WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: The Time Machine (1960) 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:15.840 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:18.720 This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:21.200 today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:26.400 about the nineteen sixty film adaptation of The Time Machine, 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:29.440 based on the novel by H. G. Wells, directed by 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.760 George Pale, starring Rod Taylor and a Vet Me Me You. 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.080 We've gotten many requests to cover this on the on 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:39.680 the show before. I think it came up recently, maybe 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.040 in the last Listener Male episode or the one before that. 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.960 Somebody was asking us to do the time Machine, either 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:46.959 this one or I think also that there was one 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.560 in the early two thousands that is famous or infamous. 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:52.599 It has Guy Pierce, I think, and has a lot 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:54.120 of weird changes to the story. 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:56.960 Yeah, there are some definitely weird changes made to it. 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:59.640 We'll come back to the two thousand and two time Machine. 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.080 I have not watched it since it originally came out, 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:03.760 but I remember enjoying it. 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.360 Yeah, as Jeremy Irons as something called an uber morlock. 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:07.840 M m. 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:09.760 Yeah, he's the more lock they can talk. 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:13.360 Yeah, great, I've never seen it, but I'd be willing 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:17.200 to explore. But this version of the time Machine is 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.240 so I just want to put my cards on the 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.800 table at the beginning and say it is so great. 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.160 We can discuss a few drawbacks to it, but overall 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:30.280 this is just like great mid century cinema, an amazing 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:35.959 visual spectacle. It's got excellent time laps and stop motion effects. 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:40.080 It has that wonderful film grain and color palette that 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.320 it's like what people have in mind when they think 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:45.840 about the gorgeous color films of the mid century. 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:49.640 Absolutely, it's gorgeous to look at. The effects, which were 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.840 Academy Award winners at the time, still hold up really 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.120 well and are a lot of fun to watch. The 0:01:55.760 --> 0:02:00.320 performances are effective, but it's just a fun ride and 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.880 it does a great great job. There's not a dull moment. 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:07.280 They do a great job unpacking the concepts that are 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.760 essential for the adventure and then delivering on that adventure. Yeah. 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.359 I think it is, while not a perfectly faithful adaptation 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.280 of the novel, I think a very good way to 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.680 take it onto film. In fact, we could talk here 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:22.160 at the beginning about some of the ways that it 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:25.000 departs from the novel. Some of them are less interesting, 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:27.959 but some more so. Like I guess, one thing I 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:30.280 will say that I think doesn't work quite as well 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.000 in the movie is that you remember, in the novel 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.280 there's no love story or romantic element at all, like 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.600 there is. The time traveler in the novel meets a 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.440 woman in the future named Weena. He befriends her, he 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.680 sort of protects her, but in the novel there's no 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.920 romance between them. In the movie, unsurprisingly, you've got Rod 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:55.000 Taylor and here and they fall in love. And I'm 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:56.920 not one of those people who is opposed to this 0:02:57.040 --> 0:02:59.160 kind of thing in principle. Some people just always hate 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.960 it when you add a romantic subplot to literary material 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.760 where it wasn't there to begin with. I'm not always 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.960 opposed to that, but given particular features of the narrative 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.359 in the Time Machine, like how both the time traveler 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:14.960 and the eloy are depicted, I think it does not 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:16.840 work super well in this story. 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:22.040 Yeah, she is as we'll discuss a dull person, you know. 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:25.480 Is we see this in various forms and different works 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:27.880 of fiction, where you'll have someone like maybe they're a clone, 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:32.200 maybe they are indeed a far future human, but for 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.760 some reason or another, they have a They're naive, they 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:43.880 are innocent despite being like biologically grown people played biologically 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:49.200 grown actors, And yeah, it can make for some odd 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:50.440 space for a love story. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.560 Yeah, so that's not the best. However, there are some 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:56.760 things this movie does to change the story from the 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:01.880 novel that I think are fantastic. Like one interesting plot 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:04.960 device I would single out in this regard is the 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:07.760 way that and if you're not familiar with the story, 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:09.400 this will make more sense later on. But the way 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:14.320 that the Morlocks use air raid sirens to hypnotize the 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.159 eloy and lure them into the Sphinx to their doom. 