TIME TRAVELERS

1. Made-for-tv film (1976). Irwin ALLEN. The TIME TRAVELERS

   Film (1964). Dobil/AIP. Dir Ib Melchior, starring Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, John Hoyt. Screenplay Melchior, from a story by Melchior and David Hewitt. 85 mins. Colour.

   Melchior is best known as a screenwriter - e.g., ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS (1964), TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO (1965) and DEATH RACE 2000 (1975). This is one of his few films asdirector. A group of scientists travel through a time portal 107 years into the future, where they find a world a little like an updated version of that in H.G. WELLS's The Time Machine (1895) - indeed, the film was conceived as a sequel to the film The TIME MACHINE (1960). After the HOLOCAUST a human society living underground battles against MUTANTS onthe surface, while using their ANDROID associates to help them build a spaceship for their escape from Earth. This uneven but vigorous film is inventive (MATTER TRANSMISSION, hydroponics, all sorts of incidental sf tropes), not least in the final trapping of the scientists in a deterministic time loop, unable to influence events. David Hewitt's special effects are sometimes good (nicely displeasing androids), but it is unclear why he went on to direct the unnecessary remake, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967), only 3 years later. Irwin ALLEN was clearlyinfluenced by TTT to make the tv series The TIME TUNNEL (1966-7).

   PN