The Time Machine ('78)

The second film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel was a made-for-television movie that appeared as part of ABC’s “Classics Illustrated” series. Normally, television movies are outside of the scope of this study, but this TM makes a handy bridge between the George Pal film of 1960 and the 2002 version. John Beck stars as the Time Traveler, this time named Neil Perry. Priscilla Barns plays Weena. As with the other film adaptations, there were some liberties were taken, some contemporary spin applied and yet some faithfulness to Wells’ original.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A Russian satellite malfunctions and begins to fall to the earth. Mega Corporation’s untried anti-missile missile is ordered deployed to intercept the radioactive satellite before it hit’s LA. Dashing, liesure-suited Neil Perry rushes in with his pocket calculator to correct the missile’s course. LA is saved. Mega Corp is happy, but wants to know what Neil spent 20 million dollars on. He shows them his time machine prototype. The Mega Corp brass are unimpressed and cancel his project, come Monday. Since it’s Friday, Neil decides to test his machine to give them proof. He goes back in the past to 1692 and his accused of being a witch in Salem. He escapes to the American west in the middle 1800s. He is pursued as a claim-jumping criminal. Returning to 1978, a coworkers shows him how mankind is doomed soon, due to atomic mismanagement. Neil travels forward in time to learn what happens, but goes too far. He sees nuclear explosions and a barren landscape. Then he sees trees regrow. He stops. Behind him are big bronze doors. He encounters the Eloi and meets Weena, all of whom speak 20th century American english. Weena shows him their museum, which has “old” weapons on display, including the Death Ray pistol which Mega Corp wanted him to develop. He plays some video tapes to learn the fate of mankind and nuclear armageddon. That night, the Morlocks break into the Eloi building and capture several, including Weena’s brother Ariel. Neil ventures into the Morlock underworld to rescue the captives. He finds them, and they all escape. Neil gets the idea to use some C4, on display in the museum, to seal up the Morlock tunnels. He mounts an expedition to plant the explosives. This eventually works, with the Eloi escaping and Neil finding his machine. He narrowly escapes the angry Morlocks by returning to 1978. The Mega Corp Chairman wants to exploit the Time Machine for financial gain. Neil escapes in his machine, to return to Weena. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Wells’ novel is fascinating, so adaptations of it are bound to inherit at least a little of that fascination. The deviations from the book are amusing as windows into the late 70s mind. Priscilla Barns makes a very desirable Weena. Less vacuous than TM60’s Weena and less noble-savage than TM2002’s “Mara”.

Cold War Angle
While the Cold War as motivator for contemporaneous sci-fi, had fallen out of fashion, it was evident (in spades) in TM78. Repeating the Cold War moralizing of TM60, it is nuclear holocaust that wipes out mankind as we know it. The fear-filled notion of super bombs lives on in the dreaded Anti-Matter Bomb which Mega Corp wanted Neil to develop and which the recordings blame for the global devastation. TM78 lays the blame squarely on the steps of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Notes
Deviations from the Book — None of the three english-speaking adaptations follow Wells’ book faithfully. Detailed deviations would be too tediously long. Brieflh: TM60 and TM2002 add intermediate stops in the future before reading Weena’s time. TM78 added a couple stops in the past too. All three deviate in Hollywood fashion in making Weena more of a love interest and allowing happy endings where the traveler and Weena are reunited. In the book, she dies.

Hall of Knowledge — Wells’ novel had a Palace of Green Porcelain, which was a derelict museum. It told no particular backstory, but did supply the Traveler with additional matches and a club for a weapon. TM60 has a museum, but added the “talking rings” as a plot device to tell backstory. TM78 repeated the hall of knowledge, but upgraded the audio to video tape to fill in the backstory on what happened to mankind. TM2002 took the Hall of Knowledge video notion from TM78, and expanded it in the form of a snarky virtual librarian.

Fashionably Pacifist — One of the very 70s features of TM78, is the flagrantly anti-war message in the Hall of Knowledge. On display are weapons of war, over which Neil can opine: “Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to preserve the weapons of history. Perhaps as a tragic reminder of how Our history has a way of repeating itself. As always, there are the innocent victims, like Weena.” Neil gets a personal guilt trip for finding that his Death Ray is among the weapons. Bad military-industrial-scientist, Bad. Undermining the moralizing, is how Neil uses the museum’s explosives to save Eloi from the evil Morlocks. That would be the very sorts of reasons weapons have always existed — to save ‘good people’ from the ‘bad people.’

Smug Modernism — An amusing (or infuriating, depending on one’s demeanor) is how TM78 uses trite historical stereotypes to (a) pad out the run time and (b) that modern people are smarter/better. The first is the witch trial scene. This is a favorite of smug modernists. The real history is smaller and less tyrannical. Ah, but that doesn’t sell. The "gold rush" western scene perpetuates the handy stereotype that in the crude “olden days” everyone was armed with 30-30 Winchesters or Six-guns and regularly shot each other up for the slightest of provocations (if any). Of course, recycling old costumes and sets was a way to stretch the run time on a budget.

Time And Distance — Where TM60 and TM2002 were careful to keep Wells’ notion of traveling through time, not space, TM78 is not careful at all. Neil leaves his military-industrial-lab in Los Angeles, but appears in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. He then appears in the west (the Dakotas?) in the 1800s. Neil’s machine was, apparently, able to home in on a place (his lab) as well as a time.

Car Nuts — Fans of obscure automotive trivia will be delighted at seeing a CitiCar on display in the Hall of Knowledge. This all-electric mini-car was a response to the gas crisis of the mid-70s. A glorified golf-cart, the CitiCar was nevertheless America’s most mass-produced (modern) electric car until Tesla came on the scene. Weak performance and the easing of the gas crisis doomed CitiCar to obscurity. Nowadays, it is a museum item.

Similar Endings — All three TMs end with the time traveler’s friend, musing with the time traveler’s female worker. In TM60, she’s the housekeeper. In TM78, she’s his secretary. In TM2002, she’s a housekeeper again. In all three, the friend gets to sign off with some time-related witticism. in TM78, the friend says, “Time is on his side.”

Bottom line? TM78 is obscure, but exists in YouTube form. Fans of TM60 may be amused at the 70s remake in 70s flavors (Burnt Orange and Avacado Green). TM78 is a neat bridge between TM60 and TM2002. A fun night (for ardent TM fans) would be a triple feature of the three. TM78 isn’t amazing or better than TM60 or TM2002. It is the poorer cousin, if anything. Still, it has its amusements.
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Time Travelers

In 1976, Irwin Allen tried to launch another time travel television series like he had with The Time Tunnel a decade earlier. Time Travelers (TT) was a pilot film for television. That's why there is a newspaper ad, in lieu of a theater poster at left. But, since Allen was a major name in pop-sci-fi, and TT bears many affinities to his earlier time travel story, it seemed fitting to include it. Sam Groom stars as Dr. Clint Earnshaw. Richard Basehart stars as Dr. Henderson. The original story was by Rod Serling, though he did not write the screenplay.

