Time After Time on DVD

If you're interested in a ripping time travel yarn and were disappointed in the 2002 version of The Time Machine, here's one that'll get your juices flowing.

Malcolm McDowell stars in this Nicholas Meyer film, a sci fi adventure / romance that's more intelligent that the average fare - as befitting its subject matter.

McDowell plays H.G. Wells himself, who at the time was a successful columnist but who hadn't yet made his name as a science fiction author. But he's also a bit of an inventor and, in a storyline that kind of parallels the "real" story of "The Time Machine," is having a dinner party with some friends at which time he's going to make a Big Announcement. But his closest friend, John Lesley Stevenson (David Warner) is tardy and Wells makes the other guests wait for his arrival.

As it turns out, Stevenson has a reason for being late, a dark secret that becomes revealed when Scotland Yard shows up at Wells' door. Fortunately, they arrive after Wells has made his Big Announcement - that he's invented a real time machine and, once he gets up the nerve, plans to test it himself by jumping ahead to a future he feels will be the socialist Utopia for which he yearns.

But the arrival of the Bobbies spurs Stevenson into action. He takes the time machine and disappears in it, much to the chagrin of the cops.

Spurred on by his righteous indignation at what he's just learned about his friend, and a feeling of responsibility for having created his means of escape, Wells climbs into the now-returned time machine and heads back to the future in pursuit of Stevenson.

So much for the first ten minutes or so of this wonderful tale…

After some relatively cheesy special effects, Wells finds himself in 1979 San Francisco, where his Time Machine and other artifacts of his life are on display in a museum. He heads into this brave and strange new world to find Stevenson and bring him back to justice in his present before he can resume the activities that got him in trouble in the first place (and in a place in the space time continuum where he's unknown and therefore well hidden).

Here we get some great "fish out of water" scenes as Wells tries to find Stevenson who, it turns out, feels completely at home in the future.

Then the main subplot kicks in as Wells meets an attractive and free spirited bank clerk (Mary Steenburgen). They become an item, but their bliss is threatened by Stevenson and his determination to stay in the future and continue his ways at all costs.

And this review will leave it at that. If you want to find out how the story is resolved, get this DVD. You won't be sorry.

Meyer's direction is well paced and deft, and the performances are top notch. This is probably McDowell's best performance outside of A Clockwork Orange, and Steenburgen is completely believable as well. Warner, in an understated performance, is chilling as Stevenson.

Add to the mix a terrifically sweeping score from Miklos Rosza (Ben-Hur, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, among others), and you have a real package.

You won't be sorry about the DVD quality, either. Warners has done it right here, giving this ignored classic a great anamorphic widescreen (16x9 TV compatible) video transfer that's bright and sharp and colorful - and with a Dolby Digital surround that, while not 5.1 (alas) still sounds pretty good.

Extras kick off with a fascinating commentary by director/writer Meyer and star McDowell, as well as a text essay "It's About Time," that discusses time travel stories in general. There are also a series of theatrical trailers.

Time After Time, from Warner Home Video
112 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV compatible, Dolby Digital Surround
Starring Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, Mary Steenburgen
Produced by Herb Jaffee
Written and Directed by Nicholas Meyer

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