TCM Pick O’ The Day: Thursday, February 5th
by John Nolte
4am PST - Time Machine, The (1960) – A turn-of-the-century inventor sends himself into the future to save humanity. Cast: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot Dir: George Pal C-103 mins, TV-G
George Pal’s take on the classic story by H.G. Wells is further proof that story triumphs CGI. Even as a kid watching this on a fourteen inch television, the special effects looked cheesy. But it takes more than bad costumes and cheap models (the stop-motion photography remains impressive, however) to undermine imagination and a great story. You get so wrapped up in the drama and ideas the bad effects barely hit the radar. The remake came out in 2002 (directed by Wells great-grandson Simon, no less) and enjoyed all the latest technical movie magic available, and still it laid there like poorly written, PC-infected roadkill.
Today’s pick was an annual late show event while I was growing up, the kind of film you worry won’t hold up as an adult because the memory surrounding it might have colored the experience. No worries here. To this day, Rod Taylor’s journey to the year 200,000 and beyond remains an annual late show event. It also doesn’t hurt that those lazy, narcissistic Eloi remind me of Flower Children. Maybe George Pal could see a few years into the future.
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34 Comments
It is interesting how a good story can cover some rather hilarious special effects. The movie Them is fantastic, but those ants are pretty dang funny.
I think Star Trek was the same way – great (okay, mainly great) stories and some terrific (okay, mainly terrific) acting made up for its flaws.
“Them” is staged so well you don’t notice any of the cheap effects. The terror on that little girl’s face when she hears the ants coming is one of the great horror scenes, and yet its done on an obvious soundstage with fairly crude audio effects.
Staging is much more crucial to horror than anything else and “Them” is pretty brilliant in that regard.
GT: Actually the Eloi are the happy Iraqis and Rod Taylor is the American Imperialist who upsets the natural order of rainbows, lollipops and the small price of a few innocent Eloi killed and eaten every night.
The stability of cannibalistic Morlocks.
How exactly was the 2002 remake of Time Machine “PC”?
By the way, John, what is your opinion of the other great HG Wells adaptation “The Shape of Things to Come”?
Wells was a socialist, but in his early novels, at least, he could still tell a great story. There’s socialistic subtext in The Time Machine, but it’s easy to ignore and focus on the story There’s reasons why his early novels keep getting reprinted and adapted, but his later ones, burdened by endless socialist pontificating, are nearly forgotten.
Them! was great, but I can’t help but think that if they got Ray Harryhausen to do stop-motion ants, it would have been even better.
I love this version! I forgot Yvette Mimieux was in it. Thanks for the heads-up!
When I lived in San Diego in the early 1980s, every Friday there was a show broadcast from Mexico called “Disasterpiece Theater”. The host, who always talked with an Edsel as a prop behind him, presented a movie that was so bad it was comical. Usually the special effects were so obvious – and ludicrous – that they made the movie. Add some bad acting and you have a Disasterpiece entry. And you’d be surprised at some of the famous actors in these bombs…Trog, with Joan Crawford, comes to mind as a Peter Graves film with giant growing rocks…
I remember seeing one where giant ants were crawling up a sky scraper – but you could see the upturned glass they were walking on. (same movie?)
Anyway fast forward 15 years and I am at the old Wendover Airport on the Nevada-Utah border- a very historical place as they taught all the heavy bomber crews in WW2 – turns out the site is also used in many movies.
They happened to be filming part of ConAir there that day – I met a studio exec by the fence and asked him if he felt that too many movies were relying on special effects and not simply good writing and acting –
He had a moment’s contemplation and then laughed – had to agree with me…
Still my favorite scenes:
Summarizing from memory-
“Thousands of years of good men dying for their dreams. For What?!?
So you can run and Play!
Well, I’m going back to my own time. We may have our problems but AT LEAST I’ll DIE AMONG MEN!!!”
I just love that last line.
Eloi. They’re what’s for dinner.
GROWLTIGER:
Reminder, not ALL Americans blindly got in the stinkin’ line of 2008.
Millions of us are now part of ‘The Loyal Opposition’ vowing to continue to fight on yet another day.
This just became available on Netflix Instant Watch, so I watched it again last week. I was actually rooting for the Morlocks!
