Sunday, April 7, 2024

Sven- The Time Travellers (1964)

From Wiki- Scientists Dr. Erik von Steiner, Dr. Steve Connors, and Carol White are testing their time-viewing device, drawing enormous amounts of power. Danny McKee, a technician from the power plant, has been sent to tell them to shut down their experiment. During the test, odd shadows cross the room and the screen shows a stark, barren landscape. Danny discovers the screen has become a "time portal" and steps through. The portal becomes unstable, and the others enter it to call him back. The portal disappears, stranding them. Pursued by hostile mutants, they seek refuge in a cave, which they discover leads to an underground city – all that is left of civilization in a future devastated by nuclear war. All this and robot, plus a ship to Alpha Centauri. Oh yeah, and some cheesecake as well. Ib Melchior sure wrote and made some interesting movies.  Do I like all of them?  Mostly.  He made Angry Red Planet, and wrote Reptilicus and Journey to the 7th Planet, both of which I enjoy (and I love ol' Tillicus).  This movie is very visually interesting and the story is good.  It is a little undone by a lack of effects, though using some magician tricks works well.  I enjoyed Sven this time.  I think because I hadn't seen all his bits more than once (not his fault, I know it is reruns) so this was all new.  I had also only seen this movie once, which helped.

I liked the end of the movie, since it didn't end in a time loop.  However, humanity is going to die out simply because they had such a tiny gene pool.  Unless there are more humans about in the far future.  Not quite the happy ending it pretends to be!

Next- Island of Terror!

 

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