Quick Plot Synopsis
During Mardi Gras in New Orleans, many people are coming down with a mysterious illness that doctors have dubbed XB. It has a 40% mortality rate and officials fear a nationwide epidemic if the revelers all travel back to infect their home states. A man named Jeff Adams is sent from Washington to conscript Dr. Earnshaw (Groom) to a daring experiment to find a cure. Jeff is cagy and Clint is cranky. Eventually, the beans are spilled that they intend to travel back in time to 1871, just before the great Chicago Fire, to find a Dr. Henderson who cured people with an identical disease. Henderson’s records were all destroyed in the fire. Clint agrees and they travel back. But, the computer wasn’t quite as precise on the date or time. They are 4 days late, and a mile off. The fire will break out only a day later. Jeff and Clint manage to find Henderson at the hospital and tell him the Surgeon General sent them to help. They try to learn Henderson’s secret, but he really don’t know himself. Seeking a blood sample of a “cured” patient goes awry and Jeff must hide out, accused of murder. Client, meanwhile, is succumbing to the disease and getting delirious. Henderson’s niece, Jane, a lonely ‘modern” woman, grows fond of Clint. He’s fond of her too. The fire breaks out in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn. With little time left before the fire reaches the hospital, Clint discovers that it was not the drugs Henderson was using, but the elderberry wine he used as the delivery medium. A rare fungus in the fermentation was the key anti-biotic. All the bottles are gone, so Jeff pursues the last patient who left with a bottle. He finds him, and returns just as the hospital is evacuating. Clint does not want to return to 1976, but to stay in 1871 with Jane. While Jeff tries to argue/reason with Clint, Henderson and Jane run in the hospital to fetch a tardy patient when the hospital blows up. Relieved of his conflict, Clint joins Jeff struggling back to the time portal point. They return. Clint recovers from his XB fevers. Jeff and others intimate that he’d be perfect for some other historical-medical adventures. What? The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Time travel sci-fi are amusing food for thought, in themselves. TT is reasonably well paced with enough plot twists to keep it from being totally predictable. It is amusing, too, to see 1871 as seen through the 70s lens. The men have 70s-fashionable long hair. Back in the mid-70s, such hair was simply “normal” — as if eternal.

Cultural Connection
Fire Facts — The writers neatly included some tidbits of the history of the fire, without falling into the trap of retelling myth. On that October night, a man named “Pegleg” Sullivan first reported the fire coming from a barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. The actual cause of the fire was never determined. Reporter Michael Ahern made up the story about Mrs. O’Leary milking her cow, which kicked over a lantern into some straw. Her dereliction allowed the fire to spread. Irish immigrants made for easy scapegoats. The O’Leary Cow story became widely circulated and believed as gospel. Ahern later retracted the story as pure fiction, but a cultural die was cast. The writers of TT were careful to include Sullivan and the O’Leary barn, but not the cow and lantern part. The O’Leary’s maintained that they were asleep in bed when the fire started, not out milking any cows.

Notes
Time Tunnel 2.0 — Irwin Allen, flush with success at his two big disaster flicks, The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno (’74) thought the time might be right to remake his 1966 television series, The Time Tunnel. TTT was reasonably successful for a television series. It had two seasons. The premise would be roughly the same, with a team of 1976 moderns venturing back in history each week to grapple with some major event. The brass at ABC were not sufficiently convinced, so no series resulted. Perhaps TT was too much a repeat of TTT. Since the moderns could not change the past, it seemed to suggest that all of their adventures result in no particular changes, so what was the point?

Edith Keeler 2.0 — The romantic sub-plot in TT is quite reminiscent to one in the Star Trek (TOS) episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” In that episode, Kirk has to travel back in time to try and correct some time tampering done by a delusional McCoy. Kirk falls for the lovely and vulnerable Edith Keeler — leader of a growing pacifist movement. In the denouement, Kirk must allow Edith to die in a traffic accident in order to set time right again. In TT, it is Clint who gets smitten with the lovely and vulnerable Jane. He wants to stay in 1871 with her. It is Jeff who plays the (then-sober) McCoy and has to restrain Clint as Jane goes back into the burning hospital to her doom. Since she died in the fire, Clint could not save her without messing up history. Lesson? Don’t fall for historical babes.

Time Tunnel Ties — Aside from the general premise, Sam Groom, who stars as Clint, also played a minor part in The Time Tunnel. For five of the 30 episodes, he played Jerry, a not too pivotal technician. Watch for the room full of computer banks props in TT. They only get a few minutes of air time, but they are also recycled from the original TTT set.

Bottom line? TT is fun as the usual time travel genre. The production values are not great, but reasonable for mid-70s television. The acting is fair too. Basehart does the best job as the irascible Dr. Henderson. Tom Hallick (Jeff Adams) and Trish Stewart (Jane) come across as more typical of 70s television. Overall, though, TT is entertaining enough.

Idaho Transfer

In the early 70s, popular themes included: dystopia, government conspiracies, the righteousness of youth, environmentalism and (as mentioned a couple posts ago, mathusian doom. Idaho Transfer (IT) has all of them. IT is an obscure film that had only a limited theatrical release. A group of teens time-travel to after some devastating ecological disaster, to see if the earth can be repopulated. It's the second of only three films directed by Peter Fonda (of early fame for writing, starring, producing Easy Rider in 1969). The story and screenplay are by Thomas Matthiesen. The cast are mostly unkowns, save for Keith Carridine who plays a minor role.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Dr. George Braden has a secret project going on up in the wilderness of Idaho. Originally, it was on matter transporting, but they discovered time travel as well. Also, they discovered that some disaster befalls mankind in the nearer future. Braden is sending teams of college-age men and women 56 years into the future to find out what and why. They study the flora and fauna and report back to 1973. George's daughter Isa is one of the young scientists. His other daughter Karen joins the team. Isa shows Karen how to operate the transfer machine. Apparently, some event called the Echo Crisis devastated the earth and nearly wiped out mankind. George's young time travelers are trying to figure out what future-Idaho is like. The vague plan is, if the future is habitable, to send a colonizing group to reestablish mankind on the Earth. Isa falls and is badly hurt. Karen transfers her back, but there's deeper trouble. Bureaucrats plan to order the project shut down. Just before that, however, a dozen or so of the youngsters manage to transfer to 2029 with backpacks of survival gear. They get to the future, but the transfer machine's power fails. They're stuck in 2029. The project's doctor transfers too, but apparently, anyone over 20 suffers kidney damage in the transfer. He eventually goes off alone to die. Karen has some off-camera trysts and eventually thinks she's pregnant. Ronald and others break the news to her that they're all sterile. Their kidney survive the transfer, but not their reproductive powers. No babies, no future of mankind. They set out to on a 500 mile hike to Portland. Karen becomes despondent and returns alone to the original transfer camp in the Craters of the Moon, lava fields. She is attacked by Leslie, one of the group who did not leave. Karen takes shelter in the transfer machine. Leslie rants outside that everyone (1973 folks) "used everything up." The power lights come on. Karen transfers back to 1973 in only her panties. A startled technician see her and alerts guards. Karen locks the door and resets the machine to a further date in the future. She transfers. No one is left at the lava field station. Karen wanders alone, hopeless and exhausted. Eventually, she is picked up off the ground by a future man. He puts her in the trunk of his future car. Karen screams. The girl in the back seat wonders aloud what they (the future people) will do for fuel with all of the "other" people have been used up. Text-on-screen: Esto Perpetua. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Actually, it's rather depressing, so it's not "fun" in the usual senses. It is very thoughtful and well done as far as conveying the intent of bleakness and doom.