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:19.200 I guess we can talk about that more in the 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:23.680 plot section. But this is both a harrowing sensory spectacle 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.440 in the scene where it happens, and it also provides 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.480 an interesting twist on the movie's anti war themes. 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:35.760 Absolutely, and I think the film's anti war themes hold 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.640 up really well. I think that they are in large 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.479 part very true to the spirit of a lot of 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.000 the ideals that HG. Wells held for the majority of 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.720 his life. So I think these were all a great 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.880 addition then there are plenty of other like small changes, 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.080 many necessary changes, like for instance, in the original book, 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.560 which is essentially a novella, the time Traveler has no 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:02.279 given name. He is just the time Traveler, which I 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:04.760 always quite liked because it made him feel more mythic, 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.080 you know, and more mysterious, and maybe in a way 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:11.359 he doesn't have an identity anymore because he is like 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:12.960 a man removed from time. 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:15.960 Yeah, he's just he's the Earth rim Roamer or something 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.200 like that. Yeah, But here they give him a name, 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:21.560 and they give him the name H. G. Wells. Basically 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.200 the other characters call him George H. Or the you know, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:29.160 his middle initial there. So it's doing the same thing. Actually, 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.280 that is done in the later film Time after Time, 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:35.920 which we've featured on the show nineteen, which is a 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.840 fun combination of the time machine and the story of 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:42.159 Jack the Ripper. But they make the time Traveler in 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.640 that also HG. Wells himself. Here it's a weird thing, 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:48.600 so they give him the name HG. Wells, but they 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.039 don't make him like a science fiction novelist in the 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.000 eighteen nineties. He's just the character from the book. But 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:55.400 they gave him the author's name. 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.880 Yeah. Yeah, so it's a little They treat it softly here. 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:01.839 It's not like a a hard like Hey, m HG. Wells, 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.760 the successful writer and that time Machine book I wrote, Well, 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.560 I actually made one. It's in the basement. Well, I'm 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:09.680 really excited to talk about this one. I had not 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.280 seen this film in quite a long time. I think 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.560 I possibly watched it on I don't know, Turner Classic 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.279 Movies or American movie classics back in the day. It 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.919 certainly is an American movie classic, and I think the 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.520 movie holds up quite well. And for that matter, I 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:27.880 would argue that the HG. Wells book itself holds up 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.120 quite well. I read that more recently than i'd seen 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.760 this film, and you know, it moves right along at 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:39.120 a great click. Very readable ideas speak to us today, 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:40.840 you know, as well as they did back at it 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:44.840 in its original publication year. You know, Wells was a 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.400 great writer with a lot of tremendous ideas. Yeah. 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.080 Yeah, It's been a while since I've read the novel 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:54.960 in full, though, I just recently reread a chapter from 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.160 it because I remember way back when I first read 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.800 this book in high school. One of the parts that 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:03.800 really stuck with me was after the main action of 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:07.080 the story, after the encounter with the eloy and the 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:10.559 Moorlocks and all of that, there is a chapter called 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.960 a Further Vision where the time traveler goes on and 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.360 on further and further millions. 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:18.520 Of earths, million years, I think you. 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:22.679 Millions of years into the future to see the final 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.080 fate of the planet Earth. And so he comes upon 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:30.040 this landscape where the Earth has become finally tidally locked 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.360 with the sun, so that the sun no longer rises 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.800 and sets, and the part of the Earth he is 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.200 on just happens to be within sort of the ring 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.600 around the horizon, like the part of the Earth that 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.360 is always in perpetual twilight with the sun kind of 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:51.200 sitting just above the horizon to the west. And so 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:54.320 he describes this giant red sun there and this twilight 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.920 landscape that is filled with giant crabs and butterflies, and 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.000 the crabs like start caressing his face with their antennae, 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.520 and it's a super super creepy vision that really left 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.200 an impression on me. And every now and then I 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.440 think I've read the book in full more than once, 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:13.680 I believe, but I've gone back and read that chapter 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:14.520 many times. 