A repeated background event appears in The Time Travelers (1964), the destruction of a habitable Earth by atomic war, which also motivates events in the just previously reviewed In the Year 2889, although this time the war happens in the future, not the past. A group of physicists are researching how to open a window on the future and they accomplish their goal – showing a blasted barren land where their campus currently resides. As they struggle to stabilize the window, they inadvertently convert the window into a door. One of their assistants, a goofy power engineer, stumbles through the doorway and into the future. When he disappears from view, the scientists set out in search of him.
I see into our future. It appears to be filled with coneheads!
Attacked by human-like creatures and having lost their doorway, they retreat (I openly admired how the young lady could out-sprint her male colleagues despite her high heels) into a maze of rocks, until they are trapped in a cave. Much to their relief, they are saved by the last true humans on Earth. They learn the plans for escaping this blasted place (it’s not a bad plan), but that they don’t fit in. What to do? That’s where the tension starts to build.
Unfortunately, the makers of this film introduced a scene or two that didn’t really belong: the seduction of the power engineer, a comedic scene involving android parts which move on their own, a scene in which the women discuss their romantic inclinations, all done to terribly dated, even excruciating music. These feel superfluous and detract from the pacing of the movie. On the other end of the spectrum, a creature described as midway between the enemy mutants and true human is introduced, saved from out-of-hand execution, and then never seen again. What?
We’re also subjected to a couple of battle scenes, which have some passing interest in how the androids’ destruction is handled, but are really rather amateurishly handled. However, as one of the battles takes place in the laboratory as the scientists feverishly work on their problem, it does show some ambition on the part of the movie-makers to ratchet up the tension.
The visuals are also a bit amateurish, and the sound is fuzzy at times; definitely not a tour de force for the movie making staff. This is not a movie made for the ages, nor do I recommend it; yet, for all that, I will say that their depiction of the final conundrum is innovative without being didactic, bringing home a basic problem the scientists face – and may never solve.