Yvette Mimeaux looked especially tasty.
Eloi. The other white meat.
“Things to come”
http://www.classiccinemaonline.com/cinema/sci-fi/thingstocome.html
True story: while our family was living at Subic Bay in the Philippines (my dad was stationed there) in 1958-60, “The Time Machine” showed at the outdoor screen at the Officer’s Club in the naval housing area where we lived. At the point where the sirens sound and the Eloi blindly march towards the underground entrances, someone in the audience yelled out, “We’re going to have a Weena roast!”
By the way, it wasn’t “The Time Machine” that inspired Gene Roddenberry’s life work; it was “Forbidden Planet” (something Roddenberry himself later acknowledged). Go watch the film (still outstanding after more than 50 years; I consider it one of the best five SF films ever made) and ask yourself, “Didn’t I just see the first-ever ‘Star Trek’ episode?” ..bruce..
As a little kid this movie was very scary – at least the part when Rod Taylor descended into the Morlock underground to rescue the Eloi.
It took me years to understand what the “mushrooms are spouting” line meant.
Thanks for memory trip John.
Bill Brandt posed the following question above: “I remember seeing one where giant ants were crawling up a sky scraper – but you could see the upturned glass they were walking on. (same movie?)”
The answer to your question, Bill, is no–not the same movie. I don’t recognize the film from your description, but it is not “Them.”
Yvette Mimieux… reason to watch
Rod Taylor was a someone you noticed on screen
Did they stop making actors in his size?
Another scifi film from the same era that has poor special effects but good writing and always keeps my attention is the James Mason/Pat Boone “Journey to the Center of the Earth”.
Saw that and “The Time Machine” on a giant screen in an old rickety all-wood building of a theater in Chatauqua Park in Boulder, CO. You could hear the breezes on a summers night rustling the pines outside the theater. I’ve long thought that my affection for both films was some sort of boyhood intense-experience imprint as well but have viewed both recently on Netflix and they do hold up.
Another Subic Bay story – I was an US Navy officer aboard a ship in port for upkeep and went to the base theater to see “Alien”. Many of the sailors had brought local Filippino girlfriends on dates.
As the film progressed it was evident that the Filippinas had a different reaction to things in the film than the American sailors did. What made me laugh was that they (the Filippinas) sat through the monster popping out of John Hurt’s abdomen and the face hugger and a few other gory scenes but when the android had his head knocked off and was spewing hydraulic fluid they revolted. About a good dozen got up and left holding their dates hands and dragging them (reluctantly it seemed to me) along. This particular affect seemed to me not to be gory and much less shocking in the half second it took to realize that the victim was not human, and that was the intended effect, but I don’t think the girlfriends got the idea that it was not a human.
Another Subic Bay story
Bill Brandt – Good to see a fellow fan of “Disasterpiece Theater”, I remember they would accompany portions of “The Mole People” with Devo’s “Whip It”.
Loved “The Time Machine” as a kid, love it now. I actually like the film better than the book, a rare thing. Rod Taylor is very good (as he was in The Birds and 36 Hours.) I remember a controversy a few years ago about Taylor not being honored (taking the name off a some building or another) because of the role he played in testifying against Communists. Anyone recall the particulars?
I loved this film. The Eloi v the Morlocks. About the same quality as the Sinbad films of the era.
great stuff
I could watch the scene where our hero sees the passing of years by the styles of dresses in the shop window every day.
Movie Trivia:
The uncredited actor changing the dresses in that store window was Don Sahlin who, a few years later, would build the muppet puppets for Jim Henson. Sahlin worked on “The Time Machine” as a stop-motion animator.
Bill Brandt
comes to mind as a Peter Graves film with giant growing rocks…
That was “The Monolith Monsters” but Peter Graves did not star in it.
Thanks, Mr. Nolte, for posting this. The film used to be a big favorite of mine.
Chiming in with another great movie where the acting and story outbalance the cheesy costumes and effects: The Thing (from Outer Space).
Nor does the John Carpenter remake live up to the original.
I’ve been hot for Yvette Mimieux ever since…
*sigh*
The Beginning of the End had giant grasshoppers, or locusts, not ants as the starring creatures.
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