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.200 Yeah, it's very doomy in almost I would say, a 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.320 cosmic horror sense. It's not quite the cord that Wells 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.280 is striking there, but you can easily imagine how this 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.800 chapter of the book may have been one of the 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:29.880 influences on many of the cosmic horror writers in the 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:30.640 decades to come. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:36.040 It also it provides an interesting perspective because so often, 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.880 especially genre stories, they really you want to get a 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:45.880 sense that there is a happily ever after, that there 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:51.720 is some kind of paradisical state that everything is moving toward, 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:55.240 and once the conflict of the story is resolved, everything 0:08:55.240 --> 0:09:00.640 will be okay now. But the Time Traveler really it 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:04.560 kind of upsets that narrative because there are conflicts to 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.320 resolve in the story. It's not like nothing matters, but 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:09.560 you do get to see, well, in the end there 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.640 are no people here anymore anyway, It's all just crabs 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.040 in the end, and eventually not even any crabs will 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:15.480 be left. 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.199 Yeah, yeah, that's a great chapter. It is not depicted 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.480 in this adaptation, But then I don't think it really 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:24.960 I don't think it would have fit. I like the 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:27.760 way this film ends this film ends the way it 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:32.120 needed to end, and we'll discuss that towards the final 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:33.239 minutes of this episode. 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:35.880 If instead of a love story between Rod Taylor and 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:38.960 Vetti Mu, you had a love story between Rod Taylor 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.040 and the crab from attack of the Crab Monsters, that 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:44.680 would really be a way to wrap this up. What 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:45.200 do you think? 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.160 Possibly? Yeah, and yeah, if you wanted to end it 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.440 on a much more contemplative and doomy note, that would 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:53.079 be the way to go. 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.240 All right, let's see, should we listen to some trailer audio. 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.000 Yeah, let's hear a bit from the old trade. 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:04.480 Today man is successfully drobing deep into the mysteries of 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:07.959 the universe. Can he penetrate the greatest mystery of all 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:09.240 time itself? 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:17.840 Why is it that we usually ignore the fourth dimension? 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:19.440 You see, we can move in. 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:23.239 The other three, as the doctor said, up, down, forwards, backward, sideways, 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:25.079 But when it comes to time. 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.320 You have prisoners can bender. 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.280 Rod Taylor's breakthrough into the realm of the fourth dimension 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.120 is defied by his friend Alan Young. 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.199 If that machine can do what you see, it gone 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:37.920 destroy it, George before it destroys you. 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.320 Every moment is a year hurtling through the atomic wars 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.960 of the future on an incredible excursion into the unknown. 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.800 And what happens when boy meets girl thousands of years hence, 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:51.760 how do they wear their hair? 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.359 Who the women of your time. 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:58.080 Up Black Herd show me? 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.400 Is this the human race of the future? Or is 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.880 this the Morlocks fiendish creatures who live in a weird 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:10.280 underground's world and the Eloi the tranqu will sunshine people. 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.640 The Morlocks dominate and maintain like cattle, luring them below 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.080 with the hypnotic wail of the sirens to feed upon 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:20.200 them in cannibalistic chori. 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:28.600 All right, well, if you would like to watch nineteen 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:32.320 sixties The Time Machine, absolutely we encourage you to go 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:34.480 out and watch it for the first time, or or 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:37.160 revisit it before proceeding with the rest of the episode, 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:39.000 or just go ahead and listen to the rest of 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:41.800 the episode. You know, we are going to spoil some things, 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:45.120 but it's the time Machine. I feel like this is 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.320 one that you've probably absorbed culturally to a certain extent 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.600 at this point, and if you do want to watch 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:53.240 it, it is widely available, and I think all formats that 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.000 have ever existed due to time constraints. I just streamed it, 0:11:57.040 --> 0:11:59.000 but there are some nice DVDs and Blu rays out 0:11:59.040 --> 0:11:59.560 there as well. