The Time Machine

THE TIME MACHINE [1960 / 2014] [Blu-ray] [USA Release] You Will ORBIT Into The Fantastic Future! Stylish! Charming! Continuously Exciting!

Here today, gone tomorrow. When H. George Wells [Rod Taylor] sits at the controls of his new creation, he has all the time in the world. H. George Wells invented a Time Machine that whisks him from 1899 to war-ravaged moments of the 20th Century and into 802,701. In that far-off era, passive Eloi face a grim future as prey to the glowing-eyed subterranean Morlocks . . . unless the time-travelling stranger from the past intervenes.

At the controls of the 1960 movie of H.G. Wells' classic ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ is effects trailblazer George Pal, whose features and short films won a combined Seven OSCARS® and Special Awards. One winner was the beloved adventure loaded with visual marvels, from the nuclear destruction of London (complete with lava eruption) to the colourful whirligig of time travel.

FILM FACT No.1: Awards and Nominations: 1961 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Effects and Special Effects for Gene Warren and Tim Baar. 1961 Hugo Awards: Nominated: Best Dramatic Presentation for George Pal (director), David Duncan (screenplay) and H.G. Wells (based on the novel).

FILM FACT No.2: George Pal was already known for his pioneering work with stop-motion animation, having been nominated almost yearly for an Oscar during the 1940s. Unable to sell Hollywood on the concept of the film, George Pal found M-G-M's British studio (where he had filmed Tom Thumb) open to his proposal. The name of the film's main character (alluded to in dialogue only as "George") connects him both with George Pal and with the story's original science fiction writer H. G. (George) Wells. The name "H. George Wells" can be seen on a brass plaque on the time machine. George Pal originally considered casting a middle-aged British actor like David Niven or James Mason as H. George Wells. George Pal later changed his mind and selected the younger Australian actor Rod Taylor to give the character a more athletic, idealistic dimension. It was Rod Taylor's first lead role in a feature film. The time machine prop was designed by M-G-M art director Bill Ferrari and built by Wah Chang. Recognized today as an iconic film property, Bill Ferrari's machine suggested a sled made up of a large clockwork rotating disk. The disk rotated at various speeds to indicate movement through time, evoking both a spinning clock and a solar disk. In a meta-concept touch, a brass plate on the time machine's instrument display panel identifies its inventor as "H. George Wells," though the Time Traveller is identified only as "George" in dialogue. The charm of a fantastic technology of time travel, wrapped in the archaic guise of brass mechanisms, studded rivets, Art nouveau arabesques, and crystalline components, influenced the later emergence of steampunk. The look of the Morlocks was designed by Wah Chang. Some of the costumes and set were re-used from ‘Forbidden Planet’ [1956] such as the Civil Defence air raid officer uniform which was the C-57-D crew uniform and the large acrylic sphere in the talking rings room, a prop from the C-57-D's control bridge. George Pal always intended to make a sequel to ‘THE TIME MACHINE,’ but he died before it could be produced; the end of ‘Time Machine: The Journey Back’ functions as a sequel of sorts. In 1985, elements of this film were incorporated into ‘The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal,’ produced by Arnold Leibovit. George Pal was already known for pioneering work with animation. He was nominated for an Oscar almost yearly during the 1940s. Unable to sell Hollywood the screenplay, he found the British M-G-M studio friendlier, where he had filmed ‘Tom Thumb.’

