Time After Time (1979 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Time After Time | |
|---|---|
 Time After Time movie poster |
|
| Directed by | Nicholas Meyer |
| Produced by | Steve Hayes |
| Written by | Karl Alexander (story) and Steve Hayes (story), Nicholas Meyer (screenplay) |
| Starring | Malcolm McDowell David Warner Mary Steenburgen |
| Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
| Cinematography | Paul Lohmann |
| Editing by | Donn Cambern |
| Distributed by | Orion Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 31, 1979 |
| Running time | 112 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Time After Time is a 1979 American feature film produced by Orion Pictures, starring Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, David Warner, and Charles Cioffi. It was written and directed by Nicholas Meyer. The screenplay was based on the novel of the same name, written at the same time as Meyer's screenplay by his University of Iowa associate, Karl Alexander.
[edit] Plot
The movie tells of how science fiction author H.G. Wells (McDowell) builds a time machine in 1893 London, the same one Wells fictionalized in his novel The Time Machine. Before he is able to test the machine, a physician friend of his (Warner) is discovered to be Jack the Ripper and steals the machine to escape capture by going to 1979 San Francisco. Wells pursues, but has difficulty functioning in the future time beginning with the ineffectual use of a false name of a popular literary character from his time he mistakenly thought would be forgotten, Sherlock Holmes.
Eventually, he meets and falls in love with bank employee Amy Robbins (Steenburgen). The duo try to stop the Ripper, who has resumed his killings. Jack finds modern society to be pleasingly bloody; he remarks at one point that in 1893, he was a monster, but in 1979, he is an amateur.
In an effort to prove that his time machine is real, Herbert takes Amy on a journey three days into the future. Amy is then horrified to find a newspaper with her own obituary: she is to be the Ripper's fifth victim. Herbert and Amy go back three days to try to change history, but Herbert is arrested for suspicion of the serial killings and Amy is left unprotected. The brutally mangled corpse of Amy's friend is found in her apartment, and Herbert has given up Amy for dead, until he discovers that Amy is still alive, but held hostage by the Ripper. She manages to free herself as the Ripper attempts escape in the time machine. Herbert removes a device (the vaporizing equalizer) from the exterior of the machine's cabin, which causes the Ripper to vanish into infinity without the machine. Herbert and Amy then board the machine themselves and return to Wells' own time, after which (actual) history records that the two marry.
[edit] Trivia
- Mary Steenburgen would again portray the love interest of a time traveler in 1990s Back to the Future Part III, as Clara Clayton, love interest (and later wife) of Doctor Emmett Brown. She reprised the role in that franchise's animated series.
- McDowell and Steenburgen married after working together on the film. They divorced in 1990.
- Amy Robbins was, in fact, the name of Wells' second wife. The movie is consistent with this, as Wells notes he's been married before and tells Amy about his first wife.
- The date of the initial jump through time, November 5, was later used more prominently in the Back to the Future films.
- The title of 1984 hit Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper was taken from this film, with Cyndi getting the name after seeing the film advertised in the TV Guide whilst co-writing the song.
- Nicholas Meyer would be a co-writer on the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home which included many similar "fish out of water" time travel themes and was also set in San Francisco.
- Malcolm McDowell and David Warner would both appear in Star Trek movies - McDowell in Star Trek Generations (1994), and Warner in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).
