Weirdhouse Cinema: Time After Time

I was reading somewhere. I don't even remember what it was now, but I discovered in this article that there was allegedly a time travel adventure movie in which the English writer H. G. Wells, real historical figure author of the novel The Time Machine, played in this movie by

Malcolm McDowell. Must you was a real time machine to chase Jack the Ripper played by a smooth and sadistic David Warner through space and time in this time machine to prevent the Ripper from slashing twentieth century disco dancers. And the premise was it sounded so bonkers that I immediately thought this had to be a good option option

for weird House. And then the really surprising thing was the more I read about it, the more it seemed that most critics really liked this movie, even though I had somehow never really heard of it, or if I had heard about it, it didn't make enough of an impression that I remembered it. So so I saw it this out, and I gotta say I was really impressed.

You know. On the downside, for for weird House context, at least, I will say this movie doesn't actually when you're watching it, feel quite as weird in its execution as a straight read on the premise would lead you to assume. But nevertheless, I think this is mostly just a really great movie and it opens up all kinds of interesting bigger question is about the themes and ambitions of time travel stories and science fiction in general. Yeah. I was excited to view this film again, um, especially

after watching Spookies last week. Uh, in part because I was excited because you had never seen it and and so that would make it fresh. It's a film that I had not seen in a long time. I remember watching it on TV. I don't know if they used to show it on like t NT, or maybe it came on an E or something back in the day. But I remember watching it on television and uh oh it's uh it does it holds up so well? I don't I've I've spoken to various people and folks who

have seen this movie. They tend to like it. I haven't met anybody who hated it. It's kind of like an Orange Julius. I guess, as long as you just don't really hate orange Joes or really hate um, you know, malls, malls or something. I don't know. It's a terrible analogy, but I don't know. It's something about about this film just seems to to sit well with most people. I

don't know. Everything's very well calibrated, like it's sci fi, but it's not so sci fi that it turns off people that would be opposed to say, rampaging more locks, And yet people like like us, who might say why are there no more locks in this picture? It's still it's still so captivating and well acted and well put together that I ultimately can't argue too much about the results. Yeah,

I I agree. I mean, I would have, of course enjoyed if it if it went much weirder and wrapped in more h G. Wells Lower had more locks and all kinds of stuff like that. It doesn't, And in fact, the film is almost the opposite of that. I would say, for a science fiction movie involving one of the most like notorious, sadistic serial killers in history, this is an extremely uh cozy feeling movie. Would you agree? I would agree.

I believe this was a PG, but it was a nineteen seventy nine PG, so I do not recommend watching this with with your young children. There is there is blood, and there's some mature themes that are explored. But but he even those mature themes, which are you know, just part of the tapestry you're invoking by bringing in a character like Jack the Ripper, they are they are handled in a very light and ultimately kind of comforting way, I guess, And I think it also helps that uh,

you know, it's funny. I wanna criticize myself because I think in a previous episode of Weird House Cinema, I was trying to list actors that just have that evil look, that unfortunately just have faces where maybe they can't overcome the fact that they look sadistic and sinister, and one of the actors I singled out in this regard is Malcolm McDowell. Like, it's gonna be hard to have Malcolm McDowell as a hero because he just looks like an evil person. That's not a nice thing to say, but

for some reason he does. And yet I haven't seen this movie at the time. In this movie, he's so sweet. He is this he is, He's very lovable in this He's a Victorian teddy bear. Uh. And and he he also feels smaller than usual. Uh, probably by design the way they were shooting him and maybe leaning into his actual hide a little bit instead of putting him in

on an apple box or something. Um. Yeah, it's also fascinating that he This was the film that followed up the notorious Caligula, in which he very much played a villain and a nasty character in a in a nasty film, and apparently that was part of it. He's like, I really don't want to play a villain for for once? Can I play the hero of a picture? And yeah, he's great in this. It's almost hard to imagine the gap that has crossed going from Caligula to this sweet

romantic time travel adventure, you know, love story. Galloping across the time. Caligula is it's It's a movie that I have tried to watch for badness sake years ago with with some friends, and I I couldn't make it through the movie. It is just so so repulsive and like it it's the one of the ugliest movies I've ever seen. Like the colors hurt the eyes. It's just relentless depressing

violence and and depravity. There's one part that's, uh, you know, it would have been funny in a different movie because it's so ridiculous. There's a part where like, um, I think Malcolm McDowell is like watching a gigantic lawnmower in ancient Rome, just like cut off the heads of people who were buried up to their necks. But but the movie is like so depressing, Like even that wasn't funny.

Uh So, so it's just yeah, just awful. And then yeah, going from that to this which is just this this spry, sprightly beautiful time travel adventure. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's quite a quite elite. But yeah, he's he's very good in this. And I will say that, as Malcolm McDowell aged, I feel like he kind of aged into that face even more to where it's harder to imagine older Malcolm McDowell playing um a likable character and a non villain. But but I say that he's been in so many films.

I'm sure he pops up later on playing like a kind grandfatherly character. But but also I think he became increasingly typecast as he got older too. Yeah, and he's still active. We'll get into his bio open in a bit. But yeah, he's still active, so there's still time. Okay, how about a movie where Malcolm McDowell plays Santa Clause he could go to Kurt Russell route. You know, I

don't know. I guess the part of the thing is if you are going to pay out and get Malcolm McDowell to play Santa Claus in your film, then clearly you want villainous Santa Claus. Like what are you doing? You know at this point? One of the Yeah, one of those Santa Claus is a is the Monster movie is like the one with Goldberg? Remember that one I

know of it. Yeah, Well, and maybe we should uh give a little historical context for the premise of this movie, which is once again h G. Wells must pursue Jack the Ripper through time in a time machine to stop him from from ripping the twentieth century. Yeah, well, let's let it rip here. So, first of all, what do you need to know about H. G. Wells and the Time Machine to enjoy this film? Well, not a lot,

but here the basics. Time Machine is an excellent five novel by English writer H. G. Wells who lived eighteen sixty six through nineteen five. It's a short read, widely available, and in my opinion, it holds up really well. It's a very readable text today. One thing that's worth noting is that the time this movie is set before H. G.

