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Pre-Order The Time Travelers (1964) (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Ronald Epstein
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Ib Melchior's low budget sci-fi film is a perfect Saturday afternoon matinee flick for the undemanding. Mutants, Robots, the Future, Centerfolds, Armageddon and Time Travel - what else could a young space cadet want at the movies?!
Two scientists (Preston Foster, Philip Carey) and their assistants (Merry Anders, Steve Franken) head off into the future world of 2071 via a telescreen (Irwin Allen's TV show The Time Tunnel certainly seems to have been influenced). There they find a small society of surviving humans who are fending off mutated creatures and a looming disaster. They created robots to assist them. Their leader Varno (John Hoyt) welcomes them and tries to get them back to their 'present'. Along the way, Danny (Franken) falls for a pretty technician named Reena (any similarity to THE TIME MACHINE's Weena was, I'm sure, purely coincidental!!). Reena is played by Delores Wells - Playboy's Miss June, 1960. To further amuse the fanboys, Reena joins the future females in a nude sun tanning salon.
It's mostly pretty tame and some of the lab scenes do go on a bit. Famous Monsters founder Forest J. Ackerman has a bit part and there's a neat magician's trick where an Android is beheaded and then 're-headed' without any cuts or edits. Oscar Winning Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond* (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3RD KIND) and Art Director Ray Storey do what they can to make the film look as good as they can with meager means. There are a few decent bits.
The best is saved for last. A mind-bending, rapidly edited twist that still is an effective finale**. It's the kind of capper that makes the film more memorable than it otherwise would have been. Is THE TIME TRAVELERS any kind of classic? Perhaps, not, but, it's fun. And, that is about all that Melchior and co-writer David Hewitt (who also did the VFX and remade the film as JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME just 3 years later) could have wished for.
* Zsigmond's camera operator was Laszlo Kovacs who would go on to photography EASY RIDER and GHOSTBUSTERS among many others.
** Oddly, the MST3K episode version on Netflix uses an alternate, and much less effective, ending. Make sure you check out the original
Two scientists (Preston Foster, Philip Carey) and their assistants (Merry Anders, Steve Franken) head off into the future world of 2071 via a telescreen (Irwin Allen's TV show The Time Tunnel certainly seems to have been influenced). There they find a small society of surviving humans who are fending off mutated creatures and a looming disaster. They created robots to assist them. Their leader Varno (John Hoyt) welcomes them and tries to get them back to their 'present'. Along the way, Danny (Franken) falls for a pretty technician named Reena (any similarity to THE TIME MACHINE's Weena was, I'm sure, purely coincidental!!). Reena is played by Delores Wells - Playboy's Miss June, 1960. To further amuse the fanboys, Reena joins the future females in a nude sun tanning salon.
It's mostly pretty tame and some of the lab scenes do go on a bit. Famous Monsters founder Forest J. Ackerman has a bit part and there's a neat magician's trick where an Android is beheaded and then 're-headed' without any cuts or edits. Oscar Winning Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond* (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3RD KIND) and Art Director Ray Storey do what they can to make the film look as good as they can with meager means. There are a few decent bits.
The best is saved for last. A mind-bending, rapidly edited twist that still is an effective finale**. It's the kind of capper that makes the film more memorable than it otherwise would have been. Is THE TIME TRAVELERS any kind of classic? Perhaps, not, but, it's fun. And, that is about all that Melchior and co-writer David Hewitt (who also did the VFX and remade the film as JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME just 3 years later) could have wished for.
* Zsigmond's camera operator was Laszlo Kovacs who would go on to photography EASY RIDER and GHOSTBUSTERS among many others.
** Oddly, the MST3K episode version on Netflix uses an alternate, and much less effective, ending. Make sure you check out the original
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