Cultural Connection
The Roots of Malaise: President Jimmy Carter was criticized for his famous/infamous "Malaise" speech, given in July 1979. In it, he said, “The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.” Carter spoke of America's cultural malaise -- a lack of hope for the future, rampant consumerism and self-absorption. The energy crisis did not cause the malaise. The roots of malaise can be seen in early 70s sci-fi. America was convncing itself that the environment would crash and we were all doomed to death and dystopia. Little wonder that "eat, drink and be merry" (buy and consume stuff) ruled the day. America had ben putting itself into a funk for over ten years. Perhaps the trumpets of Global Warming Doom should take note. Instead of spurring action, they may only create another malaise.

Notes
King Mathus -- As mentioned before, the Cold War's ever-impending nuclear doom created a lot of fear in people. The threat of nukes faded after the Cuban Missile Crisis, but that much fear did not subside quickly. Thus, the preachers of environmental doom found a receptive audience. All that fear needed something to be afraid of. Thomas Malthus wrote in the early 1800s about impending collapse (famine, starvation, death) as population would outstrip resources. It was an old message that had a habit of not happening. Despite its poor track record, It found a ripe audience in the late 60s and early 70s. It took 150 years, but eventually Malthus was king.

Soylent 2: Energy Source -- The surprise twist ending is much akin to Soylent Green ('73), except that in the future, people will be a fuel source instead of a food source. The girl in the backseat pretty much says the world will become Soylent 2 when she asks what they'll do when the supply of 'them' is used up. "We'll use each other then, won't we?" The parents don't answer. They already knew. This just hammers home the malthusian angst. We are consuming all our finite resources. When they're used up, we'll turn on ourselves. This is driven home by the final text: Esto Perpetua, latin for "It is (or, let it be) perpetual." I.e., mankind will not learn, but keep on over-consuming. This is also the state motto for Idaho.

Youth Rules -- A common enough theme in early 70s movies is that the "world" of the "old" will suddenly crumble and fall away. The young (alone) shall inherit the earth. This was the premise in Wild in the Streets ('68), Gas-s-s ('70), and Glen and Randa ('71).  This last one was also an indie film picturing teens as inheritors of a bleak ruined earth and in the northwest too!

Get Naked -- A curious bit of exploitation by Fonda, was that time travel required the young women to take their pants off and straddle the time machine. This was explained (somewhat) as having to do with metal (rivets in the jeans?). But, rather than select pants with no metal, they keep them, but strip down to their panties (or less!) whenever they transfer. There seems to be no plot necessity for this. Instead, it seems it's just there for exploitation -- a half-baked reason to get some teen girls naked.

Symbols -- Fonda was having a go at artistic directing. There were many, but a few were quite blatant. Shortly after the teens realize that they're trapped in 2029, Karen plucks up a young flower, roots and all. Get it? They're young flowers uprooted. Then there was the pointless brain-teaser puzzle (some interlocked metal rings) that Karen played with, but could not solve. She asked Ronald if he knew how to solve it. He said no. Get it? Their future is a puzzle they cannot solve? There are several others. Fonda was having an artistic go at it.

Bottom line? IT is a very depressing film. The lead character survives all her ordeals, only to end up as fuel for some guy's futuristic Caprice. As with most time-travel films, there are some points to muse over. The acting is modest, since most were young amateurs. The directing is mediocre, but the mood is quite effective. People who dislike depressing-ending films, should skip IT. Fans of the foreboding 70s will find gloom galore, government conspiracies and confirmation that mankind will consume itself into a desolate doom. If you want to know WHY American was in malaise in the 70s. Watch this film.

Slaughterhouse Five

The second "sci-fi" film of 1972 was also a Universal production. Slaughterhouse Five (SF) was based on Kurt Vonnegut Jr's novel of the same name. In several ways, SF is not much of a science fiction story, since Pilgrim's time travel "just happens" with no science-y cause. The fact that there are some unseen aliens and Pilgrim living on another planet (for awhile), and the notion of time travel per se, are peripheral reasons, SF gets included on sci-fi movie lists. Michael Sacks stars as Billy Pilgrim. Other recognizable stars play supporting roles. Valerie Perinne, in her first feature film, dominates the supporting cast (nudity will do that) as Montana Wildhack. Universal invested pretty heavily in SF. The production cost was over three times what they put into Silent Running.

 Quick Plot Synopsis
Note: SF is the story of the life of Billy Pilgrim. In the film, as in the novel, there is much skipping backwards and forwards along his timeline. Following this scene by scene would be far too long, So, for brevity, some reassembly is done.
The story opens to young Billy in WWII, a chaplain's assistant, lost and separated from his unit during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944. Billy and two other G.I.s are captured by the Germans. En route to a prison camp, one of the G.I.s dies of frostbite. The other, a psychotic named Paul Lazzaro, vows to avenge his friend's death by someday killing Billy. In the camp, Billy makes friends with Edgar Derby, a nice, if somewhat mediocre man. Some of the prisoners are transferred to a work detail in Dresden. They're happy at this, as Dresden has no military targets. They are housed in a former slaughterhouse, number five. ("Schlacthof 5") After awhile, in mid February, air raid sirens wail. The soldiers and guards shelter in a deep cellar. When they emerge, Dresden is a smoldering ruin. While working to retrieve the dead, Derby finds a little porcelain statue. He is shot as a looter.
After the war, Billy becomes an optometrist. He marries a plump daughter of a wealthy man. They have a two kids: Robert, who becomes a troubled-youth, and Barbara. While on a charter flight to an optometrist convention, Billy knows the plane will crash, but no one believes him. It does. He is the sole survivor. His wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning while driving her car recklessly to the hospital to see him. Billy goes into a malaise period, comforted only by his old dog, Spot. Robert cleans up to become a Green Beret sergeant. Billy and Spot are transported to a geodetic dome on the planet Tralfamadore, where the Tralfamadorians (who live in the 4th dimension and are only disembodied voices) keep him like a zoo animal. They also abduct a soft-porn star, Montana Wildhack to be his mate. Billy tries to tell people back home about Tralfamadore, but Barbara only think he's nuts. Her husband Stanley isn't so sure, since he heard about an actress named Montana Wildhack gone missing. Billy knows the time of his death. In the future, he will be shot by an old Paul Lazzaro, while giving a lecture about Tralfamadore. He and Montana have a son. The Tralfamadorias applaud. Billy and Montana wave. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Such a disjointed non-linear story could be confusing and/or annoying, but director George Ray Hill manages to make the transitions almost logical, as the old and new scenes have some common feature. The story itself has some power, though not particularly "fun." (war, mortality, etc.)

Cultural Connection
SR was well received by film critics, winning several awards. It was not as well received by the ticket-buying public, however. The abundant foul language in the beginning, and full-upper nudity by Valerie Parinne, made SF a bit hard-edged for mainstream audiences. The fragmentary jumble of the story was also not well received by the general public either.

Notes
Based on the Book -- Much has already been written (and easily available in the internet) about Vonnegut's 1969 novel. SF was a fairly close adaptation of the book. A couple characters were omitted and some literary devices not used, but Vonnegut himself was pleased with the film. The war segments are partially autobiographical, as Vonnegut himself was a POW, housed in a former slaughterhouse in Dresden during the infamous firebombing.

