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For my first film review on this site, I’m going all the way back to 1979 for a movie that you can find on DVD.  I think you’ll discover it to be entertaining whether you saw it more than thirty-five years ago, or if you experience it for the first time this weekend.

Time After Time isn’t the best time travel movie ever made, but it’s one of them. I saw it back when it first came out. It was a fun movie back then, and it’s still got a lot going for it. If you can forgive and maybe even forget the dinky special effects, you might just enjoy this thriller from a time before CGI.

It’s the story of Victorian writer H.G. Wells’ race through time to stop Jack the Ripper, who escapes to 1979 San Francisco, where he starts murdering again without missing a beat. Malcom McDowell plays a soft-spoken H.G. Wells, a novelist and Utopian futurist, who just happens to look like John-Boy Walton with a mustache. David Warner is excellent as respected London surgeon Dr. Stevenson, a chess partner of Wells, who moonlights as one of the most notorious killers the world has ever known. Despite his handsome and sophisticated façade, Warner projects an understated sense of danger and evil. He easily adapts to the 20^th century where he seems quite at home as a serial killer in San Francisco’s seamier underbelly.

However, Mary Steenburgen, in a very early role, is the real star of the film. As Amy, a thoroughly modern, liberated woman of the 70s, she’s Wells’ love interest, as well as one of the Ripper’s targets. She meets Wells when he stops by the bank where she’s employed as a foreign currency exchange agent. Intrigue and suspense follow as she tries to help Wells catch the killer while staying alive.

The film is less a science fiction vehicle and more of a thriller with bits of humor thrown in. The direction seems stilted through the first scenes, but by the time we reach 1979 San Francisco, the suspense is building and we can see the film’s potential to entertain. It’s a life-or-death chess game in real life between Jack the Ripper and H.G. Wells.

Nicholas Meyer wrote and directed Time After Time.  This is an early directing effort from the writer and/or director of movies that include The Seven Percent Solution and several of the Star Trek films.

If you’re looking for time-bending fun, the Back to the Future franchise is better than Time After Time.  Not much else qualifies, though.  It’s not a great film, but it’s really good. Time After Time is a time travel fantasy that’s definitely worth seeing more than once, maybe even time after time.

I strongly recommend that you find a copy on DVD and give it a chance. I think you’ll begin to appreciate movies from an earlier time.

 

 

Reviewed by: Tom Bell on June 24, 2015