The Time Machine **** (1960, Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux) – Classic Movie Review 661

After successfully producing the 1953 version of H G Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds, George Pal profitably returns to the great author’s work to direct this entertaining and imaginative movie from Wells’s other famous story. With its charming special effects which won an Oscar, The Time Machine is much admired and fondly regarded. Its pioneering time-lapse photographic effects that show the world changing rapidly prompted the Oscar for Gene Warren and Tim Baar.

Chosen to seem young, athletic and idealistic, Rod Taylor stars in his first lead role in a feature film as H George Wells, an English Victorian scientist who on January 5 1900 arrives for his dinner party and tells his guests of his travels in his time machine. He speaks of a journey several thousand years into the future, when he sets off and is hurtled past three world wars and into the year 802701, when he leads the peaceful, surface-dwelling Elois against their subterranean enemies the Morlocks.

The premise is friendly and exciting, and the film also succeeds on other levels – through its Oscar-winning special effects, its glossy Victorian period production and the credible acting by Taylor, Yvette Mimieux (as Weena), Alan Young (as David Filby / James Filby), Sebastian Cabot, Tom Helmore, Whit Bissell and Doris Lloyd. And if it looks like a 60s episode of Star Trek, well, why not?

The time machine was created by MGM art director Bill Ferrari in a sled-like design with a big, rotating vertical wheel behind the seat. The live action scenes were filmed from 25 May 1959 to 30 June 1959, in Culver City, California. Though considered too risky a project by Hollywood, it was made by the British MGM studio and grossed $2,610,000 worldwide and earned a nice profit of $245,000.

The Time Machine was remade as The Time Machine in 2002 with Guy Pearce. Alan Young plays the Flower Store Worker in the remake.

Apart from the two Wells movies, director Pal is best known for his whimsical fantasy films, 7 Faces of Dr Lao (1964) and Tom Thumb (1958). He planned a sequel to The Time Machine, but he died before he could make it.

Rod Taylor, also star of The Birds, died on 7 January 2015, aged 84.

Alan Young died on May 19 2016, aged 96.

Yvette Mimieux died from natural causes at her home in Los Angeles on 17 January 2022, aged 80. She remained best known best for her breakout role in The Time Machine but was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards during her career.

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