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.720 Yeah, and as you alluded to, as always a spoiler 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:04.560 warning for the rest of the episode, this is a 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:06.600 pretty old story at this point. But yeah, we are 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.160 going to talk about the whole thing in granular detail. 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:11.679 So if somehow this story is new to you and 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:13.960 you're not familiar, go read the novel or watch the 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:15.119 movie before continuing. 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:29.880 Absolutely. All right, well, let's get into some of the 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:34.040 people behind this picture, this big special effects picture of 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:38.240 nineteen sixty. So we can't reference everybody, but the director 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.680 and the producer on this was George Powell lived nineteen 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:45.600 oh eight through nineteen eighty Hungarian American animator, film director 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:48.720 and producer who initially worked on films in his native 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:51.559 Hungary before moving to Berlin and then to Prague in 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:56.439 the early thirties, creating short films and commercials before immigrating 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.480 to the United States and I believe nineteen thirty nine. Now, 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:01.839 during this period, both in Europe and then in the 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:06.200 United States, he made a series of puppet tunes, So 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:09.880 that's puppet and tunes smashed together into one word. These 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.520 were short films, the first being I believe a dancing 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:17.160 cigarette commercial from nineteen thirty two. Okay, so it's kind 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.560 of I guess maybe we're even alluding to that in 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.400 this picture when we have a scene with a cigar 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.200 where we have a model of the time machine and 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:26.040 they fold up a cigar and stick it in there. 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:28.360 Though it doesn't dance or move around. 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:30.559 There's more cigar action than you would expect. 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:36.280 Yeah, I believe seven puppetoun I assume that's how one 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:40.720 would pronounce it. Puppet Tune shorts received Academy Award nominations. 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:45.320 Puppetoon animation is essentially a type of replacement animation, which 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.080 is itself a type of stop motion animation, but it 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:52.080 requires a vast number of near duplicate puppets to pull 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:56.000 off the effect. So my understanding diving into this a 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.080 little bit, is that it's kind of like cell animation 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.800 where or trip or traditional cell animation, where you would 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.640 have to have like a separate drawing of say Daffy 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.600 Duck every time Daffy Duck made the slightest movement, and 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.160 in this case, you would have to have a physical 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.760 representation a doll or puppet of Daffy Duck for each 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.640 each tiny movement that would take place. So you know, 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.960 this is not quite what we see with stop motion today. Generally, 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.000 when you see stop motion today, they're articulating some sort 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.320 of a movable puppet or model each time, and not 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:32.640 just replacing it with an entirely different model. Puppet tune 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.040 shorts included, let's see there is the adaptations of Doctor 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.600 Seuss's The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, as well 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.680 as an adaptation of and to and to Think that 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:45.920 I Saw It on Mulberry Street, also an adaptation of 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:48.920 Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, and also a series of 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.560 shorts featuring the character Jasper that was already seen as 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.040 racist in the nineteen forties so obviously does not hold 0:14:56.120 --> 0:15:00.480 up well today. Now in nineteen fifty power, I'll switch 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:04.280 to live action film with the comedy The Great Rupert. 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:08.840 I think that's aid Jimmy Duranty picture, which he produced only. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.760 But then in nineteen fifty eight he directed a Tom 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:14.760 Thumb movie that made use of puppatoon effects, and then 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:17.720 of course The Time Machine in nineteen sixty, which doesn't 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:20.880 use puppatoon per se, but certainly makes great use of 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:22.320 stop motion effects. 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.760 Yeah, and I believe it was the stop motion effects 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:28.880 and the and the time lapse effects for which this 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:30.520 movie got an Academy Award. 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:33.280 I'd write about that. Yeah, though it's in general, this 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.440 is just a great special effects picture, you know. It's 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.160 like this is that the production designs here are amazing, 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.280 and yeah, we get some great uses of stop motion 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:46.240 throughout the picture, but main but essentially whenever there's time traveling, 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.200 because there's always stuff in the background that's rotting or 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:54.000 growing and so forth. Yeah, melting exploding into lava. 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:56.640 Man, I got some things to say about that lava. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.160 Did you read about that effects? Yeah, Okay, we'll get there. 