Unstuck In Time -- To dramatize Billy Pilgrim's being "unstuck in time," his life story is told in intermixed fragments. Most are of his WWIi experiences with his post-war life woven in. It amounts to a heavy use of the literary device of flashback, and one flashforward, from the vantage point of his life on Tralfamadore. The flashbacks -- in the war, to pre-war, to post-war, to back in the war, etc. etc. -- are usually connected by some shared event. Billy falling down. Billy waking up, Being lectured to, etc. much as how people's memories can be triggered by some present stimulus.

Counter-Bunyan -- By choice of the name: Billy Pilgrim, calls to mind John Bunyan's famous work, "Pilgrim's Progress". Vonnegut's Pilgrim somewhat similar, in that his life is presented as a series of events -- tests -- which begin to define him. Unlike Bunyan's Pilgrim, Vonnegut's Pilgrim does not progress towards a goal of finding God, so much as he becomes "enlightened" to a hybrid Zen-Calvinist-Quietist existentialism. There is evil, but "so it goes."

Scar of Dresden -- The fire bombing of Dresden holds center stage in SF, almost the glue that holds the story together. Pilgrim's pre-war life and post-war life segments jump around, but the Dresden thread remains linear. This event is every historical (for readers unfamiliar with WWII history). On the night of February 13th, 1945, British and American bombers dropped tons of explosive bombs and incendiary bombs on the center of Dresden. The Allies were embarrassingly successful. The resulting fire and destruction killed roughly 25,000 people, some by burning to death, but many by suffocation as the fire storm sucked all the oxygen from the air. For years afterward, (and even still today) the bombing of Dresden is debated. Was it a justified act of war, or an unjustified brutality of war? Vonnegut's story seems to preach the latter (loudly and often). Undercutting this, however, is the existentialism that Pilgrim learns. Things just are. Good and bad happen without value. As the Tralfamadorians say, you can't prevent the bad, so just concentrate on the good and try to overlook the bad. Perhaps this was Vonnegut's own coping mechanism, set in story form.

Adolescent Fantasy -- A foil to all the death and destruction of Pilgrim's past, and the crushing mediocrity of his present, is the adolescent (and old man) fantasy escapism of his future. He gets to live alone, free from all those nagging demands of the real world (an imperfect wife, troubled children, a dull career, etc.). He gets to live alone in an all-expenses-paid bachelor pad with no obligations. To complete the fantasy, he gets a young soft-porn actress as his perpetual playmate. (Life imitating art: Perinne was featured in Playboy magazine in May of '72) She (Montana) is the adolescent male dream -- pretty, buxom, libidinous and not too deep, mentally -- whose only goal in life appears to be to please him. This, then, becomes Pilgrim's coping mechanism for the horrors of war and the tedium of reality. War is hell, yes, but he'll have his bimbo afterward. Suburbia is hell, yes, but eventually, he'll get his bimbo. This might help Pilgrim cope, but his case is of no comfort to the rest of linear humanity (who survive war, and mediocrity) who don't get a bimbo in their old age (or stud muffin for the ladies).

Bottom line? It can be argued that SF is not really a sci-fi film, but rather, a war film, a fantasy film, a social satire, whatever. Yet, it gets onto sci-fi film lists. Perhaps having some aliens and time travel are enough to qualify. The non-linearity of the story keeps SF from being an easy-viewing popcorn film. Viewers who prefer simpler story lines may find SF too jumbled and confusing to the point of annoyance. Yet, for the more determined viewer, there is much in SF to muse over.

Planet of the Apes

This is, perhaps, the second biggest movie of 60s sci-fi. The biggest is 2001: A Space Odyssey, which set the benchmark for future cinema sci-fi. Planet of the Apes (PoA) would provide sequel fodder for the 70s and beyond, but was, in its first iteration, an A-level grand culmination of 50s sci-fi. PoA had big names: written (mostly) by Rod Serling, and starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, James Whitmore, etc.. Its director, Franklin Schaffner was big stuff too. He would go on to do Patton and The Boys From Brazil. This was no cheapy B film. Much has already been written about PoA, in books, magazines and internet articles, so this review won't try to cover everything.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Taylor, Dodge, Landon and Stewart are astronauts on an interstellar flight. Taylor (Heston) is making last log reports before entering his sleep chamber. They are rudely awakened when their ship crashes into a lake in a desert. Stewart died of old age, due to a leak in her chamber. The three men clamber out and make it to shore. The desert is lifeless, but they finally encounter vegetation, then people too. A tribe of cavemen steal their clothes. All are caught by gorillas on horseback, with guns. Dodge is killed. Landon lost. Taylor shot in the neck. Back in Ape City, a surgeon saves Taylor, but he cannot speak. He becomes the pet project of Zira, a chimpanzee animal psychologist. Taylor struggles to understand this "upside down" world in which apes are the civilized masters and humans are the beasts. Zira and her fiancee Cornelius are convinced Taylor is intelligent and proves their theories that apes evolved from men. Taylor escapes and causes mayhem in the city. He is recaptured, suddenly able to speak again. All the disturbance invokes a hearing in which Zira and Cornelius are up on charges of heresy. The sentence is handed down. Zira arranges for Taylor to escape. She and Cornelius leave the city too. They travel to an archeological dig site in the Forbidden Zone. They are followed by Dr. Zaius and his armed thugs. Cornelius shows Zaius archeological proof that man predates apes, but Zaius argues all the evidence away. Taylor holds Zaius hostage, demanding a horse, supplies and a gun. He rides off down the beach with his mute girlfriend, Nova. Zaius has the cave blown up to hide evidence that man was there first. Taylor discovers the half-buried Statue of Liberty in the beach sand. He then realizes that they landed back on earth somehow, in the far future. A nuclear war reduced mankind to brutes and elevated the apes. Fade to black. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
PoA is a classic bit of story telling and turned tables. There's enough food for thought to spawn several sequels. It has action, adventure and drama.

Cold War Angle
This is classic 50s mind-set. A nuclear war escalated to the point of destroying civilization as we know it. It was the Cold War nightmare come true.

Notes
Iconic Ending -- The twist ending of PoA is one of the most famous. It's final form was shaped by many hands, including the second script writer, Michael Wilson and director Franklin Schaffner. Yet, the idea was clearly Rod Serling's. He had done many rewrites of the script since he began in 1963. Boulle's twist ending, was that the astronauts reading the tale as flashback, turn out to BE apes. A movie couldn't withhold info like a book could, so Serling's twist was to reveal that the planet of the apes was actually earth. He used the Statue of Liberty as an earth-only icon. His endings had the statue in fragments, or just an arm, or the upper part of the head, overgrown in a jungle, etc. Serling was good at twist endings in his Twilight Zone episodes. One that is similar in theme to PoA was the 1959 episode, I Shot an Arrow into the Air, in which a crew of astronauts suffer some technical trouble and think they've crashed on a distant desert planet. The twist ending is that they discover they landed on earth. In that case, it was telephone poles that served the role of proof.

50s Roots -- One PoA's primary plot premises is a close copy to that used in World Without End ('56). A crew of astronauts inadvertently travel into the future, but they don't know that (yet). They crash land on a planet which turns out to have two populations -- bad brutes and good but "soft" humans. The spilt into those two populations was the result of a nuclear war. The iconic ending (see above) is solidly in the 50s' Atomic Angst idiom. Nuclear war would destroy our world. What survived would be bad. Serling had written several stories for his 1959 and 1969 Twilight Zone episodes with that moral underpinning.

