Full disclosure: I watched this movie via Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it was the entire movie, so I think it counts! 🙂 I completely enjoyed myself!
The Blurb:
Research scientists experimenting with time warps are accidentally propelled forward into an unbearable future.
What Worked:
I’m going to stick mostly with comments about the MOVIE and not the running commentary from the MST3K goons, though that was up to par in this particular episode 🙂
It’s an adventure, plain and simple, and I love that. Ib Melchior has a style, certainly. He doesn’t make his scripts too convoluted, they have some fun imagination to them, and he fills them with stock characters that are easy (and fun) to make fun of. In a nutshell, what works most about this movie is that you can turn your brain off and just have a bit of imaginative fun.
I’m also just a sucker for the aesthetic of the time, which is really a carryover from the 1950s; lots of color, cheap sets, and an old-timey wholesome-ness.
What Didn’t Work:
The plot, mostly. It makes no sense how this movie even gets started. “We didn’t make a window, we made a door!” just isn’t plausible, even in a hokey, crazy, cheap scifi movie like this one. HOW ARE YOU STEPPING THROUGH A GLASS SCREEN?
There’s also a lot of the design, particularly those of the androids, which are fucking CREEPY, that’s totally missing the mark. I expected, based on the horrific look of the robots faces, that they were going to be the bad guys. They weren’t.
There’s also a distinct lack of star power in this movie, and it shows in the wooden performances of our main characters and villains. All very tame, all very stilted, and all very boring.
And then we have the ending, which is completely non-sensical. It can be hard to remember that there was actually excellent SciFi being made around this time, and just kind of shrug an effort like this one off…but it’s still true. There WAS great SciFi being made. This just wasn’t it.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 picks crappy movies for a reason: they’re fun to make fun of. This movie is no exception, and it’s TIME TRAVEL in the 60s! It’s a win-win for me, despite the shortcomings of the actual film. I have a soft spot for the era, and this movie hit it. Highly recommend the episode.
5 out of 10 – good if you like this kind of thing