The Time Machine (1960)

Directed by George Pal. Starring Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Tom Helmore, Sebastian Cabot, Whit Bissell, Bob Barran, Doris Lloyd, (voice) Paul Frees. [G]

George Pal has a go at H. G. Wells’ influential science fiction story of a time traveler who hurtles himself the better part of a million years into the future (802,701 AD, to be precise) only to discover that mankind has evolved into two different species: the peaceful yet ineffectual Eloi living on the surface and the industrious yet barbaric Morlocks living underground. Taylor is cast as an old-fashioned kind of hero (he’d be a hard sell as an intellectual, after all), and, indeed, the simplistic storytelling and emphasis on hardware and conventional heroism/romance favors kids over adults. The early episodes work best—the ones that diverge furthest from the source material, surprisingly—while the later chapters trend toward the heavy-handed and action-oriented (think: Captain Kirk stranded on a planet of allegorical aliens in a lesser episode of “Star Trek”). In the supporting cast, Young’s Scrooge McDuck voice is always a pleasure, but Mimieux is a boring love interest by design, and quite frankly ridiculous as well—her people haven’t even mastered fire, yet she sports salon-quality hair of gold. The stop-motion animation and time-lapse special effects sequences netted the film a well-deserved Academy Award, but other techniques are more dated, especially the arrival points and the goofy Morlock design. Remade for television in 1978 and as a feature film in 2002.

62/100