Malcolm McDowell is H.G. Wells.\u00a0 He has invented a time machine and is about to use it to explore the past and future from his home in 1890, London.\u00a0 But at a dinner party where he is announcing his project one of his friends John Leslie Stevenson steals it to escape from the police who have discovered that he is Jack the Ripper.\u00a0 Stevenson is played by David Warner that I only know from his turn as Bob Cratchit in the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol.<\/p>\n
After the time machine returns empty from the Ripper\u2019s escape Wells follows him back to 1979 San Francisco.\u00a0 No explanation is given as to how the time machine can also move through space but since this movie isn\u2019t very good, we won\u2019t quibble about unimportant gaps.<\/p>\n
In San Francisco Wells meets up with a currency exchange bank clerk named Amy Robbins played abysmally by Mary Steenburgen and naturally they fall in love and we\u2019re trapped into listening to their various thoughts on women\u2019s liberation and casual sex.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty awful.\u00a0 Amy thinks her \u201ccareer\u201d at the bank is her whole life.\u00a0 She left her husband because he wanted her to raise a family.\u00a0 The monster.<\/p>\n
Wells finds Stevenson and he tells Wells that 1979 is the greatest place in the world for Jack the Ripper with casual sex and easy access to women and sharp knives.\u00a0 Then there is this ridiculous chase scene where the two Englishmen are running around on the streets of San Francisco. \u00a0It looks ludicrous and they\u2019re not really running very fast.\u00a0 Then supposedly Stevenson is killed in a minor car accident.\u00a0 Wells takes this opportunity to see the Redwoods outside of San Francisco and talk to Amy about women\u2019s lib again.<\/p>\n
Then we find out that Jack the Ripper must not have been killed because women start turning up butchered.\u00a0 Wells tells Amy that he\u2019s from 1890.\u00a0 She tells him he\u2019s nuts and to prove to her that he is telling the truth he uses the time machine to bring her forward a week and she finds a newspaper that shows that Jack the Ripper has killed her the day before.<\/p>\n
So, they go back to the week before and try to catch the Ripper and save Amy\u2019s life.\u00a0 Cars get flat tires; Wells is arrested by the police as the Ripper and it appears that Amy is murdered and hacked to pieces by the Ripper.\u00a0 The police let Wells go because he couldn\u2019t have killed Amy while he was in custody.\u00a0 But, big mistake, it was Amy\u2019s friend who was butchered and now Stevenson has her hostage and wants to trade her life for the key to the time machine.<\/p>\n
Stevenson tricks Wells and after getting the key takes Amy with him as he heads to the time machine.\u00a0 Wells takes a car and somehow figures out how to drive at night in a crowded city and follows them to the machine.\u00a0 There he begs for Amy\u2019s life but Stevenson decides to take her with him but somehow in a way that doesn\u2019t make any sense she escapes him.\u00a0 As Stevenson enters into the machine and begins setting it for the future Wells removes another key from the outside of the machine and this sends Stevenson to \u201cinfinity,\u201d whatever that means.\u00a0 Hoorah for Wells and Amy.\u00a0 Now Amy decides that her bank job isn\u2019t as important as marrying Wells back in 1890.\u00a0 And they live happily ever after.<\/p>\n
This movie is so bad that it both sucks and blows.\u00a0 The special effects are laughably bad and cheap looking.\u00a0 They remind me of some effects that they used on Gilligan\u2019s Island.\u00a0 The dialog is awful and the 1970s disco hedonism is embarrassing.\u00a0 Mary Steenburgen is an awful actress but this part is even below her talents.\u00a0 The quality of this film is at the level of a made for television movie.\u00a0 McDowell and Warner are decent actors but they aren\u2019t given anything to work with here.\u00a0 It\u2019s all too silly and badly done.<\/p>\n
Not recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malcolm McDowell is H.G. Wells.\u00a0 He has invented a time machine and is about to use it to explore the past and future from his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[3134,462,3133,43,38,1355,265,264],"class_list":["post-14923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-david-warner","tag-h-g-wells","tag-malcolm-mcdowell","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-science-fiction","tag-time-travel"],"yoast_head":"\n