Wells wrote the novel. So, uh so he wrote the novel in I don't remember exactly the year, but I think this is set in eighteen one or ninety three something like that, or at the beginning is before they travel through time eight I believe that would be the that would be prime ripping uh time right there? Okay, al right? At any rate, U this is not the absolute first time travel yarn. That's a it's an interesting

discussion to get in. I think we've talked about this in the show when he's trying to figure out like who was the first person to deal with time travel? But it was the first time travel story to gain just a huge degree of popularity, and Wells actually coined the term time machine. Now, to be clear, the character in the book is just the time traveler and is not Wells himself. Alf Wells from a first person perspective, and it is. But I don't think we're really supposed

to assume that Wells made a time machine. No, no, no no. This this film, however, takes a different approach. Um Wells was a futurist, though in real life he was not an inventor outside of the invention of sci fi concepts and the like and the exploration of new ideas. The book has been adapted a few different times, including

the famous nineteen sixty George Powell adaptation. This one has a really iconic look for the time machine, wonderful morelock designs, Like when you think more locks, these are the more locks you probably picture. But there was also a nine eight TV movie and a two thousand to remake that I've seen, and as uh, I remember it being all right. But the interesting thing about it is that it was

directed by wells great grandson Simon Wells. Really that's interesting. Yeah, that's worth seeing it on its own, even if it came out in two thousand two, which man movies from two thousand two, it is hard to escape that early too. Thousands. Look, it just kind of bleeds in everything. I watched a movie from two thousand two the other day. It was a really bad but enjoyable Clint Eastwood detective movie from two thousand two called blood Work. I don't know if

you've seen that one. I've not seen that one. Well, so, I mean absolute like hack detective story, hilarious but also quite fun, and it's got that look it just like everything from two thousand two has this I don't know this some feature of like the contrast and the colors

and everything. Just everything looks kind of slick and awful. Well, it's been a while since I saw the two thousand two time Machine, but I remember, I remember being entertained by it, and I remember that it had Jeremy Irons is a more lock in it, So oh, good, good choice there. Yeah, I remember the more locks look pretty good. But then again, I'm just I'm generally in on the

idea of moral it's hard to break more locks from me. Oh. But one thing that was true about the historical figure H. G. Wells that is also true of the character in the movie is that he was known as something of a kind of progressive utopian socialists and a futurist. So he had a lot of like visions of the future that

involved uh, progressive political ideals. I'm not sure if all of the exact things stated by the character in the film would be real things that H. G. Wells thought or would have said, but it's at least sort of

in the ballpark, right. And then ultimately, the film is largely about the idea that if if Wells represents optimism for the future coming out of the Victorian Age, and ultimately the optimism about what was possible in the Victorian Age in the late nineteen hundreds, then our other figure represents the worst of that time period, the ricorious character of Jack the Ripper. So what do you need to

know about Jack the Ripper? Okay, here the basics. So in many ways, this is the original true crime sensation and a topic of continued and largely fruitless intrigue today. Also referred to as a leather apron, this was an unidentified serial killer, active in London's Whitechapel district around eighty eight. He targeted under privileged members of society, generally prostitutes, and was known for the modus operandi of slicing first the throat then the abdomen, as well as his taunting letters

to the media. Now, one note I do have there is that because this movie set me off on a reading spree where I was like, oh, I need to

know things about Jack the Ripper. Uh. The letters are one of the most famous things about him, though I think there is serious doubt about the authenticity of all of the letters that I think there's only one letter that historians take seriously at all as possibly being from the killer himself, and this is the so called from Hell letter because and I think the reason this is the only one that's really taken seriously is that it was accompanied by a jar containing a piece of actual

human kidney, allegedly taken from one of the victims, though it's not possible to confirm whether it actually came from a victim or not. They didn't have like DNA testing at the time obviously, and uh and so, and it could have been obtained from a medical college or cadaver or something like that. Yeah, and I believe the police at the time they suspected or that one of their theories was that it that was the origin of the organ as it came from some sort of you know,

um cadaver situation as opposed to have murder victim. And one of the weird things about it is that the from Hell letter, I will say, just as like a literary appraisal of the interest contained in these letters, it's one of the less interesting ones. Like the really interesting letters are the ones that are pretty much yeah, known to be hoaxes that were sent possibly by like journalists trying to gin up interest in the story further to

sell more newspapers. Yeah. Absolutely, those those are some of the more entertaining letters. But also and you can see why they would have been fabricated just to sort of drum up this uh this this paranois and excitement about the murders they have that one of them has that line I shan't stop ripping right until I am good

and buckled or something. Yeah, uh so, so, yeah, you know, there's a high probability that he didn't write any of these letters, but they are very much associated with him the idea of this this figure that is killing and then mocking the press, that is that is the subject out of all this media and public fear and fascination, but is also potentially feeding it as well and feeding off of it, right. And I think it's these letters, even though probably none of them are authentic, or at

least most of them are not authentic. It's these letters that sort of create one of the most lasting legacies of Jack the Ripper, which is this idea that he's sort of playing a game of chess with the police, uh, and that this is a major part of his motivation. And this does come through in the movie as well, because you see Jack the Ripper in his identity before

he's revealed to be Jack the Ripper. Uh. He he is a friend of H. G. Wells and they play chess together in the movie, and you know he's very into like outsmarting his opponents. Yeah. Now, there are I think just five verified murders if you will, by Jack the Ripper, though there are others that may or may not be attributed to him, depending on where you're falling. And then likewise, there's a great deal of folklore, fiction and pseudo history that just abound within the realm of

Ripper ology. Um, he was never caught. And there are numerous suspects that have been discussed over the years, and they range from the potentially believable to the to the outrageous to the unbelievable even during the time. Um, and some of them, some of these suspects did have a surgical background, because there was the whole apparent removal of organs in the murders, and so you know, some thought, well this, this indicates that they had the individual had

some level of training or expertise or familiarity with human anatomy. Now, in time after time, the Ripper is this character Dr John Leslie Stevenson, who is not an historical person as far as I can tell. But weirdly enough, the Outer Limit episode Ripper, which stars David Warner and carry Elis, was co written by Leslie Stevens. So there you go.

That's enough of a connection for Ripper ology. I think, Wait, is Leslie Stevens a real person and it's just a coincidence or is this a pseudonym for saying it was like written by David Warner or something? Um, I mean it's an IMDb writing credit. That's not David Warner, So I I think it's either just somebody who happens to be Leslie Stevens, or is the actual Jack the Ripper having time traveled to the nineties to make a career

for himself in uh in TV screenplay writing? Okay, So the last week I've been wandering around my house NonStop singing that Cindy Lauper song. I can't get it out of my head. Is it's not used in the film? In fact, the song was released after this film came out.

Is there any connection between them? Allegedly, Cindy Lauper was inspired to write the song because she liked the movie, and weirdly enough, there was a in re in history, there's been a there was an attempt to bring the novel Time After Time back as a TV series, and each episode of the TV series gets its title from the lyrics to Cindy Lauper's Time after Time. Nice Nice.