Based on the Book -- Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel "Planet of the Apes" is essentially the same story as the movie, in it's middle portion. Astronauts find the earth of the future to be run by apes. Man has been reduced to an animal. Boulle's beginning, with a message-in-a-bottle, and two astronauts basically reading the story as flashback, was not screen-friendly. Boulle's ending in which the earth man flies back to find earth ruled by apes, had its problems too. Serling opted to leave Taylor stranded and alive. (a few early variations had him killed at the last). The novel's subtle commentary on oppressed working classes (in this case, apes made to work as slaves for humans, then visa versa) has been in sci-fi for decades. The movie did not delve into that theme as much.

Evolution's Popular Hole -- The Spring of '68 saw three big movies in a row incorporate the evolution of man into their plots. In all three, the slow-and-steady theory (held popularly, but not so much by scientists) is punctured by some outside influence. In Five Million Years to Earth, it was the Martians who tampered with earth apes, bestowing intelligence. In 2001 it will be aliens to mess with earth apes to start intelligence. In PoA, the surface of the plot suggests a lampooning of religion (in favor of evolution) but beneath that is the sting. Again, slow-and-steady did not do the trick. In PoA, it was a nuclear war which mutates apes into sentience, and degrades humans into beast-hood. All three movies play on the nagging doubt that slow-and-steady just couldn't have produced humans from apes. There had to be something outside that did the trick.

Bottom line? Planet of the Apes is a big-time classic of 1960s sci-fi. The original is better than the many sequels, though it's hard to recreate the power of the twist ending nowadays. Still, PoA is very much worth watching, for sci-fi fans and people who like action adventures.

Journey to the Center of Time

David L.Hewitt produced and directed this low low budget remix of the usual time travel ideas. That this film, Journey to the Center of Time, (JCT) bears more than a passing resemblance to The Time Travelers ('64) is no coincidence. Hewitt co-wrote the latter and directed the former. There is more on the parallels in the Notes section. Production values are low, as JCT tells yet another tale of man traveling to the future and earth's prehistoric past.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Dr. Gordon and his team are trying to use laser technology to photograph the past. Thus far, they can only go back 24 hours. Mr. Stanton is the bombastic new owner/director of the lab facility. He scoffs at their project and demands results within 24 hours, or he'll shut them down. While demonstrating their time lab for Stanton, Mark is compelled to push the 'laser cycling' beyond safe limits to force results. The time lab hurtles 5,000 years into the future. They see a sleek rocket and a war going on. "Aliens" (plain men) escort our four time travelers to their alien leader, Dr. Vina. She monologues about leaving a dying world, looking for a new home and how earth seemed nice until this war broke out. Earth combatants breech the aliens' defenses. A melee breaks out. Vina is shot with laser. She gives a cautionary warning as she dies. The other aliens help the travelers back to the time lab and send them on their way. The time lab overshoots the present and travels back into the past. Our travelers watch extended clips from old movies. WWII. Civil War. Cowboys and Indians. Sailing ships firing at each other. (history = war, apparently). They encounter another time travel ship hurtling at them towards the future. Mark radios it, but no response. Stanton panics and fires their laser at it, blowing it up. The time lab finally 'lands' in the year one million B.C. Stanton goes out to look around. Mark and Doc go to retrieve him. Karen stays behind, but is scared by a "giant" lizard. She fires the laser to fend it off, but shatters the laser's ruby in the process. She then runs outside too. They all meet up in a cave. Lining the cave walls are large precious gems. They look for a ruby to fix the laser. Stanton, as the greedy capitalist, just pockets gems. In a lava chamber, he greedily pulls another gem from the wall, which somehow causes more lava to rise. They try to flee along a narrow ledge, but Doc falls into the lava. Stanton gets back to the time lab well before Mark and Karen. He puts his pile of rubies on the laser table and sets the controls for home. This strands Mark and Karen. En route to the present, Stanton sees another time lab hurtling toward him. He hears Mark's radio warning, himself panicking, and firing. Stanton and the time lab blow up. Mark and Karen emerge from the jungle to find an empty time lab with settings the same as when they first landed. Oh well. Mark and Karen travel back to the present, but their time synchronization is off. They arrive several minutes too soon. Everyone in Time Central is frozen in the present. Worrying that when the present catches up with them that they might explode, or implode, or something bad, Mark and Karen get back into the time lab and set off for some undefined time in earth's future. They might be a new Adam and Eve for a brave new world. Star field, fade to credits. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
JCT is undeniably low budget and full of inane techno-blather, but it has 60s . It tries hard to be deep and complex. Despite some laggy padding, the story does at least move along to its denouement.

Cold War Angle
Like many of its 50s brethren, JCT is a cautionary tale about unchecked militarism in the future, and mega-weapons getting out of control. They arrive in the year 6,968 in the middle of a "nuclear war."

Notes
Time Travelers Retread? -- There are lots of similarities between JCT and The Time Travelers, but there are many differences too. This should be no surprise, as Hewitt co-wrote TTT and directed JCT. Below are some commonalities and differences.
Same Stuff: A time viewer project. Funding about to be cut off. Push the lasers beyond safe limits. Three scientists, one a woman, and a non-scientist. Future earth is bleak. A big fight between factions in the future. Return to present with people frozen. Time loops.
Different Stuff: A spherical 'ship' travels to the future instead of stepping through a portal. Obnoxious capitalist in lieu of comic relief janitor. Aliens in the future instead of mutants. Some of the travelers die. Instead of ending in a perpetual loop, Mark and Karen avoid the loop and set off for a (linear) future.

Ruby: The New DiLithium -- Throughout JCT the scientists keep talking about lasers and coherent light, etc., which is all fine and scientific. But, at other times, they talk about their ruby as if it were a Star Trek di-lithium crystal -- their quasi-nuclear power source. Near the end, Stanton piles some rough rubies he's collected in the cave, on the "laser" stand and somehow this restores the time lab's power. An amusing mix of fancy and factoids.

Slick Cheap -- Cheap sci-fi "space ship" sets in the 50s were cobbled together out of military surplus, and resembled the insides of a submarine. Note how cheap in the mid 60s had gone through an upgrade. Smooth orange octagonal walls (no boiler rivets) for the interior of the time lab. There were lots of flush-set blinking lights and that really cool quarter-opening sliding door. And what about that utterly pointless scissor lift that lowered Stanton three feet from the 'mezzanine' to the sunken-livingroom center area? It was still cheap, but it was following a different vision.

Want Babes? Be A Computer -- Note the background of the Time Central facility. The back wall is filled with their "computer" (lots of lights and non-moving tape reels.) Yet, this beast requires a bevy of beauties to attend to it. Half a dozen or so pretty, and leggy young women in high heels (and white lab coats) stand there in glamor poses. Hewitt (also the film's producer) must have been quite the man around town with the ladies. "Hey, I can get you part in a movie..."

Pre-Carol -- Watch for Lyle Waggoner in his brief role as alien squad leader. He doesn't get much for a part. This is before he became famous on the Carol Burnett Show.

