The Time Travelers

[Foxbat]

Directed by Ib Melchor
Made in 1964
Starring John Hoyt, Philip Carey, Preston Foster, Merry Anders

Step through the portal beyond the crack in Space and Time where the fantastic world of the future will freeze your blood with its weird horrors!

A group of scientists are working on a machine to view past and future events but something goes awry and it’s not a window they create but a doorway 107 years into the future. Stepping through, the intrepid band of heroes find themselves stranded in a post-apocalyptic world where mutants roam the devastated landscape. The travellers find a small group of surviving humans in this ruined Earth. They live underground and use their technology to build Androids to both defend against mutant attack and help build a star ship. They hope to travel to a new planet and begin anew.

As mutant attacks intensify, the time travellers must make a choice: work to re-open the portal or escape with the others to a new planet and a new life.

This is a fine piece of campy nonsense. Gaudy colours and terrible fashion sense give the game away. Even if you didn’t know the decade in which this movie was made, most people would probably guess correctly that it was from the sixties. Everything visual about it screams its origin from that swinging time. In its defense, it is certainly above average for a B movie both in terms of plot and acting (actually, running at 82 minutes, I’d argue that it’s not really a B movie at all!) Top all this off with a very imaginative ending and you’ve got a fine bit of Science Fiction to entertain yourself with on a quiet weekend. Most people weaned on today’s CGI spectaculars probably won’t appreciate this one but any connoisseur of vintage SF should have this movie in their collection.