Cindy Lawper doesn't get enough credit as a songwriter. You know, have you ever have you ever actually listened to the like the lyrics of girls just want to have Fun? That's actually like a sort of profound and sad song. Yeah, yeah, I I like some Cindy Lapper. I haven't really been playing her recently, but but yeah, she had a number of hits I would I would generally take the Cindy Lapper songs of that era and put them above the

Madonna songs of that era. Oh, I don't know if I would go that far, but definitely I'm a fan. And now I have to correct myself because I actually just looked it up to make sure and found out that Cyndy Lawper did not write girls Just Want to Have Fun. Her version was a cover version. Whoops. Okay, well, great song anyway, and her version is great. So we've already pretty much done our elevator pitch for time after time? Shall we go ahead and listen to just a little

bit of the trailer audio? Not the full thing, but just a little bit of the trailer maybe some Oh man, I don't like this trailer. I feel like it really it takes away from the movie. But okay, let's let's just get at least get a snippet. The time is and novelists and in better H. G. Wells makes us startling announcement, gentlemen, I am talking about traveling through time in a machine constructed for that Betty purpose. The first to use the machine, however, is Dr John Leslie Stevenson,

better known to history as Jack the Ripper Time after time. Yea, yeah, this is this is a bad trailer. I hate the comedic trailer narrator who's like Jack the Ripper is on a on a vacation, you know, it's like always this kind of like Casey Cason asked, voice that's like, you're gonna have a good time at the theater and give me the voice of God any day over this nonsense. The trailer is bad in numerous ways, and I do not recommend watching it. First of all, because of what

you're saying. The tone and the narrator are irritating and I think do not accurately communicate the the spirit and feeling of the movie. And second, the trailer reveals the entire plot, including the ending. It's one of those awful things. So like, if you've seen the trailer, the movie is kind of spoiled for you. Yeah. Yeah, not a good way to go into this film. Now, being a time

travel movie. One of the things that I was thinking about for this episode is it it sort of made me want to create an in house taxonomy of major types of time travel stories, sorted by prevalent themes um And of course, any given movie or story can partake of multiple different time travel themes, multiple of the themes that follow that we're about to talk about. And I'm also sure this list will not be exhaustive. People will probably right in and be like, hey, what about this

type of movie? It will be something I didn't even think about, But I think here are some of the major categories of time travel stories. Uh and, and we can talk about how time after time fits or does not fit into each of them. So the first one I wanted to mention is what I would call the debugging history story. Uh and. This is a type of time travel story that focuses primarily on isolating variables of cause and effect in the progression of history and human life.

So it's largely concerned with with the consequences of decisions and the long term ripple effects of seemingly minor events and encounters. So this can be seen, for example, in Back to the Future, where Marty McFly learns that that you know, certain minor interventions with his parents as teenagers like he gives his teenage dad a pep talk about standing up for himself and so forth. This radically changes

the circumstances of his family thirty years later. Or it can be seen in movies that don't even really feature time travel, but just merely the alteration of past events. An example here might be the final act of It's a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey learns that, you know, if if Clarence the Angel tweaks history so that he was never born, everybody else in his life turns out miserable and impoverished, and he sees the impact that his

life had. I would actually say that Time after Time does not partake heavily of the debugging history theme, though there are little nods here and there, especially at the ending. We can maybe something we can talk about if you want or not, though it's a spoiler for the movie. Um but but this is not the major type we're dealing with in Time after Time. Yeah, this this film. Ultimately, the character of Wells is more interested in protecting the future.

That's what That what prompts him to travel through time in the film, or at least no not necessarily protecting the actual future. By protecting wells idea all of the future. So in a sense, the existence of Jack the Ripper in UM, even in the late nineteenth century, is a threat to his worldview and vision for change. The idea of Jack the Ripper escaping into his envisioned utopia is a total threat to this idea. Now, while we're going through and talking about time after time, I feel like

we should also just run through this list. The example of Transfers to the other time travel movie we've done, Yeah, and I think the basic answer is always going to be yes, sort of maybe, but who knows, because Transfers is all over the place with time travel and why they're doing it and who's doing it. But I would say, yes, Transfers definitely does this, but it's messy. Okay, that's a debugging history. The next major time travel theme I would say is Journey to Time Island. This is a time

travel story. This is probably one of the least thematically interesting ways of using time travel in the story, and it's a story that uses some time in the future or the past primarily as a hostile setting for adventure. So in these stories, the past or the future can be thought of as largely equivalent to physical places like Skull Island or the Forbidden Planet. It's just a dangerous place for the characters to arrive and then face unfamiliar challenges.

And I will say Time after Time does not largely fall into this category, but actually H. G. Wells novel The Time Machine is more in this vein. Yeah, traveling into a distant future for example. That uh, that definitely is a commentary on the present or the Victorian present that the author lived in. But also it is just kind of this fantastic place in which to have an adventure, right. I think the time machine also partakes largely of another more interesting category we'll get to in a minute now

that the time travel the time Island. Rather this idea, uh I was I was thinking to myself, Okay, well, what's something that that falls in line with this? In my mind instantly goes to Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder, though that one is also a debugging history tale to a to a large extent, sort of accidental debugging of history. That this is bugging history, Yeah, inserting bugs in the

lines of code of history. Yeah. Yeah, the idea I can go back into dinosaur days and have a safe adventure hunting dinosaurs, but then you find out no, you cannot by doing so you're totally bugging in the future. That's very good observation. Okay. Third category, so we had debugging history, journey to time island. Third one, I will say is what I would call fish out of time.

This is a time based equivalent of the standard fish out of water plot seen most often in comedies, where most of the tension, usually comedic tension is based on failures of the out of place protagonists to understand and adapt, understand and adapt to local conditions, expectations, you know, wandering around, being confused by surroundings, accidentally violating taboos. So you can think of like Borat but with time instead of place,

or Demolition Man with the three cshells. Yeah. Another example of this would be um a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court. You know, whether a lot of comedic fodder is made on the fact that, oh, this person is out of time. They don't know what this means, and the people that he's around now they don't know what this means, and hilarity ensues, and you know, I will say, usually fish out of time is not one of my

favorite time travel themes. But Time after Time has a good amount of this, and I loved it in this movie. I would say, is it works much better in Time after Time than it usually does in other stories of this sort. Yeah, it really excels at this, often with stuff that on paper just sounds awful, like the idea what if what if H. G. Wells traveled to the late seven Days and went to a McDonald's. Uh, it

sounds awful, but it's great. It's great. My favorite. That's one of my favorite scenes where he goes into the McDonald's and he's trying to make sense to everything. And then later he's having a meal with the romantic interest and and she asked or how the food is and he's like, Oh, it's better than the Scottish restaurant where I had breakfast macdougals. So yeah, yeah, this this film excels at the fish out of time. Oh and he gets really excited when he figures out what fries are.

Oh yeah yeah, he's like, oh, it's palm Fritz Fritz. Now as far as transfers goes, um, I think they did this. I'm pretty sure they did this. Uh, there's a there was a fair amount of humor in transfers. So it's if if you have humor in your time travel scenario, you're probably engaging in this trope. Okay, the next category is the one. I feel like I need a snappier name for this one, but it's basically what

I would call the time travel arms race. And these are the ones that tend to be the most complicated in terms of plotting, and that's because they're the ones that take the premise the most seriously, like they're thinking really hard about what it would actually be like to have the power to travel back in time and uh, and not just as a means to get the protagonist to an unfamiliar setting, but actually as an ongoing mechanism that can be used over and over, often ultimately as

a weapon, something that grants godlike power, because if you know what's going to happen in advance, and you have the power to go back in time and approach any situation differently, you can make almost any situation turn out

your way. And so this gives anybody who possesses the power of time travel the temptation to use it for selfish, deceitful, or evil purposes, and so I think these plots often contain both protagonists and antagonists who have the power to travel through time, uh, trying to sort of travel back further and further to gain advantage over one another. So the themes of this would usually include thoughts about weaponry, strategy, tricks, and the dangers of having too much power, especially too

much technological power. Good examples of this I think would include, like the movie primer Um, the overarching premise of the Terminator films, though there's not a lot of this mechanic within the movies themselves Terminator, the setup of each film usually involves something some form of the time travel arms race uh. And I guess in terms of more recent movies, you could think about Tenant as a version of this.