Poupee, We Hardly Knew Ye -- The credits announce: "Introducing: Poupee Gamin" in the usual style for launching a career. Her part in JCT was minimal as Dr. Vina. She stood, for awhile, in her tight "bald" cap and very ample cleavage. Perhaps that was Poupee's outstanding feature(s). Yet, Poupee did not go too far. She played small parts in two more movies in 1967, then disappeared from the screen.

Spider-Rat-Bat Cameo -- In a nod to Ib Melchior, Hewitt included a very brief glimpse of the Spider-Rat-Bat creature from Melchior's Angry Red Planet ('60). Hewitt and Melchior collaborated on TTT. This brief glimpse occurs when our band of four are viewing glimpses of the future before they get there. No explanation. It's just there.

Bottom line? JCT is a rehash of time travel tropes and stocked with utterly stereotypic two-dimensional characters. The overall quality is marginal, and enough pointless padding to frustrate the attention-span-challenged. It feels like it was a one-hour TV episode padded out to just barely make "feature film" runtime. Yet, for fans of 60s time travel stories, it has plenty of psuedo-science babble and LASERs. Lots of laser talk. The result, while not deep nor cerebral, has some entertainment value.

Dimension 5

The team that brought you Cyborg 2087 produced another time travel story. Dimension 5 (D5) is only marginally a sci-fi film. It amounts to a commie plot spy thriller with a time-shifting belt as one of his gadgets. Jeffrey Hunter stars as the agent with the almost-prescient name of Justin Power. Other recognizable second-teir actors include Harold Sakata ("Odd Job" in Goldfinger), Robert Ito (Quincy, MD) and France Nuyen (Star Trek, Elaan of Troyius).

Quick Plot Synopsis
The story opens to a car chase in which Justin Power eludes police by using his time-shifting belt. Back in the USA, his boss has another assignment for him. A chinese plot to blow up Los Angeles is afoot. The NIA have captured an enemy agent. Powers is assigned to bring him in. He uses his time belt to discover and foil an assassination attempt. Interrogation via a truth-gizmo extracts that the Dragons (a mafia-like gang) are importing a nuclear bomb in pieces and assembling it. Powers is given a pretty new partner, Kitty (France Nuyen). She has also been playing double agent with Dragon. An attempt is made to blow up Power, but it fails by chance. Power goes to Nancy Ho's apartment. (she gave the explosive owl). She tries to kill him, but Kitty saves Power. She also turns him over to Stoneface, an agent of Big Buddha, the local Dragon boss. Stoneface reneges on her deal to meet Big Buddha. She decks them all. Back at Power's apartment, Kitty gets a time belt too, and some lessons. Big shipment coming to Ming Products warehouse. They go check it out. They poof three weeks into the future to see what gets unloaded. They find lead containers (with U238 inside) in bags of rice. Big Buddha and his minions have Power and Kitty surrounded. They poof out to escape, but Kitty poofs back in to threaten Big Buddha. Back story about him being an executioner in Nanking and her as abused girl left for dead. A minion knocks out Kitty. Power finds them in an office. Stand off, then drawn out fist fight. Woman minion stabs Big Buddha. All escape just fine. Happy music. Power and Kitty say they'll go back in time and do it again the right way. Flirting and frolicking. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Short-jump time travel as practical tool has some interest. The poor-man's-Bond flavor has its amusements too.

Cold War Angle
Instead of the more customary allegory, the Cold War is part of the plot. Chinese communists (this time) are the rogue element, trying sneak a bomb into America. This aspect actually has some resonance to post 9/11 America,

Notes
Budget Bond -- There is an unavoidable similarity between D5 and the various Bond films that preceded it. Hunter plays a similar sort of handsome, suave, gadget-laden special agent. He has a boss and a gizmo-wizard guy. And, there are plenty of babes around. Power's time belt gave him quite the advantage, making up for his apparent lack of observational skills. (the whole gift owl (bomb) in the restaurant thing did not seem just a little suspicious to him?) His beautiful cohort, Kitty, seems the more capable spy.

Odd Job 2 -- Harold Sakata played "Odd Job" in the Bond film Goldfinger. He lends some of that menace momentum to the role of Big Buddha: the Dragon gang's Los Angeles boss. In an odd quirk, the screenplay has him wheelchair bound. Even more peculiar is that he was dubbed by Marvin Millar.

Time Tale Two -- D5 is the second time-travel movie put out by Harold Goldman and his United Pictures group. For D5, Goldman tapped Arthur C. Pierce (again) for the screenplay. Pierce had written the time-travel story for Cyborg 2087. In both, he made a special effort to point out that time travelers to the past had to use non-lethal force (paralyzer darts or rays), to avoid potentially big changes to the future timeline. Apparently, it's okay to kill people in your future, though to be fair, Powers uses his time belt to scope out future events (such as the assassination of Chang) or to test a situation (the warehouse ambush). He would then repeat the event, better informed, so that non-lethal force could be used. Time traveling spies, with a heart.

Storm Clouds Rising -- Note the demands of the Dragons. They will blow up L.A. unless "all American troops are withdrawn from asia." Hidden in those lines is the reality of increased American presence in southeast Asia. The "Vietnam War" would soon become woven into the American cultural fabric. But as yet, it was just storm clouds on the horizon.

Shadow of War Crimes? -- A somewhat interesting bit of back story, is that Kitty was a young girl in Nanking before WWII. "Big Buddha" was apparently a cruel POW warden who executed her parents and abused her. The "Rape of Nanking" is not a common plot nugget in American films. Nazi prison guards or evil doctors in hiding are much more common.

Made Small -- Even though there is a theatrical poster, the whole flavor of D5 smacks of being made for the small screen. From the titles and credits, to the music, to the simple script easily wrapped up in the end, D5 is a typical made-for-TV film.

Bottom line? As a sci-fi, there's not much to recommend D5. It is essentially a very low budget secret agent story. Where some of Pierce's films have a sci-fi setting or tone, D5 is a low-budget, poor-man's James Bond with few gadgets and fewer babes. Fans of cheap spy stories may find more to like.

Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150

Following up on the success of the first Dr. Who feature film. AARU productions put out a second. Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 (DIE) was, like the first movie, a big screen remake of six episodes from the small screen's second season. Peter Cushing again plays the Doctor, but this time with a bit more zeal. Roberta Tovey plays young Susan again. The rest of the cast are new. In several ways, this sequel rises higher than the first film, in having more action and a faster pace.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Policeman Tom Campbell fails to stop some jewel thieves. He rushes to what he thinks is a police box, and stumbles into the Tardis. Dr. Who was just about to depart, so he must come along. Inside are the Doctor, Susan and the Doctor's niece, Louise. The arrive in London, at the year 2150. London is in ruins. A scruffy man named Wyler helps Louise and Susan hide, but Tom and the Doctor are taken prisoners by the Daleks and their human mind-controlled minions, the "robomen." The prisoners are put aboard a "flying saucer" ship to be transported to a Dalek mine operation. Susan and Louise have fallen in among humans living underground and plotting rebellion. They stage an attack on the saucer, freeing the Doctor, though the attack is crushed. The Doctor and a rebel named David head to the country to find the mine. The Doctor is certain that the mine is the key to the invasion. Susan and Wyler head for the country too. Louise and Tom ride in the saucer. Wyler and Susan are betrayed into the Daleks' hands. Tom and Louise are helped hide by a miner. A profiteer takes the Doctor and David to the mine. The minor says that the Daleks are trying to break open the earth so its metallic core is expelled. They then plan to make the earth into a space ship. The Doctor hatches a plan to divert their seismic bomb down an alternate shaft to a magnetic anomaly. Tom succeeds in getting to the shaft, but the Doctor captured when the profiteer sells him out. Using loose boards, Tom fashions diverter in the vertical shaft. The Doctor is brought to the Dalek leader. The Doctor uses the Dalek PA system to order the robomen to attack the Daleks. The do, but eventually, the robomen are all killed. This gave Tom time to finish the diverter. The bomb is dropped down the shaft, but bounces off the boards, down the diagonal shaft. It blows up sooner than expected and releases great magnetic waves. These suck the Daleks down the shaft. Many things explode. The remaining Daleks take off in their saucer ship, but it too is drawn to the mine shaft. It crashes and explodes. Anything else Dalek explodes and burns too. Dr. Who declares that the earth is safe from further Dalek invasion since we know their weakness -- magnetism. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
DIE has more action and a busier plot than the first movie. It was amusing to see that 200 years in the future, Londoners would still be driving around 50s-vintage vehicles. The saucer in DIE was pretty cool, and well done. (much better than the Ed Wood-ian wobbly hubcap of the TV series)

