Time After Time **** (1979, Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, David Warner) – Classic Movie Review 7,336

Malcolm McDowell stars as H G Wells, who jumps in his time machine and chases surgeon Dr John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), aka Jack the Ripper, from Victorian London to 1979 San Francisco. Wells falls for a modern woman (Mary Steenburgen).

Writer-director Nicholas (Star Trek II) Meyer’s excellent, compelling and satisfyingly unusual 1979 sci-fi fantasy adventure thriller film Time After Time mixes the Jack the Ripper legend and H G Wells’s time travel stories in a story that has the serial murderer using the writer’s time machine to evade the police by escaping his time period.

Malcolm McDowell stars as H G Wells, who jumps in his time machine and chases surgeon Dr John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner) aka the Ripper from Victorian London to present-day America (that is 1979 San Francisco). Wells falls for a modern woman, Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen, who is terrific), just as in real life McDowell fell for her.

Wells wants to capture Stevenson, with Amy’s help, and bring him back to Victorian London to face justice, while Stevenson is pursuing Wells for the key to the time machine.

Time After Time is robust and exciting as an action thriller, and Meyer makes it more than that, something quite special, making it resonant and intelligent with its historical and literary references. It is a quite brilliant idea, quite brilliantly carried off. The main credit is to Meyer for the screenplay, but also to Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes for the story.

It is Meyer’s film directing debut. Meyer’s screenplay is based on the premise from Karl Alexander’s then unfinished novel Time After Time and a story by Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes. Meyer recalled that Alexander give him 55 pages of his unpublished novel to critique. Meyer optioned the story to write a screenplay based on the material but developed in his own way.

It is shot by Paul Lohmann in Panavision.

Also in the cast are Charles Cioffi, Kent Williams, Patti D’Arbanville, Joseph Maher, Corey Feldman and Shelley Hack.

It has one of the last scores of veteran composer Miklós Rózsa, who won the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Music. Nicholas Meyer won the Saturn Award for Best Writing and Mary Steenburgen won for Best Actress,

Time After Time (1979, Mary Steenburgen, David Warner).

Malcolm McDowell met Mary Steenburgen in 1978 while filming Time After Time, and they married in September 1980. They had two children, Lilly (born 22 January 1981) and filmmaker Charlie McDowell (born 10 July 1983), before divorcing in 1990.

McDowell abandoned his attempt to recreate Wells’s vocal style after being ‘absolutely horrified’ to hear Wells speaking in a high-pitched, squeaky voice with a Southeast London accent on a 78 rpm recording.

David Warner said Orion Pictures wanted Mick Jagger for his character but Nicholas Meyer and producer Herb Jaffe fought for him instead.

It is shot in and around San Francisco, including Cow Hollow, North Beach, the Hyatt Regency hotel, California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, the Marina District, Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Richmond District, the Golden Gate Bridge, Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, the Embarcadero Center, Chinatown, the Marina Green, the Palace of Fine Arts, Potrero Hill, and the Civic Center.

The London interior scenes borrow from the 1960 film The Time Machine, based on H G Wells’s 1895 novella. Also the 1990 Back to the Future Part III, in which Mary Steenburgen appears, has some similarities with Time After Time. Some similar time travel ideas and the modern San Francisco setting also appear in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which Nicholas Meyer co-wrote.

The cast are Malcolm McDowell as Herbert George Wells, David Warner as John Leslie Stevenson/ Jack the Ripper, Mary Steenburgen as Amy Robbins, Charles Cioffi as Police Lt. Mitchell, Kent Williams as assistant, Patti D’Arbanville as Shirley, Joseph Maher as Adams, Corey Feldman and Shelley Hack.

It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 1979 before its US release on 28 September 1979.

It runs 112 minutes.

It took $13 million at the box office.

Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 song ‘Time After Time’ was named after the film.

The ABC TV network aired a Time After Time series in 2017, executive produced and written by Kevin Williamson, but it was cancelled after only five episodes, though 12 episodes were made, screened in some countries, and are available on streaming. Each episode is named after a phrase in Cyndi Lauper’s song.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,336

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