Cast: Rod Taylor (Narrator), Alan Young, Sebastian Cabot, Tom Helmore, Whit Bissell, Doris Lloyd, Yvette Mimieux, Bob Barran (uncredited), Josephine Powell (uncredited), James Skelly (uncredited) and Paul Frees [Talking Rings] (uncredited)

Director: George Pal

Producer: George Pal

Screenplay: David Duncan (screenplay) and H.G. Wells (novel) 

Composer: Russell Garcia (music score)

Cinematography: Paul Vogel, A.S.C. (Director of Photography)

Image Resolution: 1080p (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Audio: English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Spanish: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono Audio
German: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono Audio
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio

Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish and German SDH

Running Time: 103 minutes

Region: All Regions

Number of discs: 1

Studio: Warner Home Video

Andrew's Blu-ray Review: Set in the Victorian era, George Pal's production of ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ [1960] is a faithful adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel in most respects except one; it omits the author's cynical observations about the British class system. Yet it's the main premise that has captivated audiences for years: A scientist George Wells [Rod Taylor] creates a time-traveling machine that carries him forward into the year 802,701 where he finds a strange new world populated by the Elois, a passive, peace-loving race, and their predators, the Morlocks, a cannibalistic tribe that lives underground and is light sensitive.

Although not lavishly produced, George Pal's 1960 version of the H.G. Wells classic ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ dazzles with a battery of clever special effects. The key to the Jules Verne successes was the appeal to a wide audience. George Pal gambled that H.G. Wells' name would pull in the same crowds as did Walt Disney's major smash ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.’ George Pal was on a roll at M-G-M. Already famous for his Puppetoon short subjects, that he had inaugurated the science fiction craze ten years earlier with three Technicolor hits. Given the boot from Paramount Pictures after the failure of ‘Conquest of Space,’ George Pal turned his energies away from space fantasy. George Pal's M-G-M hit ‘Tom Thumb’ and put him back on track with the Paramount Pictures studio brass.

‘THE TIME MACHINE’ begins in a period setting, England of 1899. H. George Wells [Rod Taylor] demonstrates his newly invented time machine, hoping to interest his stuffy friends in the wonder of visiting the future. Disillusioned by their inability to see beyond petty comforts and war profiteering, the pacifistic H. George Wells bids his peers farewell and takes a trip forward in time, very tentatively at first. Everything he sees is warped by war. His dear friend David Filby [Alan Young] dies in WW1. A 1966 war with nuclear satellites effectively ends civilization. H. George Wells stops far in the future, in the year 802,701. The Earth has become a Garden of Eden. He discovers a strange society of beautiful but passive people called the Eloi, none of whom seem to be over twenty years of age. H. George Wells meets the comely  Weena [Yvette Mimieux] but is disenchanted to find that the Eloi have lost all knowledge of independence, curiosity, and chivalry. H. George Wells then learns that this paradise is  actually a human stockyard. The Eloi are pampered and husbanded as a food supply for the subterranean Morlocks, hairy green monsters with horrible crooked teeth and glowing eyes. Seeking to inspire men of his own time, H. George Wells instead becomes the warrior-emancipator of a remote future world.

‘THE TIME MACHINE’ is easily George Pal's best directed sci-fi film, and with the exception of ‘The War of the Worlds.’ ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ was a solid hit in the 1960s. Barely heard  were the misgivings of sober critics that decried George Pal's diluting of H.G. Wells' original story. In 1895, the Darwinian idea that Capital and Labour might devolve into separate species of men was intellectually controversial. H.G. Wells had used it as a political critique of his times.

George Pal and screenwriter David Duncan retained H.G. Wells' narrative framing device of the two 1899 dinner parties, but greatly altered the Eloi of the 803rd Millennium. H.G. Wells' Eloi are a depressing race of slight and effete midgets that resemble miniature deer on two legs. When trying to communicate with them, the original Time Traveller, who he had no given name in the book, has zero luck getting much further than “hello.” This lack of satisfying human contact simplified Wells' storytelling chore while making his adventure more like a waking nightmare than a journey to a faulty Eden. The events in the book are also more depressing. The time traveller has a soft spot for Weena, but as she's only quasi-human, the romantic angle is lacking. George begins as a typical English tourist in a Third World land, shocked by everything he sees and having a tough time coping with anything un-English. Within 24 hours he's spearheading an Eloi revolution. It's a good thing that George returns to the future, as the Eloi are apparently incapable of doing anything for themselves.