All right, Yeah, now, Transfers, I think, I think definitely transfer has got into this territory because there is the idea that, yeah, cult members have gone back in time and they have they have transfer armies, and so we need to send Transfer cops back in time to deal with them. So yeah, Transfers, being a high minded time

travel movie, definitely gets in on this action. Though I would say Time after Time has very little of this, and it would have made it an entirely different film in ways that we might mention later when we talk a little bit more about the plot. But uh, I don't really hold this against the movie because it just decided to go in a different direction with the way

its structured its story. But but Time after Time could have been a completely different film if it had just taken this premise seriously and and h G. Wells it said, Okay, I can always just go back one more day in the past and do this instead, right right? Um? Or I guess another thing that could have complicated matters is the idea of is the question of how many time machines are there? And is the time machine a singular entity or is time travel a technology that may be

reproduced in this film? In Time after Time, there is one time machine, um, and there's some interesting plot mechanics that keep it that way. And additionally, nobody has subsequently understood the time how time travel works. The time machine winds up in a museum in San Francisco, uh, and it's fully functional, and nobody has really taken it apart to figure out how it works. Um. Which, if if

you're gonna be really pedantic about about it. Yeah, it's it's that's kind of silly, but it works within the context of the film. Yeah, I agreed. So the next category I want to mention is kind of a subcategory because it's more of a category worry that would apply to usually how a like a twist at the end of an of a time travel story. But this is what I would call the have you heard about the

Fates version. I kind of don't want to list examples of this because by including them in this category I would usually be spoiling some kind of good twist in

the movie. But this is a variation that usually starts with something that looks more like debugging history or the time travel arms race, only for the protagonist to discover too late that the Fates cannot be outrun and while they thought they were avoiding some bad outcome by going back and changing the past, they in fact we're not avoiding it or were even causing it or something to that effect. Yeah, yeah, not so much. In this picture. Transfers did not really get into this either. Um, but

I will say that it does remind me. And this is not a spoiler because and I'll explain why, but the Stephen King time travel novel sixty three, UH is

really good for starters. I have recommend this book, but it uh, it definitely gets into this area early on because there's this idea that, yes, you can travel back into the past via this portal, but once you get there, changing history in any meaningful ways is it is incredibly difficult because there's a sense that it's like time is this this surging river, and to try and divert the river's course, there are forces like not not know forces with with names or faces so much, but like just

reality itself will revolt against you, like everything will go wrong in your attempt to try and change the course of history. Oh that's interesting. Yeah, I haven't read that one, but but you've tempted me. Yeah. Basically, it's a uh an individual becomes uh convinced that going back and stopping the assassination of John F. Kennedy will make the world a substantially better place in the future, and therefore it's worth it. It's worth basically like a one way trip

to go and see this through. And uh it's in here. King explores it for in a very long book, but in a in also it's a love story which which of course brings us back to to this movie. I was wondering as I was watching it, how many subsequent time travel romances would just simply not exist if not

for Time after Time. I'm thinking about everything from Outlander to Highlander, which even though Highlander is not about traveling through time via mechanics, it is about immortal characters living outside of their original time and then falling in love. Uh So, I feel like the film was probably very influential on this sort of subgenre of time travel fiction. Oh well, I think this is another great category we should mention, which is the the love across time uh story,

which is time after time. I think you could definitely say as an example of it's a type of love story. You know, it's common in a love story to have people who who clearly want to be together, but there's some kind of tension that keeps them apart, and that could be you know, social expectations, it could be you know, in romantic comedies, is often a series of article misunderstandings

that leads them to fighting each other. Uh in. But in in a lot of more sort of serious and tragic love stories across history, it's often been like separation of time of space, you know, like like we're from different kingdoms or something and we can't be together for that reason. But there are movies that do this with time travel as well. It's like, well, no, I've got to go back to my time, and you don't want to leave your time and so forth. Yeah. Other times

it's the lady hawks scenario. It's like you're a you're a hawk during the day, I'm a wolf at night, and we're just dontline, we can't align. That's accept during a total eclipse, right, that's right, okay. And then one last category I want to mention, but because I think this is the one that applies the most to time after time, this is the category I would call fresh

eyes for bad eras. And this is the type of time travel story that is primarily about commenting on the particular features of an age of the time in which they are set, usually the present, but often also the future as influenced by the present. And so I think these tend to contain the most social commentary of any

of the time travel subgenres. So the time traveler is able to look upon an age such as the present and see it with fresh eyes, noticing things usually bad things that the chrono locals have learned to ignore just because they're inured to them. And so Time after Time actually, much like H. G. Wells actual novel The Time Machine, partakes heavily of this theme, uh tying it back into

the novel The Time Machine itself. Apart from it just being a sort of journey to Time Island, it's also very much this one because he was using a dystopian vision of the future to suggest that such a future would follow from negative trends that existed in his present. So he's commenting on the present by suggesting a horrible future. But in in Time After Time, it's just looking direct ly at the present. And I think this is one of the most interesting ideas in the movie. So it

takes these two time travelers from eighteen nineties London. So H. G. Wells, who the character in the film, is a progressive, utopian socialist in eighteen nineties London. He believes that humanity will pretty soon advance to a golden age of peace and prosperity and egalitarianism, where there will be no war, no violence,

no inequality, no oppression, and so forth. And then the other is Jack, the Ripper, who is sort of the embodiment of violence, sadistic, misogynist id And what if these two figures suddenly got a look at the world in nineteen seventy nine with without having a chance to get used to it as time progresses slowly in the normal sense,

what would they think? So, of course, there's a scene in the present where Jack the Ripper turns on a TV and he just starts flipping channels for Wells to see what's on, and it's just seen after seeing both real and fictional of hatred, violence, murder, war, terrorism, nuclear escalation, full contact football, and Wells is horrified to see that his utopian dreams were hopelessly naive, and the Ripper is

just like, yes, good war football, I am home. This is a lovely scene, you know, taking place in Jack the rippers hotel room. Um, that's a you know a little a little messy because he's been staying there. He hasn't been ripping there, but he's been staying there. Uh. He has this line has several lines that really drive this home, but one of them is ninety years ago,

