The Time Machine(1960)

Shaun Watson reviews�

Movie poster from the
Internet Movie
Database

Main Cast for

The Time Machine
(1960)
Rod Taylor as George
Alan Young as Filby
Yvette Mimieux
as Weena the Eloi

When I watched movies as a kid, I had to turn the TV to WDZL - Channel 39 when it was time to get the good stuff. I saw great sci-fi movies on the Saturday Afternoon Movie lineup that I couldn't have been able to see in the theaters. Sometimes, a really good one would come on. One of those classics was the 1960 version of The Time Machine, based on the sci-fi tale of "the Time Machine" by H.G. Wells.

The movie starts off around the turn of the 20th Century. Instructions were left five days earlier to one Mr. David Filby (Alan Young, the voice of Scrooge McDuck on Ducktales, Mr. Ed) and three others who were with him on New Year's Eve 1899 to return to the estate of their mutual friend George (Rod Taylor, Colossus and the Amazon Queen, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds). They show up on time - but George is late! Just as they were about to leave in frustration, a grungy-looking George stops them. What could've possibly happened in a week that messed up this bad? As if he heard them, George began to tell them the wildest story ever told...within the confines of a flashback.

Back on New Year's Eve, George invited them over to see what he made. Before he showed them, he spoke about the 3 dimensions and a theoretical fourth dimension, which he speculated was TIME.
Assuming time is linear, a three-dimensional object travels only forward through time for as long as it exists, all the while aging. George posits the thought that it may be able to travel backwards and forwards through time while staying intact, only to be cut down by unbelievers. "It's a fantasy, George!" one man says. That's when he shows them a miniature time machine he's been working on.

Compare this 60's version of the
Time Machine with the Millenium Version
of the Time Machine.
Sure, it looks like a little sleigh with a recliner in it and a sun umbrella in the back, but it can travel through time. Do these guys believe George? Hell no! They compared his "contraption" (read: piece of crap) to a parlor trick and all of the men except Filby left. Filby knew that his buddy George might not have been joking about time travel and asked him not to even think about messing with "the laws of providence".

Ignoring his friend, George goes into his garage and decides to go and start his journey - in a full-sized time machine! He tests it out and then sends the time machine on a journey that will send him across the ages and past the wars to times long past for us and into the future to come and into a year that may never come to pass. It still gives me chills when I look at the chronodometer and read the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen in science fiction:

October 12, 802,701.

It is the inhabitants of the year 802701 that make me enjoy the story of the Time Machine. There will always be divisions of class and nowhere is that more evident in the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks. One of the film's big departures from the book is changing the description of the Eloi from the book. Instead of frail, child-like creatures, they are mildly athletic Aryan youth. So as not to hit the viewer with a heavy message too fast, the love interest is introduced.

Mmmmmm. Weeeee-naaaaa�*gargle*
Her name is Weena (Yvette Mimieux, The Black Hole). And she's so fucking hot.

George has a gang of questions and no one understands or cares about them. Storming away from the Eloi in anger about not finding the answers he seeks, George makes for the time machine and finds out that he's been "time-machine-jacked." The tracks lead up to the sealed door of the sphinx building. Luckily for the plot, Weena shows up and explains that the things that took his machine are the Morlocks. The Eloi must obey their commands...or else. George asks why they've taken the time machine, but she has no answer. While they gather dry branches to make a fire, the Morlocks try to snatch Weena. In the book, she dies in the middle of a brush fire. In this movie, Weena is saved by George in the nick of time to continue her job as the Love Interest.

Plans are made to look for a way into the sphinx and the duo soon find some exhaust ports. George decides to climb down and explore the exhaust port. Just as he makes it down enough, an air raid siren goes off. Weena goes into a trance and heads to the sphinx, along with other Eloi.She is taken and he tries to rouse a rescue party from the remaining ranks of the Eloi, but the fight has been bred out of them. As a stock Scientist Man of Action of his era, George gets to the Morlock base underground.

George finds the Weena and the missing Eloi and proceeds to save them from becoming the Morlocks' dinner(they've evolved[I guess�] to cannibalism), destroys the Morlock machines and saves his time machine. He travels back to 1900 CE to tell his friends, thus ending the sweetest flashback ever. Then George hops back in the time machine to go back to 802701 to live with Weena and revive civilization for the Eloi. While some of his friends didn't believe him, only Filby knew that George was telling the truth and noted that 3 books were missing, prompting this last line:

"If you had to rebuild a future civilization from past knowledge, which three books would you bring to the future?"

CHOICE CUTS:
-The whole idea of time travel. It causes many more problems than it could ever fix.
-Weena. WeenaWeenaWeenaWeenaWeenaWeenaWeenaWeena. Weena!
-Fight Sequence. I always find it funny how scientists are all moderately fit in the science fiction stories.
-Thinly veiled allusions to the 60's and White Supremacy.
-That time machine chair has gotta be hella comfy.
-Filby, the voice of reason.

PRICELESS MOVIE QUOTE:
-George after travelling forward so many years to the future and commenting on women's wardrobe after seeing the mannequin:

"Oh my. That's a dress?"

I always enjoy watching this movie because of its innocence in regards to science. It's really a reflection of science, politics and the emerging counterculure of the early Sixties. This movie covers the travelogue of exploratory vehicles into the unknown(space exploration), clandestine events(aka "Cold War"), and the struggle against curses coated in blessings(Communism), all while dealing with one of the more ponderous aspects of science fiction--time travel.

I bestow upon this fine movie a rating of 7.