Taken by itself, most of George Pal's ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ is dead on the mark, entertainment-wise. 1899 is neatly sketched with just a few scenes. His actors have clear parts to play, and the explanation of the Fourth Dimension communicates well even to children. Alan Young is solid as George Pal's moral anchor, affecting an endearing if hammy Scots accent. Four years earlier, the under-appreciated Rod Taylor had a featured role in a space film involving involuntary time travel, ‘World Without End.’ Rod Taylor showed considerable charisma as George Pal's hero, becoming a rare case of an actor helped rather than hindered by being cast in a science fiction film. Yvette Mimieux was only seventeen during filming.

George Pal did a brilliant job matching the appropriate effects to his story, given the lowly status of film effects at the time. Unlike some science fiction pictures, `The Time Machine' required something new and creative in almost every scene. The big studios always preferred the control factor of keeping the work on the lot, but by 1960 M-G-M's crafts and effects departments had been whittled down to nearly nothing. The most the studio could offer was the back lot and giant warehouses of props and costumes.

Seen today, ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ remains a reasonably elaborate affair, with impressive production values and fine special effects. The Moorlock makeup is reasonably frightening (in part because their scenes are filmed mostly in underground darkness), turning them into memorable movie-monsters. And there is a decent amount of spectacle special effects tricks for the eye, including the destruction of London by an exploding volcanic eruption (the lava was made out of oatmeal dyed red), nuclear bombs and the hideous appearance of the Morlocks (green latex skin and grotesque masks fitted with electrical eyes, courtesy of makeup artist William Tuttle). Cinematographer Paul Vogel worked out a lighting scheme to indicate the advance of time as Rod Taylor travels into the future on his "barber's chair;" a clear gel was used for daylight scenes, a pink one for dawn, an amber one for dusk, and a blue one for night. These were synchronized on a seven-foot circular shutter rotating at varying speeds to simulate the movement of the sun through the roof of the Time Traveler's greenhouse as the machine advances into the future. Other time changes were represented by blue-backed traveling mattes (the sequence where Rod Taylor is entombed in rock) and the use of numerous background sets which were double-printed with scenes of the traveller in the stationary time machine. The film even has a fair degree of visual poetry, as when the time traveller asks to learn more about the Eloi by looking at their books: an Eloi takes George Wells to a dilapidated library and hands him an ancient volume, which promptly crumble into dust in his fingers. George Wells concludes ruefully that the books do, indeed, tell him all he needs to know about the Eloi.

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Blu-ray Image Quality – Warner Home Video presents this Blu-ray that is really superb and outstanding. For starters, this 1080p image presentation is only single-layered and if available disc space exists and is enhanced with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ was shot on a fairly miniscule budget; and its image is lovingly presented in hi-definition with all of the inherent flaws of its original source material intact. Unfortunately we are always at the mercy of these original elements; the image weaving back and forth from razor-sharp clarity to fairly thick and occasionally blurry inserts; mostly in the shots heavily laden with matte work and other SFX effects. Also, colour can waffle from vibrant hues to marginally less than; flesh tones looking relatively accurate in one shot, but then adopting a faintly orange tint in another. Again, this is NOT a flaw of the Blu-ray transfer. Neither is the slight gate weave that could have, and should have been corrected! Overall, the image here is gorgeous and impressive; advancing in sharpness and colour saturation and providing an exemplar of what good solid video mastering entails. Yop marks for Warner Home Video effort.

Blu-ray Audio Quality – Better still, Warner Home Video has given us a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio remix, enhancing the vintage 4-track Westrex recording is a modest affair, retaining the original's front orientation and using the stereo separation to expand the presence of the brilliant Russell Garcia's [Perry Mason] orchestral underscore sounds for the time travel device's characteristic sound effects, is absolutely marvellous. The war sequences and the confrontations with the Morlocks have relatively limited dynamic range by contemporary standards, but the dialogue is always very clear. Again, top marks for Warner Home Video effort.