I was a freak. Today I'm an amateur, that's right, Um, And there's there's so much to love, and there's some of the little things, like when he turns on the TV, he's like, he's clearly at ease in this world. He's wearing the suit of the day, you know, of the time period. He's he's largely acclimatized to the late nineties seventies at this point. But then he holds the remote control in a really weird fashion to turn on the TV,

which is a great touch. You know, it's like he because this character, Yeah, he's like, I feel the spirit of this age, but I'm not altogether on the technology

just yet. Yeah, it's great, And there are all these little things in the movie that signaled this as it goes on that um, there's an irony where H. G. Wells is the progressive futurist and the age that he travels to does include a lot of the the ideals he believed in, Like he is pleased to discover that that women have more rights now than they did in

his time and so forth. But there's this irony because he for some reason doesn't feel comfortable and easy to adapt to the culture of the future in the way

that Jack the Ripper does. Yeah. Uh, the treatment of the Ripper, and this it reminds me a lot of the ideas that Alan Moore would would later explore in his his now classic graphic novel From Hell about Jack the Ripper, in which the Ripper is presented as the dark um uh embodiment of the Victorian age and ultimately the the beginning of the twentieth century, a kind of profit of the modern age to follow. Now, Needles would say,

that's a much darker treatment. And our ripper and this film does not see himself as such a grandiose figure. He's he simply shan't stop ripping, and this is an even better age in which to do it. But he like, like, like that line above that we mentioned implies, he feels like the world has ultimately passed passed him by. It's even, it's even it's it's not only met his his his spirit, but it has surpassed his spirit. But he's happy to

live in this age, right. And so one could take this in a in a kind of um simplistic way and say that, well, maybe the movie is just engaging in the sort of naive pessimism, the pessimistic bias that makes people always think that times are just the worst they've ever been. Things are always getting worse the hell in a handbasket thinking, I would say, the movie actually doesn't quite do that. It it pretty frequently acknowledges things that in Wells view are better about the present than

they were in Wells time. But there's also something off about the modern age of special something about the sort of about the sort of indifference to violence and the sort of callousness of the modern world that the Ripper finds very welcoming. What is the headline in the newspaper that he picks up about. It's a sports headline. It's like rams massacre cults or something like that. It was ramsmall cults or something. Yeah, which I love that moment.

That's a great one of many great moments in the film where it's like, yeah, that headline is just insane. It implies outside of the you know, the modern sports understanding of it, that uh that like herbivores are are tearying each other apart in the streets, you know, like

we're living in like a biblically misaligned age. Yeah, and so I don't know, I appreciate the the interesting complexity of the feeling that it has about the present that like, some things have definitely progressed and gotten better since the time that Wells is used to, but there are other things that are just sort of like always new sicknesses

that continually emerge throughout history. And there's something going on with a kind of with a kind of inurement to violence and hatred that just is pervasive in the modern world. And I think I think a lot of this is exemplified by the setting, because you know, I like the idea of setting it in in um in the United States, even though it you know, it begins in what it's supposed to be London, but you could have easily you can imagine someone arguing, well, let's set this in seventies

New York, you know, just straight to Hell City. But no, you go to San Francisco, and their treatment in San Francisco is is this kind of almost fifty fifty split of seedier elements and seedier parts of town. But also you have so many, uh you have a lot of time in the film to admire sort of modern late seventies architecture in San Francisco, to to walk through the parks in public spaces. So I think it's a nice balance.

It's achieved through the setting and ultimately the film is like a in a way, it's like, uh, it makes you want to visit of San Francisco. It's like a like a tourism brochure for the city that they spent a lot of time wandering around the Pan America and Exposition buildings, which is funny because he's you know, wells is admiring them, and Mary Steen Virgin's character, I think she has to break his heart and inform him that they're made of plaster. Yeah, he asked if they're made

of marble, and she says it is no plaster. But is that actually worse? I don't. I don't know. They are beautiful to look at. Since I guess it's time to jump into the connections anyway, I just wanted to flag a strange fact, which is that. Okay. So this movie was directed and at least in part written by Nicholas Meyer. I know they were was based on a novel and I think there are multiple story credits for

the movie. But Nicholas Meyer the director and uh he I think wrote the screenplay at least or was one of the writers. Uh he made this movie, which is about H. G. Wells and Jack the Ripper traveling through time to nineteen nine San Francisco. And Nicholas Meyer also was one of the writers of Star Trek four, The Voyage Home, which involves time traveling to present day San Francisco,

but from the future instead of the past. Interesting. He knows what he likes, so Nicholas Meyer was born nine five American writer and director who first made a splash with the nineteen seventy four Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven Percent Solution, in which Sigmund Freud helps Sherlock Holmes battle

his drug addiction. Interesting. Meyer wrote the screenplay for then the nineteen seventies six film adaptation that starred Nicole Williamson, Robert Duval, Alan Arkin, and Laurence Olivier, as well as Charles Gray and Samantha Egger. It was a big hit. Meyer wrote more Holmes novels and then went on to direct this film in nineteen seventy nine, followed by Star Trek to the Wrath of Con in nineteen eighty two and Star Trek Being Discovered Country in among other films,

but those those were the big ones. One interesting thing about Nicholas Or as a filmmaker was that he was also behind the nineteen eight three TV special or TV movie The Day After, which was a supposedly uh factual look at the possibilities of nuclear war like what if

the Cold War went hot? And uh and this It's hard to tell exactly how influential it was, but it has been alleged that this TV movie was pretty influential even at like high levels of government and and changed the thinking of some military and political officials about antagonism

in the Cold War now. He also wrote a number of screenplays, including but not limited to, Star Trek, The Voyage Home, Um, The Human Stain, and the pilot episode for the two thousand seventeen TV series Time after Time, which we alluded to earlier, which I have not seen it. It may be great, but just looking at stills, it looks like it asked the question what do you Time after Time? But hunkier, it's got some very square jaw lines. So ultimately, Nicholas Meyer Saturn Award winner, and he's been

nominated for both an Academy Award and three Emmys. But if I understand correctly, this movie, much like two thousand one of Space Odyssey was one of the rare cases where a movie based on a book is being completed simultaneously to the completion of the book. That's right. And this leads us to the writer Carl Alexander. Uh. This is the son of William Tunberg, who wrote the screenplay for Old Yeller, and the nephew of Carl Tunberg who wrote the screenplay for Ben Her. This was his This

was his first novel, Time after Time though. The book was actually option before it was completed by Nicholas Meyer, who happened to be a friend of Alexander's who you know, had to heard him talking about it and had I think, looked at a part of the uh, the the novel before it was completed. Uh. And so he was like, this is it. I want this to be my next film. So the film is finished, Um, alongside the book. The book in the film are being completed at the same time. Interesting. Yeah.

