ human selfishness. But
this sub-scenario examination of the failures of human empathy and compassion passes
by without much fuss or notice.
On the plus side, Melchior’s film may have inspired a
couple of future filmmakers to more fully develop ideas proposed here for their
own films and TV series. Sexual pleasure
in 2071 comes courtesy of a partner-less “Love Machine†that allows survivors who
– due to the present lack of resources - need to suppress their emotional and sexual
desires until they all land on Alpha Centauri. In the meantime, they can get their rocks off in a more mechanical way, without
the messiness or warmth of a human partner. Could this have been the genesis of Woody Allen’s “Orgasmatron†in Sleeper?
And while the tech-minded survivors have not been able to
construct a starship capable of handling an extra six-hundred pounds of human
cargo, they have succeeded in building a neat matter transporter. This transporter would precede that of Gene
Roddenberry’s Star Trek series by a
couple of years. Melchior’s transporter
is less dynamic in presentation, making subjects lie sown in a supine position
ala a rotisserie chicken, before being whisked away to… Well, to wherever, but mostly not all that far
from the place they began.
This is the sort of film where the menacing androids are
fended off with the throwing of rocks and blasts from fire extinguishers, where
survivor’s dress in powder blue jumpers with swooping necklines, where episodes
of not-particularly funny, light-hearted comedy routines are interlaced into an
otherwise doomsday scenario. Composer
Richard La Salle’s soundtrack is schizophrenic as well. There are moments when is scoring is
perfectly moody and appropriate. But in the
aforementioned light-comedy sketches, his score is as absolutely juvenile and as
wonky as the visuals it underpins.
The cast does what it can with the material, though no
one draws any particular attention to themselves as being above the material
they’ve been tasked with. Eagle-eyed
viewers might even catch a glimpse of Forrest J. Ackerman, of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine
fame, in a brief cameo. Truth be told,
the magazine editor’s walk-on did little more than guarantee the filmmakers a
bit of extra publicity in a future issue of the then popular and influential horror-fandom
mag.
I really don’t like to pick apart these grade B sci-fi
thrillers from the 1950s and 1960s as, generally speaking, I love them. Some of the elements I enjoy most about them
are the ridiculous premises, the low-budget sets, the wacky spaceships and the bargain
basement-designed control rooms… and that’s not to mention the purple prose and
preachy recitations of post-Doomsday homilies. I know that someone out there likely has some nostalgic fondness for The Time Travelers as a guilty
pleasure. I don’t deny that the film is
amusing here and there, but this isn’t one I will revisit anytime soon. Nor can I recommend it in good conscience to
a journeyman fan of old sci-fi. The film
is not necessarily a waste of time as much as it is a waste of thoughtful ideas
and good intentions.
This Kino Lorber/Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray edition of The Time Travelers is offered here in
its original color presentation in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen 1:85:1 and
English DTS-HD 2.0 Mono sound. Supplements are light, though the set does include trailers for The Time Travelers, Trackdown, Beast with a
Million Eyes, Rollerball and Invisible
Invaders.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON