A movie that starts out boring you to tears with a conference room sequence where the main scientists are trying to explain the technical aspects of time travel to a narrow-minded corporate exec. Turns out the audience ends up more confused by all the verbal masturbation than Jim Brady as the exec.
The budget here is so small that the time machine seen in long shots looks like a model of a metallic sphere. But when we see the cast of scientists moving in and out of the thing, it is merely a vault door! Clearly the production team was influenced by Star Trek's Enterprise Bridge (classic series) when they built the interior set of the time machine: it is round with a lowered floor, complete with a railing that runs around the edge of the upper platform, with a large viewing screen at the other end of the room.
After landing thousands of years in the future we're greeted to Lyle Waggoner and some other actors looking rather goofy as 'men from the future' wearing vests, silver 'Hammer Time' pants and over-sized boots. In the future, for some reasons, people stand around and orate on pedestals of varying heights.....very odd, that scene.
The only scenes that included anything CLOSE to 'production values' were the prehistoric jungle, and cave sequences. Looked to me like Producer/Director David Hewitt got permission to film those scenes at 20th Century-Fox where TV series like "Lost in Space" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" used fairly impressive cave sets extensively. Likewise, I suspect the jungle scenes were filmed on the "Land of the Giants" set as the JTTCOT similarly had a foggy-type look to it. Otherwise, this film featured schlocky, minimalist sets (aka Limbo sets).
The movie had too many gruelingly long scenes where the crew of the time machine (and the audience) is looking at various periods of time (mostly footage of wars) through the main view-screen. This movie just dragged on and on and on. Finally ending with a twist on the story of 'Adam and Eve'.
Hewitt actually stole a cue from Irwin Allen's "Time Tunnel" series by having a band of young people back at "Time Central", a sort of mission control for the time machine. Funny thing: it was never included in the early scenes prior to the launch of the time machine, making it appear as though director Hewitt shot the 'Time Central' scenes later, as an after thought (or perhaps because he saw Allen's "Time Tunnel" and decided to copy the 'back-at-the-lab' setup for his film). Interesting that similar reel-to-reel type computers seen in "Time Tunnel" appear in JTTCOT.
I guess Producer/Director David Hewitt wasn't thrilled with 'The Time Travelers' and so did this film in 'retaliation' against his former partner, Ib Melchoir. Either that, or perhaps Hewitt wanted to 'cash in' on the time-travel theme since "The Time Tunnel" TV series was in production at the time this movie was being filmed. Whatever the reason, this movie fails on so many counts that -- to me -- it's probably THE WORST movie I've ever seen. It sucks on (1) Acting, (2) Production Design (?), (3) Special Effects (?), (4) Screenplay, and (5) Music. It literally has NOTHING to offer. And yet both Brady and Abraham Sofer are true character actors that have done much better before and since this turkey.
I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would actually ADMIT to sitting through this garbage when it was originally run in theatres.
Sadly, I can only recommend this celluloid monstrosity to a true insomniac.
The budget here is so small that the time machine seen in long shots looks like a model of a metallic sphere. But when we see the cast of scientists moving in and out of the thing, it is merely a vault door! Clearly the production team was influenced by Star Trek's Enterprise Bridge (classic series) when they built the interior set of the time machine: it is round with a lowered floor, complete with a railing that runs around the edge of the upper platform, with a large viewing screen at the other end of the room.
After landing thousands of years in the future we're greeted to Lyle Waggoner and some other actors looking rather goofy as 'men from the future' wearing vests, silver 'Hammer Time' pants and over-sized boots. In the future, for some reasons, people stand around and orate on pedestals of varying heights.....very odd, that scene.
The only scenes that included anything CLOSE to 'production values' were the prehistoric jungle, and cave sequences. Looked to me like Producer/Director David Hewitt got permission to film those scenes at 20th Century-Fox where TV series like "Lost in Space" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" used fairly impressive cave sets extensively. Likewise, I suspect the jungle scenes were filmed on the "Land of the Giants" set as the JTTCOT similarly had a foggy-type look to it. Otherwise, this film featured schlocky, minimalist sets (aka Limbo sets).
The movie had too many gruelingly long scenes where the crew of the time machine (and the audience) is looking at various periods of time (mostly footage of wars) through the main view-screen. This movie just dragged on and on and on. Finally ending with a twist on the story of 'Adam and Eve'.
Hewitt actually stole a cue from Irwin Allen's "Time Tunnel" series by having a band of young people back at "Time Central", a sort of mission control for the time machine. Funny thing: it was never included in the early scenes prior to the launch of the time machine, making it appear as though director Hewitt shot the 'Time Central' scenes later, as an after thought (or perhaps because he saw Allen's "Time Tunnel" and decided to copy the 'back-at-the-lab' setup for his film). Interesting that similar reel-to-reel type computers seen in "Time Tunnel" appear in JTTCOT.
I guess Producer/Director David Hewitt wasn't thrilled with 'The Time Travelers' and so did this film in 'retaliation' against his former partner, Ib Melchoir. Either that, or perhaps Hewitt wanted to 'cash in' on the time-travel theme since "The Time Tunnel" TV series was in production at the time this movie was being filmed. Whatever the reason, this movie fails on so many counts that -- to me -- it's probably THE WORST movie I've ever seen. It sucks on (1) Acting, (2) Production Design (?), (3) Special Effects (?), (4) Screenplay, and (5) Music. It literally has NOTHING to offer. And yet both Brady and Abraham Sofer are true character actors that have done much better before and since this turkey.
I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who would actually ADMIT to sitting through this garbage when it was originally run in theatres.
Sadly, I can only recommend this celluloid monstrosity to a true insomniac.