He went on to follow this up with a sequel novel in twenty nineteen, or at least it published in twenty nineteen. I'm not sure if someone else had to finish it for him or how it worked out with the manuscript because he lived ninety through two thousand and fifteen, so he would not have lived to see Jacqueline the Ripper, published in twenty nineteen. Now, the writer Steve Hayes also has a story credit on In This Boord nineteen thirty one. Again, I think this comes back to the fact that the

screenplay in the novel were essentially being completed. At the same time, Hayes did a lot of TV writing, including for at least two series that I wasn't familiar with based on popular eighties action films Conan which ran eight and Rambo from six, which I got excited about and then realized that it was a cartoon. But then also I find that weird that we decided Rambo needed to be a cartoon. Yeah, I didn't know there were a

Conan or a Rambo TV series. All right, Well, let's come back to Malcolm McDowell, who plays h. G. Wells in This Uh born in nineteen forty three, and this is this is a guy where it's it's it's hard to even figure out where to begin. Legendary British actor who played Alex and Stanley Kubrick's clockwork Orange in ninety one. Again, he was in the notorious nineteen seventy nine film Caligula, which came right before this one. He was in eight twos Cat People. I fondly remember him from a child

watching us Blue Thunder. He plays the villain in that who flies this little helicopter that battles are big combat police helicopter. That is Blue Thunder a helicopter battle movie. How many are there? And I remember, um, there's one called I think Firebirds that has maybe Charlie Sheen or somebody in it. I think, so, yeah, this one. I have no idea how big of a splash Blue Thunder was, uh at all, but it was big for me as a kid because my aunt had taped some films off

of HBO. This was one of them, and uh, it was probably inappropriate for me to be watching it, but I I mainly watched it for the helicopter combat scenarios, and then I would build the helicopters out of legos and have them crash into each other. That's great. I was wrong. Actually it wasn't Charlie Sheen. It was Nicholas Cage, who was in Firebirds. Firebirds was a one of those bad action movies that I taped off TV. When I was a kid, because I was like, looks like this

will be a military action movie. I'm you know, I'm a boy in East Tennessee. This is the kind of movie I'm supposed to be watching. Not great. So Malcolm McDowell, like we said, he continues to work a lot in films and TV. Uh we can't. We can't mention everything he's been in before. I believe he's come up on the show before, not not maybe in a film that

we've watched, but in you know, the various connections. But he played Dr Loomis and both of Rob Zombies Halloween films, um which I have not seen, but I assume he's villainous in those. Uh oh no, he I mean he looks villainous because scolmcdwell usually does, though he doesn't in time after time. And I don't know how exactly they accomplished that. Maybe with the careful use of hairstyling and facial hair. Um. But no, he's not villainous in the

Rob Zombie Halloween movies. He's just not super helpful. Now. One of the interesting things about about Malcolm mcdowen this film is that this is where he met his second wife Mary Steinberg in Um, who plays the character Amy Robbins Uh born nineteen fifty three. But yeah, they apparently

met on this film. Uh, fell in love on this film, were subsequently married, and their son is Charlie McDowell or one of their their children anyways, Charlie McDowell, who is a director who directed the excellent film The One I Love Mary Steen Virgin is also great in this. She has a she has a kind of funny, nervous energy in the movie. And uh, and she's of course great

as a as a comic actress. Um. She essentially would you say that you think she was sort of playing a similar character in this to the character she plays in Back to the Future three. I guess Back to the Future three is one of those films that I think most people only see once, so I don't really remember her all that. I remember the basics of the character, but I don't know how closely they aligned with this. Well.

I was just thinking Back to the Future three had to in part be based on or partially derived from her role in Time after Time. Yeah, yeah, I would, I would think so. I mean, because ultimately I think most time travel romance novels or films or TV shows haven't have to at least in some way look back

to time after time. It feels very influential. But yeah, she I think it took me a while to figure out that she is so good as a comic actress because I think I recalled the first the first role in which I really became familiar with her was as like a nefarious uh lawyer defending the bad company in Philadelphia. Okay, you remember that. I it's been a long time. Think

I saw that many years ago. Oh yeah, I think she plays a ruthless lawyer who's who's defending the company this being suited and she has like cruel scenes where she grills Tom Hanks on the stand. But that was before I'd seen her really in any comedy stuff. And and she's great in comedies. She's uh, she she's great in Step Brothers. Where where Will Ferrell is her son? I think? And well, you know, it makes me wonders Will Ferrell her son with H. G. Wells from this movie.

I always enjoy her when she's she often pops up in various comedy things that her husband Ted Danson is in. Uh, and say, she's been very funny in some of those films. I remember she was an elf and had a pretty pretty fun role in that, but ultimately Academy Award winning actor here with with Mary as his steam burgeon here.

Um uh, and she's pretty good in this. Yeah, she's it's a it's it's an interesting role because she's called upon and I think her only second screen presence to play the modern woman to like to represent not only the modern woman from the film's perspective, but the future woman, the woman of the future from H. G. Wells His perspective. So it's it's kind of a uh, it mostly holds

up today. Uh. There, there's certainly some some choices here and there where you're like, well, I think they would they would inevitably do that differently if you were to to create this again in like one. But well, I would say those are not choices on Mary Stein versions in the script. Yeah, there there are some, Like it is ironic that some of the parts of this movie that the movie clearly regards as the most illustrative of the culture of the modern world are exactly the ones

that have aged the most poorly. Like they're they're uh, Like there's a scene where Mary stein Margin's character uses casually using offensive language to refer to lesbians, like she says the D word. I assumed that that word was

considered derogatory at the time. I think it was. And she talks about how she does want to pursue her own career ambitions, but she offers the disclaimer that I'm not women's lib which, yeah, she also echoes this this idea that one's work should be your life and that that's not like a healthy choice for the modern professional um as if Like, ultimately, Jack the Ripper's main flaw is that he's making too much time for his hobbies, right, Yeah,

I do think it's interesting though in this film that's like comparing these, you know, different expectations for how the future will turn out, especially with regards to things like moral values and all that that. Like, some of the things that are that are considered the most like sort of textual illustrations of how people think in the modern world are some of the things that have aged the worst. Yeah, yeah, that is interesting, but but again, ultimately this is the writing.

Nothing on Mary. Mary's great in this All right, let's let's get to our ripper. Let's talk a little bit about the actor who plays Dr. John Leslie Stevenson a K. Jack the Ripper. This is the legendary David Warner. David Warner is fantastic in this. Yes, Yeah, he's he is great. Uh. Warner borne as of this recording, still still still around and either still active or was still active, uh in a limited uh to a limited degree as of Like, Um, I'm not sure, especially when you're doing a little older

individuals like this. I don't know if he has effectively retired at this point or he's, you know, going to come back and do some more voice acting. But he, like McDowell, has been in just everything twice. He has two five acting credits on IMDb. He has done theater, he has done audio dramas. Uh. He seems like a guy who has just constantly been working through you know, just just NonStop throughout his old career. Yeah. And like McDowell, he also has a real knack for playing villains and

has played some really notable ones. Uh. He was in Titanic, he was in Tron Time Bandits. Yeah, he was in Star Trek be Undiscovered Country also popped up on some key episodes of of Trek television series including the one where the Romulan tortures Picard. I'm sorry, not a Romulan. It's a Cardassian. Good what are they? I don't know, card not a cardass Dassian. Cardassian, Yes, the Cardassians. He plays a Cardassian in that, a Cardassian interrogator, and he

is um. He is torturing Picard and trying him to to like break him. Very memorable episode. Speaking of being in time travel movies, oh, I love him. In Time Bandits. He plays the villain in Time Bandits. He's he's the

embodiment of evil. He's sort of the devil, but he is obsessed with technology in Time Bandits, which I think has some sort of satirical content, but like a lot of things in Time Bandits and and Terry Gillian movies more generally, and it's the thing that I like a lot of times, the satire is not super clear, it's it's satirical in a kind of vague way. But yeah,

