Time After Time

Although it starts off looking like a low budget Hammer horror, writer-director Nicholas Meyer’s debut feature has had a good deal of effort expended on its inventive story.  This has Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells on the trail of Jack The Ripper (David Warner) after the latter travels to San Francisco 1979 in Wells’s hijacked time machine and resumes his murderous activity.

One couldn’t say that the combination of period comedy and slasher movie works well although Meyer is mercifully restrained when it comes to showing the latter but McDowell, then still considered leading man material and at his cocky best, is engaging as the 19^th century idealist futurist encountering 20^th century reality in what constitutes the best sections of the Meyer’s script. Mary Steenburgen as Wells’s love interest and Warner as The Ripper are OK in their underdeveloped parts but add little to what is a passable diversion.

 

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