Cold War Angle
Beneath the surface-level replay of War of the Worlds and dabbling in Nazi archetypes, is still the notion that a hostile power (in this case, the Daleks) recklessly plan to use a nuclear bomb to make the Earth more to their liking.

Notes
Dalek SS -- Where the first movie tapped into exiting "Nazi" ehtos, DIE takes it up a notch. The robomen are helmeted, and dressed in black (The Daleks' SS troops). They round up prisoners, whip the stragglers and obey orders from their superiors without question. DIE's robomen are more military than the TV series portrayed them. On TV, they came across more like zombies -- stiff, awkward and slow. They were also dress in plain clothes. Only the silver headgear with metal mutton-chops set them apart. In DIE, we have the classic nazi visuals of guard towers with search lights and forced labor camps.

A Nod to Wells -- The trope of an invasion of England, and a battlefield in London, owe much to H.G. Wells. His novel War of the Worlds (1898) was not the first to depict England invaded, but it is the most famous. There is something deeply visceral to the British, about seeing their great city in ruins. It's a trope they return to many times.

Deviations -- While the screenplay of DIE follows that of the television series, in large part, there are numerous deviations. Most notable, is the replacement of Barbara and Ian (as seen on TV) with the Doctor's niece Louise and the chance policeman, Tom. Necessarily missing from the TV version was the budding love story between Susan (a young woman of 23) and the rebel David. DIE still used Roberta Tovey (aged 11), so the romance threads had to go. Another notable change was the omission of the Daleks' beast, the Slyther. A notable addition in DIE was that of magnetism being the Achilles Heel of the Daleks. On the TV show, they're simply blown up in the end. In the movie, massive magnetism sucks them (and their space ship) into the earth.

Who Was Boring First? -- Someone is boring deep into the earth so they can explode a nuclear bomb to exploit a crack in the earth? Haven't we just seen this? Crack in the World used this exact same premise. CitW was in production in late 1964, released in theaters in May '65. DIE was released in August '66. The television episodes upon which its screenplay was based, aired in November and December of '64. Their teleplays obviously predate that.

Comic Quirks -- In the first movie, Ian is played as a comic-relief bumbler. Actor Bernard Cribbins plays the role of the "other" man in Tardis (constable Tom Campbell) as the serious hero most of the time.. Yet, director Gordon Femyng still inserted a comic scene which seems oddly out of place. The scene is aboard the Dalek saucer, when Tom "hides" by tagging along with a squad of robomen. They all act in unison -- rather like a drill team. Tom is always comically out of sync. Later, there is a retread of the classic unstoppable food conveyor gag, made famous by Lucille Ball.

Bottom line? Dr. Who aficionados consider the two feature films to be non-canonical, since they deviate (somewhat) from the TV series. As stand-alone films, they hold up well enough, even if some of the quirkiness of the series leaks through.

The Wizard of Mars

Easily overlooked in the increasing numbers of sci-fi films released in the mid 60s, The Wizard of Mars (WoM) as a very-low budget indie film that was 20 years behind its time. Some businessmen (vending machine operators, according to Wikipedia) wanted to make films. David L. Hewitt (writer in The Time Travelers agreed to help, acting as producer, writer and director. To his credit, Hewitt was able to get John Carradine, for marquee power. The film itself, however, suffered both from a tiny budget, one-film actors and the usual pitfalls a one-man-show piece is heir to. When released for television, the movie was retitled "Horrors of the Red Planet."

Quick Plot Synopsis
Four astronauts, Captain Steve, Charlie, Doc and Dorothy, are on the first manned orbital mission to Mars. Their task was to orbit and map only. A "freak" storm in space knocks out their control systems. They jettison the "main stage" prevent plummeting to the surface. With only nominal control, they are able to crash land on Mars. Once down, they have only enough battery to radio for help OR open the hatch. Doc persuades them to go out. They do, just before the ship catches fire. They have only enough oxygen for four days. They inflate two rafts and float south down the water-filled canal from the ice cap, following signals they're sure are their main stage. (which contains more O2 and supplies). They encounter some flaccid canal worms, and thick fog. The canal becomes a cave. Now on foot, the four wander through the cave, finding lava pits. They discover a hole back to the surface. There, they wander through a sandy desert, almost out of oxygen. The signals turn out to be a derelict NASA probe. Residual O2 in the probe gives them a couple more days. A sand storm blows through. The storm uncovered golden pavers. A golden road, says Dorothy. They follow it to an ancient and abandoned city on a mesa. Inside, the corridors are all lined with columns. These turn out to be tubes containing the hibernating bodies of the über-brainy martians. Through a sort of mind-meld, the martians tell Steve to go into another room. There, John Carradine's head floats, superimposed over various star field photos. He (the "wizard" of the title) is the manifestation of all the martian minds. He talks for a long time, about how his people were the masters of the universe, with a vast empire of a thousand worlds, etc. etc. They even conquered time, managing to pull themselves (in the city) out of time. The eons gave them time to realize that immortality was wrong. Life needs death. Trouble was, they could no longer affect the physical world. The wizard tells Steve what to do to put the city back into regular time. They place a small sphere (containing a model of the city) into the hub of a big pendulum/clcok works. it starts swinging. As time catches up with the city, it begins to crumble. The four astronauts run through the falling debris, finally getting out just before the city disappears. The all fall onto the sand, exhausted. The next moment, they're waking up on board their ship. They're dirty and the men have scruffy beard growth. Mission control calls. They're two minutes overdue for a check in. Two minutes? says Steve. Carradine delivers a few final lines about life and death. Fade to black. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
There is something very nostalgic about the style. If you look beyond the lame production techniques, there are a few nuggets of thought to muse over.

Cold War Angle
The story is more philosophical about life and mortality than anxiety over commies.

Notes
Old School -- The bulk of WoM is reminiscent of travel adventure B films from the 30s and early 40s. Back then, movies were still novel enough that images of different landscapes, caves, deserts, etc. (or exotic animals, for jungle flicks), was enough to keep audiences interested. Some 50s B films, such as Unknown World ('51) used this format, but this was no longer enough. By the mid-60s, it was really not enough.

