TIme travel’s been done, of course. It’s been done to death, Heck, the poor and proverbial dead horse hasn’t taken the beating time travel has in terms of how often it’s been done in films. The 1964 American International Pictures movie, The Time Travelers did it. Or, more precisely, walked through it. Again and again and again.
The movie opens in the lab of a university campus on May 7, 1964, where our heroes are getting ready to send a guy named Al back to May fifth. They’ve got him set up in a designated spot with a giant sign reading “May 7” and a receiver and are watching him wave cheerfully at them on a Jumbotron screen in the lab.
While Dr. Steve Connors (Philip Carey) and Dr. Erik Von Steiner (Preston Foster) are sure their experiment will work, their project is in jeopardy because the powers that be consider it to be too expensive. Mechanic Danny (Steve Franken), who has come to tell them the bad news, stays to watch the latest test.
Long story short, their experiment works a little too well because the screen shows 2071, when the earth is a barren wasteland after nuclear wars have wiped everything out. Everyone’s aghast when Danny steps into the Jumbotron screen, and because story progression, Steve and Erik follow him. lab tech Carol (Merry Anders) stays behind watching nervously but freaks out when a bunch of beings who look like the Blue Man Group (except that they’re brown) try to crawl through the picture. After spraying them with a fire extinguisher Carol notices the portal is collapsing, so in she goes as well.
Yep. They’re all stuck in the future, where everything looks like Lava Lands in Bend, Oregon. Mankind has either been obliterated, mutated (that would be the Brown Man Group), or has escaped to underground shelters, where they build droids and bide their time until the ship they’re building is ready to take them to Alpha Centauri. It’s a long journey, of course, but they’ll all be in suspended animation and their droids will take care of them. Okeydokey. At least everyone seems nice, especially Varno (John Hoyt) and Gadra (Joan Woodbury) who are on the colony council.
Since they’re basically stuck, our group integrate themselves into society. Danny becomes very smitten with a technician named Reena (Delores Wells), Steve and Carol get quite taken with each other after Reena wows them with a concert on her futuristic Wurlitzer organ. The colonists make parts seemingly out of thin air or by wiggling existing parts in front of special scanners. Why their hands don’t change is anyone’s guess.
Oh, and Danny gets to take a super special trip on a transporter machine that sends him all the way into a corner of the room. Wow. Modern technology.
Everything seems to be going according to plan until a month before the ship is supposed to leave, when our group finds out they can’t go to Alpha Centauri. It would take too long to add four extra seats and four extra droids, so there’s nothing else to do but rebuild the portal and return to Earth. Another spanner gets thrown into the works, though, when the Brown Man Group infiltrates and a lot of stuff happens from there. Then it happens again. And again. Yep, it’s a time loop movie but no, I won’t ruin it.
OK, right off the bat, why does it feel like everyone in this movie is named Steve? They’re not, but I just want to get that out of the way, because it feels as if we hear that name more than any other one, except possibly “Danny.” I wouldn’t advise making a drinking game or an M&Ms game out of this one.
The TIme Travelers screams Cold War, of course. The Brown Man Group are mutants because their forebears didn’t make it inside in time to avoid radiation poisoning and thus they mutated. This is straight out of Cold War nuclear annihilation fear. Although most households didn’t bother building a shelter and barely thought about the possibility of nuclear war, the culture of the time liked to put forth the questions, “If the bomb dropped, who would you decide to let into your shelter? Would you let anyone in?”
Fear, maybe even fear laced with assumptions, can make good drama.
Since this is an AIP film, everything is very cheaply done. Even though most of the action takes place underground, everything looks like plywood, plaster, and paint, and pretty flat at that. There are a lot of classic illusions tricked out to look like futuristic tech, such as the colonists who spend all day turning circles into squares and producing brass chains seemingly out of nowhere. The effects used in these scenes are really obvious, and after a few rounds of what is evidently supposed to be grunt work it starts to feel like filler.
The acting is decent if kind of generic, as there isn’t much to distinguish these characters, and like I said, hearing the name “Steve” over and over again kind of numbs the senses. Eventually I just had to give up on character names and let it all happen.
No, The Time Travelers isn’t a great movie, but it’s a great concept, which is why, according to TCM, Ray Dorn and Irwin Allen both borrowed (read: copied) the Time Travelers’ premise for Journey To the Center of Time and The Time Tunnel, respectively. However, seeing as director Ib Melchior was new and therefore considerably lower in the Hollywood hierarchy, he chose not to make a fuss. It was either that or quit working.
Melchior got his wish and had a long, fruitful career making sci-fi schlock and other types of films, but he always seemed to be getting the short end of the stick. He claimed to have pitched the idea for Lost in Space, which Irwin Allen ended up making, as well as the idea for Star Trek, which of course is credited to Gene Rodenberry, Again, though, Melchior was advised not to do anything because he was new in Hollywood and therefore didn’t have much clout.
The Time Travelers is not without its charms and it’s definitely inspiring, considering the number of time loop movies that have come about since. Maybe Melchior didn’t get the recognition he deserved, but I hope he took comfort in the fact that he essentially spawned an interesting subgenre.
Another post is coming up tomorrow. Thanks for reading, all, and have a great Sunday…
The Time Travelers is available on Blu-ray from Amazon and is free to stream for Prime customers.
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