Out Of Time

I just rewatched Time After Time, a film with the fanciful, or should I say bizarre, plot that has H. G. Wells creating a time machine in 1893 London and chasing Jack The Ripper into present-day, i.e., 1979, San Francisco.

It's a minor if pleasant adventure-romance, with Malcolm McDowell as a very nice Wells and David Warner as a very nasty Ripper. Most memorable is the gal they struggle over, a modern woman, played by newcomer Mary Steenburgen. Her role requires her to be a serious businesswoman who falls in love with Wells in no time flat. It's a rather ridiculous part and she plays it in a spacey sort of way that makes you wonder what she's really thinking. (She'd win an Oscar next year for her work in Melvin And Howard.)

Is there something about Steenburgen that attracts time travelers, since Doc Brown falls in love with her in Back To The Future III? Steenburgen and McDowell, by the way, fell in love during the shoot and got married (and later divorced).

What's fun about these sorts of films is we have Wells marvel at the inventions he runs across, such as calculators, record players and widespread telephones, and today's audience looks back and marvels at how primitive they are. It's also fun to watch the old-style special effects. Forget CGI, this movie was probably planned before Star Wars came out.