Time After Time
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Year Released: 1979
Rating: 1.0
Creative concept of Jack the Ripper stealing H.G. Wells' Time Machine (that he built in his basement) to travel to late 70's San Francisco to delight in the killing of the decadent - and having Wells follow him to bring him back to the past - is ruined by Meyer's turning it into a fish-out-of-water story, wherein Wells (Malcolm McDowell) marvels at things like electric toothbrushes and a TV set that plays nothing but nightmarish war and death stories. For being so intelligent, Wells is shown as being consistently stupid, neglecting the biggest loophole in the whole movie: if he used the Time Machine to go back in time just before the police arrive in Wells' home and Jack the Ripper escapes, the entire movie would have been over in less than a half-hour and all those innocents wouldn't have been murdered. Duh.