I love the devil. He's he seems to not really understand what subscriber try dialing is, but he really wants to know about it, and he really wants to know about you know, about computers and things. I need to watch that one again. Yeah. So David Warner is an actor who's been in in way too many things to list here, but I thought I might mention some of some of my additional favorite roles that he's had, and I think all of these are roles where he doesn't

necessarily play a villain. He has a role in John Carpenter's in the Mouth of Madness. Uh, he plays the head of the Assassin's Guild and the hog Father, and oh, most memorably, he plays both a good guy and a bad guy in the Quest of the Delta Knights. I don't know that movie. Oh, oh my goodness. So the Quest of the Delta Knights is this low budget RENFESTI fantasy yarn um and uh, it was. It was It was used on Mystery Science Theater three thousand, So it

was riffed on on that show. And it's a it's a it's a strong Mystery Sentence Theater three thousand episode, as I recall. Uh, but I it's it's it's what. The thing I love about it is that it's not something that comes to mind as a good David Warner film. But there was a fabulous interview with David Warner on The A V. Club by Will Harris with David Warner.

This was in where they basically just run through and asked him about various films that he was in, you know, just you know, what kind of stories do you have from this picture? What kind of stories you have from this picture? And they they asked him about the quest of the Delta Knights, and he responded with this, wow. Well that was, of course a low budget film which what's what's that called mystery science theater? It ended up there laughs. But I had great fun doing it, playing

two parts. Originally I was just asked to play the one part, and I said, would it save you money if I played two parts for the same money? And they said yes. So I had great fun changing from a black wig into a gray wig and putting brown contact lenses into my normal blue eyes. It was great one logistically. So I have great affection for that little

low budget film. I've always loved that, this idea, that this this film that we think of as being bad and you know, and forgettable for an actor of David Warner's pedigree. He's like, no, that was that was tremendous fun. I'm so glad I did that picture wonderful. In that same interview, he also mentions that when it comes to time after time, the studio wanted Mick Jagger for this role. But yeah, but but the filmmakers were like, no, we don't want Mick Jagger, we really want David Warner. And

they fought for David Warner and thank god they got him. Yeah, because you had to save Mick Jagger for free Jack. I think free Jack chose this everything we need to know that it would have I'm not saying Mick Jagger would have made a bad Jack the Ripper, but I don't think he would have been well, he would not have been a very good Jack the Ripper. Let's just leave it there. I like David Warner. Yes, I'm glad we got David Warner. Yeah, he's great in this Get

the Mate. That's your mate, Jagger though, that's not You're David Warner are Ripper in this film. Dr Stevenson Meat. He's very very stern um, but at times he has a sardonic wit to him. He's it's just it's a great role and he has a lot of great lines in it. Um. It's it's a very interesting villain and Ultimately, I think this may be my my favorite take on Jack the Ripper. I mean, Jack the Ripper is a character that doesn't automatically mean great film presence, but he's

I think Warner's terrific in this film. You know what I also love Warner in is uh is Tron where there's a thing in Tron where the same actor will usually play a character in the real world in in mate space, but then also play a character within the digital world, And so David Warner does. He's like a

sort of uh corrupt software business leader guy. I think he steals somebody's ideas for some video games or something in the real world, but then within the computer world he plays the villains Sark, who is this evil like you know, frisbee player who works for the Master Control program. If you haven't seen the Old Tron, it's it's worth seeing for a number of reasons. But David Warner is a great villain in it. Oh yes, he's great. Uh Oh.

I should also I mentioned that nineties Outer Limits episode that has Jack about Jack the Ripper. I watched it last night, so I just have to share real quick. It's titled Ripper, and it's pretty fun it's maybe a little long, like the episode is longer than the premise demands, but it's it's pretty great. Uh, Carrie els is in it, but also Francis Fisher and France Newon of Death Moon Fame for us of death Men fame. I don't think

anybody is actually of death Men fame. But but it's got a fun cast and the premise is essentially this, what if the Jack the Ripper murders were not due to a human killer, but we're due to some sort of of an alien space snake that goes that that travels into people's mouths and then emerges from their bellies, thus creating the abdominal wounds associated with the Jack the

Ripper killings. Yeah, so it's okay. David Warner play the snake. No, David Warner plays um Scotland yard investigator and uh, Carrie Ellis plays a former doctor turned opium and um what is he is? An he's an opium atic, but also he's drinking too much, too much, absentthe and is just generally depressed and sweaty all the time. And so so he there's a lot of great overacting from him, like just the right level of overacting the type of overacting

you you want from Carrie Elwis. Okay, well, I guess I gotta see that one. Maybe it'll come up in a in a future anthology episode. Al right. Um, as far as other people the film, like, these are really the three main characters, I'm not sure how many of these other individuals we need to go into. Some of them are only in it briefly. Um, there are some cameos that pop out. Corey Feldman shows up as a child.

I don't think he has any lines, but I just saw him and I was like, wait, that's Corey Feldman. And then screen he may say something like look mom, a time machine or something like that man's in I don't know, he maybe says something, but yeah, this was his film debut. Another film debut. I believe this was at least his first credit film screen credit is mc gainey, who just plays one of the London Bobbies. But this

is an actor born. You may not envisioned him in your mind when I say his name, but if you look him up, you'll be like, oh, that guy because he's a character actor frequently cast as rotund creepers, bikers and bad cops. Uh. Yeah, I think about the the pilot of the plane in con Air. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that was him. Now, I you really pinpoint the music, and I should pinpoint the music in this one as well.

