Starring: Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Alan Young    Directed by: George Pal   Written by: H.G. Wells, David Duncan

The Story: Time. I never seem to have enough of it. Maybe I should build a time machine, like George, the hero of this movie.

If you think of H.G. Wells, this story is probably what comes to mind. I read it years ago, and don't remember much in the way of details, only that I thought it was a pretty good read. This movie is more like the book then the 2002 remake of it, but since they are destined to duke it out in the First Infernal Grudge Match I won't mention the 2002 movie again here.

A week after the turn of the century....the 20th century that is (1900), several English gentleman sit in the dining room of their friend, George, awaiting him. He asked them over for dinner, but is apparently late. Since this is Victorian England these guys grumble and complain about how a gentleman is supposed to be punctual and all that. Geezuz,  people must have had a lot more time back then. Nowadays if five friends were waiting for a dude that didn't show up on time they'd be more or less like "Homes musta ran into traffic.". Suddenly, George enters the room, his clothes are a tattered mess and he looks like he just went a few rounds with the Hulk. George explains what's happened by taking us back to a week prior.

The same group of people were at his house...Filby, Dr. Hillyer, Bridewell and Kemp (and Mrs. Watchett, his housekeeper) when George demonstrated a tiny model of his time machine to them. Of course none of these guys believes that time travel is possible, even when George sends the model into the future. Ok, lets be honest...it just disappears, and there's really no way of telling if it went into the future or not. Assuming George is right they then start in on him with "What is it good for?" type argument. These bozos are thick, but Hillyer is the thickest (and since he's played by Sebastian Cabot...no, I'm not gonna make the fat joke I was thinking of...forget it) Hillyer says George should turn over his invention to the War Department. Yeah, that's a good idea, Hillyer.....I can only imagine what kind of pandemonium would happen if any government had such a device. Good thing George didn't take him seriously, or we'd all be flying Union Jacks and drinking tea right now. George just wants to travel to the future, though. He believes that the world will be some kind of Utopia in a few centuries.

The others leave, but Filby, George's best friend, remains a moment to have a heart to heart. Filby is concerned with his friends obsession with time. (No [unwrite]. This guy has about five hundred clocks in one room!) George assures him he's fine and tells him to bring the other back for dinner in a week. Then he skulkers off to his lab, hops in the life sized model of his time machine and away he goes. At first George just travels a few hours in time, which I guess was his test run. Makes sense....kind of. For all he knew his model might have just disintegrated. With more confidence in his creation, George travels to the year 1917. His house is now abandoned and boarded up. (The machine moves in time and not space.) There he meets Filby's son, James who tells him that Filby died during the war (WWI). George then travels further into the future, witnessing the air raids of WWII on England as the years fly by. His house is hit by a bomb and disappears, but while traveling in time I guess he's in a state of grace or something since it doesn't affect him or the machine. George then stops in 1966. And WHAT A 1966! It looks like a live action Jetsons set! George is ecstatic! He's amazed at the progress. He's also blissfully ignoring the fact that everyone on the street is running to an underground shelter and that there's a siren going off. He even meets James Filby again. Filby, now an old man tells him they have no time to talk, they have to get to the shelter, but George doesn't listen. (Amazingly, Filby remembers meeting him in 1917. Wow. I can't remember people I met last year. And how old is Filby now, 100?) Filby leaves dumbass George on the street when the nuclear bombs start falling. George climbs into his machine and starts her up in order to escape the destruction and once again heads for the future. But the earth starts spewing lava which in George's accelerated point of reference turns quickly to stone, encasing him and the machine. Now he has to wait for the machine to take him far enough into the future for erosion to wear away the rock. And he does, emerging 800 centuries or so centuries later.  Right next to where the machine is, a big freaking Temple like Sphinx stands. Stopping the machine rather abruptly cause it to send him flying out of his seat, knocking himself out. When he awakens, he explores the now green, tree studded landscape. There he sees the Eloi....future humans....basking by a stream. They don't react when one of them falls in the water and starts to drown. George saves the girl, whose name is Weena. Weena doesn't offer any real information to George, but after spending some time with the Eloi, George learns that they don't do anything, have no drive or ambition or even creativity. Books that they own are in an abandoned and ill kept library, and fall to dust when touched. George flips out. The Eloi are pretty sorry. He decides to leave them and return to his own time...only...the Time Machine is gone!

What's the problem with you, George? Why didn't you build the damned thing with some kind of anti-theft safeguards? Anyway, Weena comes out into the night to warn George that the Morlocks may be about when the sun goes down. And that the Sphinx belongs to the Morlocks. She takes him to an old ruin which presumably was a museum or command center or something because it contains the talking rings. Some kind of gizmo that has recorded history. George then discovers the terrible truth...Constant wars laid the Earth barren. Mankind split into two parts. Some tried to survive on the surface and became the Eloi...the others eked out a living underground and became the Morlocks. The Morlocks are cannibals. they feed and clothe the eloi to keep them ignorant and use them like cattle. George really wants his time Machine back now!

