1979 - TIME AFTER TIME, deliberately old fashioned fantasy, romance

The writer and director Nicholas Meyer is about three years away from making the best of the Star Trek films, Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn.  He's six years away from contributing to the the time travel Star Trek film,  Star Trek:  The Voyage Home.  Time After Time is almost a warm up for those two films.

The plot has Malcolm McDowell (for once not playing some kind of cinematic psycho character) as H.G. Welles.  In this story, back in 1893 Welles invents a time machine which is stolen by Jack The Ripper who uses it to escape through time into the future.  The time machine automatically returns to Welles who also travels through time to find and stop Jack the Ripper from killing again.

Into this story is woven a love story as Welles meets a woman from the 20th century and has to confront the various challenges of understanding the future age he has traveled into.  It's a clever screenplay.

  

The acting by McDowell and David Warner as Jack The Ripper is tops,  however Mary Steenburgen plays McDowell's love interest and her performance is so low key it almost seems like she is barely awake in her scenes. Actually if there is a criticism to be made about this film it's Nicholas Meyer's direction which could have used a little more energy to it, the film is awfully low key at times.

 

The special effects and the music provided by Miklos Rosza (in his final score) deliberately evoke an old fashioned feel to the film.  All in all Time After Time is an entertaining film, the running time is 112 minutes.