Welcome back to my blog. Here’s my recommendation of a movie to check out today and hope you punch your “Ticket to the Movies!” OK, today, we’re going a little sci-fi and serial killer today with “Time After Time” in which H.G. Wells follows “Jack the Ripper” into 1979 San Francisco via his time machine. Whew! What a story! Plus, it has solid acting and a worthy cast.
“Time After Time” stars Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells (a real person, if you didn’t realize already); Mary Steenburgen as the woman he meets and falls in love with in 1979; and David Warner, who simply defines the on-screen character of real-life serial killer “Jack the Ripper.”
The science fiction component is time traveling. In real life, Wells wrote “The Time Machine” and “The War of the Worlds” and at the start of the film, McDowell is telling friends what he has invented. One of the friends is “Dr. John Leslie Stevenson” and, unknown to the others, he is “Jack the Ripper.” As police close in on what would be his final murder in London, Warner uses the time machine to escape.
To 1979 in San Francisco. “Time After Time” proposes that a time machine traveling into the future will arrive where the machine is stored in the future. So, since the time machine was on display in a museum in 1979 in San Francisco, that’s where it appears. However, it always returns to McDowell’s basement (and became a museum piece after Wells’ death in 1946.
Much of “Time After Time” is McDowell using his intelligence to track down Warner in San Francisco. He encounters Steenburgen at a bank where Warner had been cashing old currency to get modern money to pay his way in the future. Warner is no idiot and ultimately discovers that Steenburgen is in touch with McDowell.
Along the way, McDowell is introduced to airplanes, modern dress … and Hare Krishnas!
The two meet when McDowell discovers Warner’s hotel room. The conversation between the two is the best scene in the movie and chilling when Warner concludes finally that the future was not the utopia of McDowell’s fantasy. After showing McDowell violence on tee-vee from movies to the news, Warner tells him, “… I belong here completely and utterly. I’m home. Ninety years ago I was a freak. Today, I’m an amateur.”
Sadly, the comment is even more true today than it was more than 40 years ago when the movie had its premiere.
You’ll have to remember or find out for yourself as to how the film concludes, but I will say the movie remains intelligent throughout its entire run.
So, I say punch your “Ticket to the Movies!” or and watch “Time After Time.” It’s available as part of the subscription to a few streaming services and available to rent on others. So, find it! Watch it! Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later for “Time After Time.”
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