When Weena and some of the other Eloi are captured by the Morlocks George makes it into their underground lair to free them. Knowing that the Morlocks are afraid of fire (How? I don't know...the Morlocks must employ fire to cook the Eloi and to run their machines, yet they fear it like Frankenstein's monster does) George fends off the blue skinned brutes and fights his way out of the caverns....inciting the passive and pathetic Eloi to fight too. They all escape and George has the Eloi throw burning wood into the Morlock cavern entrance burning them out.

But George still doesn't have his machine. He's stranded in the future. Until the sphinx doors open and he sees his machine inside. George hops into it, ecstatic, but the surviving Morlocks inside the sphinx attack. The doors close cutting the Eloi off from helping him and cutting off George's escape. With no choice, George activates the time machine and returns to his own time.

And here he sits, telling his friends this story. Naturally they think he's making it up. But as soon as they leave, George drags the time machine...which materialized in his backyard....back into his lab and leaves again...taking three books from his shelf. What three books we don't know. We only learn from Filby that the reason he moved the machine was so it would reappear outside of the Morlock temple, instead of in it.

Some things don't age gracefully, but this movie isn't one of them. 40 years later and its still pretty good. Hell, it almost makes me want to read the book again....but then I don't have the time. Get it? Hahahaha....oh, never mind. Rod Taylor was George. Alan Young was both the elder Filby and his son, James. Yvette Mimieux was Weena, and Doris Lloyd was Mrs. Watchett.

Best Lines: "What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you can let it crumble to dust!" - George flips out on the Eloi because they don't value knowledge at all.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) Perhaps George should get some new friends. He's a little late and they're all bitchin' and moanin' about how rude he is, etc. Guys, you're in his house eating his food! If they were complaining like that in my kitchen I'd be throwing fat English dudes out of the window.

2.) When George travels from 1900 to 1917 he meets Filby's son James and at first believes its Filby. Hey, George....did it even occur to you that Filby couldn't possibly look that young 17 years in the future? If I traveled 17 years into the future and looked up one of my old buddies I wouldn't expect them to have not aged a day!

3.) George should be less concerned with technological progress and more concerned with developing some common sense survival instincts! When he arrives in 1966 its during an alert. There's a siren going off and people are all running and screaming to get into the shelter. He even meets James Filby, now an old man, again. Filby is less interested in talking and more interested in getting into the shelter. Now I understand that George doesn't know what a siren is, or anything about Nuclear bombs, but its no big whooping secret that there's something real bad about to happen. If the dumbest guy on earth walked outside of his house and saw everyone running away and saying "Get to the shelter!" I'd assume that even he would run and get to safety. Does George, a man smart enough to build a Time Machine? No, like a complete meathead, its beyond him that everyone is running for a reason! For Heaven's sake George, you just saw TWO world WARS! Instead of a journey in time take a trip on the Clue Train!

4.) George tells Weena not to worry about the Morlocks because fire seems to keep them away. How does he make that conclusion? He hasn't lit a fire yet!

5.) Speaking of fire, Weena sticks her hand into it because she's never seen it before. But when the fight in the Morlock caverns starts George tells Weena to find anything that burns so he can use fire to keep the Morlocks at bay. George, she barely knows what fire is, so how is she gonna find something that burns? She'll probably hand you a rock, man, she doesn't even know fire is hot!

6.) After the atomic blast in 1966 (My history teacher never told us that someone nuked London in 1966) George is trapped under tons of molten rock and must wait for the ages to wear the rock  away before he can stop the Time Machine....why didn't he just go back then? Slap that puppy into reverse and return to his own time?

Nudity and Sex: None

Huh?:

What the heck? I can understand the need for a test model...after all, I would want some proof that the time machine works myself. But its so tiny! What powers it? You'd think a machine that could somehow move through the 4th dimension would use an enormous amount of energy. Did George also create the world's first AAA Ever ready Battery when he made his model? Hell, what's the actual life size time machine run off of? It was built in what? 1899? 1900?

That mannequin sure as hell lasted a long time! Geez, the store its in lasted a long time! Do mannequins usually get used for 60 odd years?

Good thing George didn't catch a lethal dose being out in the open when that nuke went off, huh?

I guess its supposed to be a noble thing for George to return to the future after moving the Time Machine so he'll reappear outside of the Morlock sphinx. Its kind of a goofy thing to do if you ask me. Weena and the Eloi are pretty pathetic. The only reason I could think of for going back to them is to TAKE OVER AND RULE THE WORLD! Filby and Mrs. Watchett note that he's taken three books, but don't know which ones....probably "The Art of War", "How to make firearms" and "Building Castles: A guide to making a stronghold".

Another thing about George leaving for the future....he must have no regards for his friends at all. Mrs. Watchett is effectively out of a job! And it doesn't seem to bother George to leave his friends behind forever! What a dick!

The Final Judgment: Do they still make kids read H.G. Wells in school nowadays? they should. (Shoot, they just make 'em read period.) The Time Machine is an extremely enjoyable movie and one of the few in The Inferno to get a five devil score and the recommendation that's a family type of movie. The Morlocks might frighten smaller children, but I doubt it. There are scarier monsters shown on TV nowadays. If only I the time to watch TV...get it?...ok, I'll stop it with the lame time jokes.