A Madman Not Worth Pursuing

 A Time Traveling Waste of Time

Time After Time (1979) Jack the Ripper escapes from Victorian London to San Francisco in the 1970s by way of H.G. Wells’ time machine.  Wells pursues the killer to stop his killing rampage.

Better than the movie

Directed by Nicholas Myers

Starring Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenbergen, David Warner

Why I Liked It – David Warner is pretty good as the bad guy.

Jack the Ripper traveling through time almost deserves its own genre. The character represents so many of our deepest cultural fears. A mysterious killer who escapes into the misty darkness, leaving devastation behind. My problem with the concept is that the possible storyline options have been worn out. Jack is either a irrational madman or a cool, cerebral psychopath.

This movie suffers from the most common issues with time travel movies. H. G. Wells (McDowell) is a man of the late 1800s dropped into a culture a century advanced from his own and in a completely different country. Yet, he adapts quickly to this alien situation. One of my all-time favorite time-travel flaws is driving. The Whitechapel murders took place in the late 1880s, and cars don’t become common for most people till thirty-plus years after that. Because modern viewers have grown up around cars, we think it’s easy. But if you remember when you first learned, at the very beginning, most of us struggled. Driving a car requires a variety of skills to function all at the same time. Modern cars operate in a manner and at a speed that would have been unknown to Wells. But here, despite some weaving and bumping, he masters driving at speed in a matter of minutes. Add in some plot issues (there’s this “magic” key that can make time travelers disappear to… I do not know where. Or why? Or how?), and the movie struggles.

The special effects are not very good here either. Star Wars showed us a new level for special effects two years prior to this movie. Honestly, the transporter effect from the original Star Trek series (more than a decade earlier) are better than the cheesy prismatic “time travel” effects seen here. There’s an element of late ‘60s-early ‘70s psychedelic trip acting during the travel segments that haven’t aged well either.

For the performers, Malcolm McDowell is OK as Wells. The version here is a mess, in my opinion. Wells in real life wasn’t a great romantic model (he cheated repeatedly on his wife and saw no issue with it). So, making him the romantic lead here just feels off. Plus, as a dedicated futurist, he doesn’t show much, if any, interest in actually being in the actual freaking future! Mary Steenburgen does what she can with a cardboard cutout character. The reality is that there isn’t much she can do. David Warner does better with a Ripper character in the cold, calculating mold.

Director Nicholas Meyer has a strong connection with Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic Sherlock Holmes character. One of the best additions to the Holmesian canon is his novel “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”. There is a scattering of references here along with other pop culture references. Sadly, too many of them felt artificial and forced.

So, there’s not a lot to recommend this one. Warner’s Ripper is the best performance. If you don’t mind some real cheesy effects and story, you could enjoy this one.

Rating – ** Not Impressed