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Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:

Special Feature: Time Machine: The Journey Back [1993] [480i] [1.37:1] [47:43] This Behind-The- Scene documentary was originally presented on the earlier inferior DVD release. The 1993 production is a valentine to film craftsmen that genuinely love their work. After an overview of George Pal and the film, the show tells the tale of the film ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ title prop from construction, to auction, to its rediscovery in a thrift store and reconstruction by some dedicated effects people, including the brilliant fabricator-artist Tom Scherman. The haste and bluntness of studio work can be judged by the fact that as soon as the throne-like Time Machine prop had finished shooting, it was sawed apart to film inserts of its control panel. Nowadays there'd be three sturdy props with breakaway variations; the original Time Machine was a delicate construction that barely lasted through shooting. The documentary features the noted monster-maker and prop collector Bob Burns, but also details other effects processes. At one point Gene Warren talks about a talented painter whose canvasses were animated as he painted them, to produce images of foliage growing and such. If I'm not mistaken, some close-ups of leaves and apples growing during this explanation are really like the animation you get with the George Pal's familiar “Puppetoon” variety. Later on the documentary shows views of entire landscapes changing with the seasons, and an Eloi dome being built, which Savant thinks correctly illustrates the work of the skilled painter. The Journey Back includes a newly produced scene between Alan Young and Rod Taylor reprising their characters. It starts well but doesn't add up to much beyond making us wonder why sequels to `The Time Machine' were never made. With both Rod Tayor and Yvette Mimieux still with us, a sequel would seem a natural, especially in the early 1970s when George Pal was in a slump. George Pal apparently floated a number of scripts, but nothing ever came of it. One reason for this might have been the notion that shows like “The Planet of Apes” series and television's “The Time Tunnel” had left George Pal's simple 'go there and come back' plotting far behind. It remained for Zemeckis and Gale's clever ‘Back to the Future’ films to rediscover and mine the time travel concept for general audiences. The film won a Saturn Award and a Television Award. Contributors include: Rod Taylor [Host / Narrator / H. George Wells], Alan Young [David Filby], Whit Bissell [Walter Kemp], Wah Chang, Gene Warren, Bob Burns, Mike Jittlov [Genius] (archive footage), Michael J. Fox and H.G. Wells (archive footage).        

Theatrical Trailer [1960] [480i] [1.37:1] [2:31] This is the Original Theatrical Trailer for the film ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ and is a very poor transfer image presentation.

Finally, ‘THE TIME MACHINE’ is one of those essential science fiction films of all time to have in ones Blu-ray Collection, and Warner Home Video Blu-ray, has come up trumps, despite the age of the film and certainly no film has more influenced the cinematic sub-genre than George Pal's 1960 adaptation of the novel, which fired the imagination of generations of future filmmakers. Even today, when many of his sequences look slightly primitive by comparison to modern effects, others still hold up, because they rely more on creativity than technology. But us fans of this type of genre film do not mind, as again we know how old the film is and in the past the film studios did not know what a wealth of classic films that they had in their vaults and tended to let the negative rot, but of course if at the time the film studios knew of the coming of the Blu-ray format, they would of taken better care of these brilliant classic Hollywood Blockbusters. Because rarely has anyone come as close as George Pal to conveying the child-like wonder of how it might feel to pass through time without being affected by it, watching it accelerate and decelerate, reverse and proceed, as easily as one might navigate a vehicle through space, when we viewed the film on the big screen, when we came out of the cinema, we all wanted a time machine and what wondrous possibilities we could achieve. Again, despite the age of the film, I think it is a really beautiful copy and on my set up it looked stunning and I am now so proud to have this brilliant classic George Pal sci-fi film in my Blu-ray Collection. Very Highly Recommended!

Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado 
Le Cinema Paradiso 
United Kingdom