It is a score by Michelos Rosa, who lived nineteen o seven through nineteen So if you're watching this in the score to this film feels very traditional. Well that's because Rosa cut his teeth on film scores in the thirties and forties. He was a Hungarian American child prodigy. His earliest successes included The Four Feathers in nineteen thirty

nine and The Thief of Baghdad in nineteen forty. He earned seventeen Academy Award nominations, including three Oscars for Spellbound in forty five, A Double Life and forty seven, and Been Her in fifty nine. So huge name in the score business in the Golden Age of Hollywood. He composed a good hundred scores and also maintain a career as a concert composer. So even though it's not the sort of film score that I would I would want, I

would personally want to listen to outside of the viewing experience. Um, it's it's a fine score by a legendary composer. It is a nonsense score that you will allow. Yeah, yeah, I will allow it. So I guess we're getting kind

of close to the end here. It doesn't make a lot of sense I think for this one to talk in much detail about about the plot or scene by scene, but I mean broadly, the main thing is you have this set up where you establish the characters in the eighteen nineties, and then there and then there is invocation

of the time travel mechanisms. So Jack the Ripper escapes to the future and uh, and H. G. Wells realizes what has happened, realizes that his friend is in fact, Jack the Ripper has escaped to the future using his time machine that he invented, and now it's his responsibility to track him down and bring him to justice. So that's one half of the plot, is this sort of chase through time, and then the other half is broadly

the love story. When H. G. Wells arrives in the future, he and Mary Steen Virgin, they meet each other at a bank because he is trying to exchange hundred year old British pounds for money that he can use to buy palm Fritz at McDougall's and um and she is working there at the currency exchange. They meet and they fall in love and there's a very sweet love story that develops between them as as the as the plot goes on, and that the threat of Jack the Ripper

is sort of looming in the background. But apart from that, I mean, I guess, drawing on the themes, I think one thing that's interesting in this movie is, Uh, it's very pointed about h. G. Wells reaction his extreme resistance to arming himself with weapons in his struggle against Jack the Ripper. Like he when he goes to try to apprehend him, at first, he doesn't arm himself or try

to use force in any way. He just goes and tries to talk him into coming back with him, and even later on, as the threat becomes more and more dire, it's only at a point of sort of like breakdown an extremity that he finally gets a gun. Uh. It's something that he's been urged to do, I think by Mary Stein Virgin and maybe other characters before that time. And I wondered what you thought about that there was an interesting decision to make this character who's so almost

irrationally resistant to using weapons or arming himself. Yeah, that I did wonder at that point in the film, like what it was ultimately supposed to mean. Like maybe I guess it was probably more about the character and the necessity of the plot, Like it maybe one of those situations where you you you're like, Okay, he's in a life and death struggle. Surely he would break and get

some sort of a weapon at this point. Uh. And then it also helps with the whole situation where the police have apprehended him and they find him not only behaving suspiciously but also armed. So I guess it has its role in the plot. I don't I was I

struggled to getting anything more significant out of it. Well, well, I mean, I mean, I think it probably has something to do with like his utopian ideal, because Wells is imagining you know, he's his character and the actual H. G. Wells in in the late nineteenth century, like was a member of the Fabian Society and didn't think that, you know, that incrementalist change in a progressive direction would eventually eliminate war and poverty and all that kind of stuff. And

so if he's thinking of the utopian ideal. I mean, it seems that he is committed to the utopian ideal of non violence in a way that even could be very self destructive and could be seen as irrational in these cases where like clearly he's dealing with like a dangerous killer one on one. Yeah. And and it's interesting that the time when he breaks this is in a moment of weakness. It's when he's sort of like lost it. Yeah,

but I thought that also had interesting implications. And I don't want to spoil anything, but for how how the conflict is finally resolved in the end. Another point I would I would make about the time machine because I, you know, I want to step into a movie like this and I expect to sort of geek out about the particulars of time travel a bit. And it's interesting because if you ask me to explain exactly how the time machine works, and I'm not talking about like the

you know, the power system at all. It's supposed to be like solar powered or something, but there's still powered even though it's in his basement, right, But there's this whole bit about, uh, the different keys that make it do different things, and I cannot tell you what how these exactly worked? Uh? But the film, the film screenplay and presentation is so effective that you you don't really have to think too much about it. Uh. But it's almost like the whole situation where it's like you you

have to try and draw a bicycle. You have this vision of the bicycle in your head and you think you understand it, but then you really don't, not enough to draw it. Uh. And I feel like that's how the time machine functions in this this plot, Like they it works it. I understand how it functions in the plot and ultimately in the the climax of the picture, but I also would struggle to explain how these keys

work and which one does what. That's one type of writing skill, I mean, one good quality of writing is writing that gives you the illusion of explanatory depth. I mean, most stories that you enjoy, you probably couldn't go through and explain in the same level of detail as the author why exactly everything happen ends and stuff. But there there's a sort of ease you settle into with certain types of storytelling, with good writing and all that, where

where you just kind of like forget about it. You don't worry about it, and you you accept that everything makes sense even when it often doesn't. And I mean, and one way in which it doesn't that I wanted to bring up is how this movie does not get into the archetype of the time travel story the arms race that I was talking about earlier, and I was thinking about how different the movie could have been if

it had embraced that ethic. So when Jack the Ripper flees to the future, the way H. G. Wells decides to deal with it is he's going to go to the same time in the future and bring him back instead of going one day in the past and preventing Jack the Ripper from stealing his time machine in the first place. Like that. That might have been a wiser choice, but it wouldn't have made for his fun of motion picture. Yeah, yeah,

just different storytelling sensibilities. Um. And ultimately, I mean, I think it comes down to what is it that the

storyteller really wants us to think about. In this case, I think they want us to think about, uh, the qualities of the present age in which the movie was made, sort of the the arc of history, and how that would be sort of metabolized by somebody from the past with utopian ideals and and things like that, and it wants to tell that kind of story more than it wants to tell the kind of story about the power that would be granted by a time machine and and

how people would use that power. Yeah. My final note on this film is that there's a scene later on where H. G. Wells is using a phone booth. Oh my wait, let me back up another great point in this film where I was laughing out loud and disturbing my wife while she's trying to work in the next room. It was the whole scene with the garbage disposal. Like, there's a scene where somebody goes to use a garbage

disposal and you just see the hand. It turns out it's not H. G. Wells, but you're like, oh no, don't let H. G. Wells use the garbage disposal. He is not ready for this technology. Very good point. Yeah, and he's repeatedly confused by phones that he eventually gets the hang of them. Um. But but yeah, there's a great part where he goes to a telephone booth and and there's some like graffiti that I think is supposed to to display the sort of like violence and callousness

of the age. Yes, it says eat razor blades, which which is great because it's one of the I love it when movie graffiti is like clearly orchestrated. It doesn't feel like an organic bit bit of legit graffiti art from the age like this is the prop Department. But it feels perfect for this film. Like it. It feels in line with the sort of worries about the future in the present that are inherent in this tale of Jack the Ripper traveling through time. All right, well, we're

gonna probably go and close it out here. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have not seen Time after Time, well lucky you. It's widely available on disc and as a digital purchase or rental or a physical rental if you have a video store

like say video Home in your area. As of this recording, it's currently streaming on HBO Max in the US, So if you sign into that app, if you if into that app, if you use that service, you can skip all the Mortal Kombat and Suicide Squad stuff, go right to the classics they have. They really have a great selection of older films on there. Oh, Yeah, I've lately been impressed by by the selection of older movies on HBO.

Max thumbs up on that. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, you'll find it on Fridays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed were primarily a science podcast, but on Friday's we put aside most of the science discussion. I guess there's been more of it and here since we're talking about time travel, but generally Friday's that those are those are our days to just talk about weird films, and thus here we are huge thanks as always to

our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.