The Time Travelers
Who is David Cameron?
Seriously. I mean, I know the name and I’m aware he’s a politician, but it seems he’s mentioned on every single news headline at the minute. Where’d the dude come from? I’ve kind of always known the name, but he seems to be grabbing every single Yahoo! News headline since the start of this year, and until March I was rather confused because they only referred to him just as Cameron, which naturally led me to think, “man, the guy who directed Titanic has been busy lately.”
My dad was suddenly reminded of a film he saw nearly fifty years ago, The Time Travelers, and was curious to see if I could find it for download online. Downloads were found within thirty seconds. Modern technology continues to astound me with its sheer convenience. My father was apparently a mere ten years old when he saw this in the cinema, and he’s never seen it since, but apparently the basic story and a few notable scenes have stuck in his mind since then. Personally, it takes a special something to elicit that kind of memory from me, so I find that pretty interesting.
Three scientists and a dorky engineer are working on… something (I’m pretty sure it’s not even explained!), when they accidentally happen to create a portal into the future – one hundred and seven years, to be exact, where the world is now a barren, desolate, inhospitable land ravaged by nuclear warfare, the only life on the surface being violent, primeval mutants. They do stumble across an underground organisation of humans who have advanced technology, functional androids and formfitting jumpsuits, and are building a starship to go to Alpha Centauri where they can find a hospitable planet to live on and escape the wrath of the mutants. The time-displaced crew basically get used to future life while puzzling over how they’re going to get home, and then everything goes pear shaped. Yes, for once I’m not actually spoiling anything. It’s a rather silly film at times, but I would be lying if I said my heart didn’t sink for the characters at what happens near the end.
It’s an old 60s movie, so naturally it doesn’t have the high-end budget of a modern sci-fi flick, but it still remains very entertaining and very competent simply through the atmosphere and visuals. The androids do look pretty dorky, but there’s a particularly great scene that shows its head being detached and reattached all in one take, achieved by the actor putting his head through a hole in the table, and the whole thing works remarkably well – yes, if you want to be nitpicky, the android head does kind of morph a little as the actor’s head goes back in, but I thought it was a great effect.
The movie is often rather slow-going, seemingly delaying itself solely so it can give you more time to take notice of the sets or surroundings – the opening chase with the mutants seems to go longer than it should, but given the absolutely beautiful location it’s shot in (seriously, where is that? My dad suggested New Mexico but my geography is too terrible to guess) I was hardly complaining. Likewise, the rather ridiculous scene of two scientists making out with babes from the future lasted a lot longer than it should’ve, but was excused just because of a rather cool colour effect that’s hard to describe. Of course, quite often dialogue between characters will stretch on solely as a lead-up to a silly one-liner (“And I thought I was the one giving her the eye!”), which is so bad you have to laugh just because of how far the film goes to accommodate it.
The film did feel a little unfinished in places, though, as if it had cut out some sub-plots for the sake of running time. There’s a man from the future who doesn’t take too fondly to the time-displaced fellows and appears set up to be the designated villain, even going so far as to block them from going aboard the starship and leave them stranded on this doomed Earth (though given his reasons I would totally justify it, but the movie presents this as a “what an evil bastard!” moment). There seems to be the setup of some scuffle between him and the lead scientist, and I was totally expecting some kind of karmic death for him, but… no. There’s a little bit of arguing, but nothing really comes of it and he’s effectively forgotten about once the mutants siege the place.
Even worse, about halfway through the film the female scientist discovers a different kind of mutant, who the head honcho claims is neither a human being or a “traditional” mutant and the aforementioned evil dude just wants to shoot him, but they’re all convinced to take him in. My dad tells me the encounter with the mutant was one of those scenes that stuck with him since he was a kid, and it’s definitely a striking visage – they got a guy with real limb malformations to play him, Peter Strudwick, so he has no feet and his hands are distorted with oddly-located thumbs, and at first I was surprised at what a good prosthetic it was, until I realised, dude, that’s real! But the problem is that everyone comes to agree that he should stay, and it’s implied the female scientist and the mutant would spend time together… except he’s never seen again. Aside from a rapid-fire montage at the very end, the mutant is very acknowledged or seen again. It almost seems to act like a subplot junction, not only to start off one regarding this mutant’s life and further showing what a dick the future dude is, but also to show that not all mutants are evil. Earlier on the future folk talk extensively about how the regular mutants are primitive and are beyond attempting to negotiate with, even going to say that “they’re already dead” in terms of intelligence and humanity. I personally thought it could’ve been a turning point in human-mutant relations and made a decent impact on the story, but… no, I’m not sure what input the scene even has on the story. It’s rather sad, because if it was actually part of a subplot, that means it was cut out so they could give us a five minute scene where naked women from the future talk about men.
It’s a very intriguing film; yes, even at eighty minutes long it feels a little drawn-out, but there’s a certain je no sais quoi about it that renders it appealing and memorable to me. The story is a little limited by the budget, but it’s well written and never feels too cheap, and the ending is surprisingly melancholy – in a way it’s uplifting, but in another it’s depressing that no matter what, those scientists are never going to return to their original time and are doomed to repeat the events of the film to get where they are now. It could so easily have ended with a simple victory over the mutants and fixing the time portal successfully, but I am so glad it had the courage to do something inventive and memorable for its conclusion.
I would recommend checking it out if you’re a sci-fi nerd. Sadly, it only ever had a VHS release and I sincerely doubt it’ll ever get a DVD release, never mind it even surviving long enough to reach public domain status.