Talk To Me -- Notable in WoM is Hewitt's screenplay is a heavy reliance on words, and near-total absence of action. Action shots and effects are expensive. Hewitt had some lofty intentions in his story, telling of a highly advanced race who could freeze time for themselves, but came to regard their immortality as a mistake. This part of the story is all delivered mostly in the Wizard's monologuing. The other characters were fairly shallow foils for dialogue. Steve: the brave leader. Doc, the obligatory scientist type. Charlie, the comic relief and Dorothy, the token helpless female. Hewitt's skills as a director and writer would improve, but they're pretty rudimentary in WoM.

Hype For Dollars -- The theatrical poster promised some pretty high-energy stuff. "We Triple Dare You to retain control of your mind as screeching creatures attack your brain!" and much more. Audiences in the mid 60s had seen some pretty impressive sci-fi effects. WoM was probably a major disappointment for them. WoP was a cheap mass-market product designed to make a little money for its investors, then disappear. The investors weren't making art, just a few bucks. That said, it does seem that Hewitt was trying to convey a deeper literary meaning via his story.

A Bit of Baum -- Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz formed only a scant framework for Hewitt to hang a story on. We do have four travelers, one a woman named Dorothy. The do find a yellow (or golden) road and follow it to an unusual city. Inside, they do talk with a projected floating head, and tell it that they just want to go home. As in Oz, it wraps up by being all a dream -- or almost. Sci-fi liked the trope of a time warp to put things back the way they were, in lieu of an actual dream. Hewitt wasn't out to recast the whole Oz story on Mars, however, so trying to parse out which astronaut was the scarecrow, etc. is probably a waste.

Easy Dubs It -- A familiar budget-saving trick in film making was to add the sound track in the studio, post production. One handy thing about having the characters wear their Mercury Program astronaut suits most of the time, is that you could hardly ever see their lips moving within those helmets. Easy dubbing. There are many long shots, or shots with the actors looking away where the dubbing was easy to.

Bottom line? For people who expect high-quality productions in their movies, WoM will be a mind-numbing bore. For people with a more sympathetic view towards the old 30s travel-adventure genre, or a taste for philosophical musing, WoM has a few nuggets.

The Time Travelers

Ib Melchior, who brought us Angry Red Planet ('60), Journey to the Seventh Planet ('62) and helped adapt Defoe's novel to give us Robinson Crusoe on Mars ('64) was both writer and director of another imaginative film: The Time Travelers (TTT). It repackaged some familiar tropes and traditional themes but gave them a mid-60s flavor. A team of scientists accidentally travel to earth's future to find it post-apocalyptic ruin.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Dr. Erik von Steiner, Steve and Carol are working on a time camera in a university lab. They want to get images from the past and future. Technician Danny watches. The time camera keeps not quite working, so Steve cranks up the juice. Sparks and smoke fly. The image is a rocky wasteland 107 years in the future. Danny discovers that it's actually a time portal. They all go through and are quickly chased by a band of tall mutant men. They flee into a canyon, then a cave. There, they are saved by advanced people with androids. Earth had a nuclear war that wiped out everything. Only bands of mutants remain. Supplies are limited in the caves, so Dr. Varno's people have built a rocket to take them to New Earth (Alpha Centauri 4). Several scenes depict the wonders of technology. The four time travelers cannot come, for lack of supplies and room. They build another time portal machine as best they can remember. Just before the rocket is to blast off, the mutants attack en mass. Despite crowded fights in the tunnels, the mutants are winning. The rocket catches fire, falls and explodes. Holed up in the time portal room, Steve fires up their new portal. They see the university campus on screen. The mutants break into the portal room. Another pitched battle rages. Many people flee through the portal, then close it behind them. On the campus, they find they're in a frozen moment of time just before the original portal machine sparked. The screen is black and dial set for 100,000 years in the future. They all climb through. The scene brightens. Our 13 time-refugees stroll in a peaceful looking sun lit field and trees. Meanwhile, back in the university lab, the story resumes as it began. A video montage of clips quickly retells the story, then repeats faster and faster until the images blur together and dissolve over a photo of a galaxy. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Time travel movies are inherently more thought-provoking. TTT is no exception. The acting is respectable and action plentiful enough to keep interest up. The special effects are pretty good for a limited budget, sometimes taking on the feel of stage magic.

Cold War Angle
TTT contains a blatant and familiar Cold War message: Nuclear war will ruin the earth. To explain the earth of 2071, Dr. Varno plays some stock footage of 1950s nuclear tests and destruction. His somewhat florid homily is the film's cautionary message. "Earth is now just a burnt out sterile slag in space. The last generation mutated -- once humans --, the offspring of the radiation saturated survivors, roam the desolate surface, possessed by the insanity of crippling deformities of mind and body. When they are gone, earth will be lifeless, and incapable of sustaining life, as the barren moon itself."

Notes
BunkerVision -- It had become received canon that a post-nuclear world would have a remnant of normal people survive underground. Those on the surface would become mutants. World Without End ('56) was about some people from the mid-20th-century who travel to an earth in the future. That post-apocalyptic future has the "normal" people surviving underground and the surface roamed by brutal mutants. This trope appeared early on in 1000 Years From Now (or "Captive Women") ('52) in which the normals lived underground the the mutants on the surface. This was also a feature in Beyond the Time Barrier ('60) -- normals below, mutants above.

Freeze Frame -- A notable feature in TTT was time could be different for people in the same space. Our intrepid survivors get back to the university, only to find everyone frozen in a moment, or at least moving very very slowly. This asynchronisity makes the new people invisible to the frozen people. Also of interest was that the "fast" people could not affect matter in the slow time. Objects were frozen and immovable to them. Ib Melchior wrote this trope into another time-warp screenplay for the series Outer Limits. The episode The Premonition (January 1965) featured a test pilot and his wife who became frozen in a 10 second bit of time. They could move no objects there, but fashioned a way to save their daughter from being struck by a runaway truck, by using the seatbelts from her car (which was apparently taken into the time warp with them). The interesting thought in all this, is that someone can visit the past, but would be asynchronous with it, so could not change it anyhow. Erik, Steve and Carol could not prevent the nuclear war.

Fertile Seeds -- The concept of a re-creatable time portal had enough legs to spawn repeats. Journey to the Center of Time ('67) would come from co-writer of TTT, David Hewlitt. It will be a repeat of the trope. The 1966 TV series Time Tunnel would serialize the historical adventures possible with such a portal. Even such later TV shows as Stargate SG-1 would revisit the handy notion of a time portal. It's just too handy of a trope to not re-use.

Android Fascination -- Much run-time is devoted to a fascination with building the androids. The gee-whiz nature of the androids almost competes for the role of the purpose of the story. Even the fight scenes devote special attention to damaged androids fighting on or one long segment in which an android burns to a charred frame.

The Future is Groovy -- the future envisioned in sci-fi was becoming more 60s flavored. Note the segment in which Reena (in short floofy skirt and tall white boots), gyrates as she plays electro-techno music on the multi-colored Lumichord. Of course it helps that Delores Wells was Playmate of the Month, June 1960. The imagined future was taking on more of a mood of sensual abandon. Very 60s, Very groovy.

Bottom line? TTT is a cut above the usual B-grade sci-fi. It is one of American International Pictures' better efforts. It is not well known, but for fans of the genre, is well worth the effort to find and watch.