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.480 So subsequently he directed sixty one's Atlantis the Lost Continent, 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:08.040 sixty two's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grim the 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.400 fairy Tale segments only, and finally Seven Faces of Doctor 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.640 Looe in nineteen sixty four. I've never seen that one, 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:16.920 but of note to MST three K fans, that's the 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.080 movie that Joel quotes in the final moments of his 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.240 original run on Mystery Science Theater three thousand. This is 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:25.520 a bit where it's every time you stop and think 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.720 I'm alive and being alive is fantastic. Every time such 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.200 a thing happens. You're part of the circus of Doctor Lao, 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.640 which is fun. Though that movie is I believe sadly 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:39.200 built around a yellow face performance by Tony Randall, but 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.840 still the quote I like, all right. Moving on to 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:47.160 the screenwriter here. David Duncan has the screenplay credit nineteen 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:51.280 thirteen through nineteen ninety nine American screenwriter and novelist, best 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.400 known for his adapted screenplays for This and nineteen sixty 0:16:55.440 --> 0:17:00.000 six Is Fantastic Voyage not an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novel, 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:02.920 which was itself an adaptation of that film, but rather 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.760 an adaptation of an earlier script or treatment. Wow. 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.200 His other scripts when got around huh, yeah. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:12.240 You know, that was a big picture. That was I 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:14.200 think when that one was coming out, and that would 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.320 be a fun one to do on Weird House. Eventually, 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.240 that was I think marketed is the most expensive science 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:23.000 fiction picture, science fiction picture of all time. So there 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.359 were a lot of cooks in that kitchen. Yeah. But 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:29.760 Duncan's other scripts include the English version of nineteen fifty 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:33.280 six is Rodin fifty sevens The Monster that Challenged the 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.760 World nineteen fifty sevens The Black Scorpion fifty eight's the 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.080 Thing that Couldn't Die fifty eighth, Monster on the Campus 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.760 six nineteen sixties. The Leech Woman. That's the one you were, 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:46.439 the one in My Dreams of Blood. This one was 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:49.920 featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand as well, and 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.800 he also wrote the Human Factor episode of the original 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:53.520 Outer Limits. 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:56.720 Sorry, Rob, I was just looking up because the title 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:59.160 got the Monster that Challenged the World. I was trying 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:01.199 to remember what that one was, and oh, that's the 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:03.680 one about like a caterpillar that comes up out of 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:04.880 the out of the water. 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:07.800 It challenged the world. It didn't conquer, it just challenged. 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:11.920 Duncan also wrote a series of novels, though some of 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.719 which look quite interesting. But I think these have all 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:16.280 been out of print for a while and are I 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:19.600 think largely only available as very old to use paperbacks. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:21.639 But if anyone out there has read a David Duncan 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.840 novel write in, I would love to hear about it now. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:28.280 As we mentioned, this is of course an adaptation of 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:32.000 the original book by H. G. Wells, who lived eighteen 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.040 sixty six through nineteen forty six. He was active from 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:38.040 eighteen ninety five until his death, and he is generally 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.359 considered the grandfather of science fiction. He wasn't the first 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.440 to craft sci fi, and it certainly would have gone 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.800 on without him, but his influence is undeniable, given such 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:50.880 works as The Time Machine eighteen ninety five, The Island 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.200 of Doctor Moreau from eighteen ninety six, The Invisible Man 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.720 from eighteen ninety seven, and of course The War of 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.960 the World's from eighteen ninety eight. He was a progressive 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:05.040 social critic and futurist, which certainly contributes to the continued 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:06.280 readability of his work. 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:11.080 A lot of science fiction story types that recur with 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:15.000 variation throughout the twentieth century. I think you could essentially say, 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:17.560 what was the first version of this story? And often 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.879 it's argued that Wells Wells is the first version. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.240 Yeah, and certainly in cases where there's some sort of 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.159 a predecessor, like he cemented the idea, you know, like 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.600 his is the story that casts the long shadow, and 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.359 so yeah, his works are highly readable today. They're always 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.320 interesting in terms of like what did he seem to 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:42.440 accurately predict as a sort of futurist. What social commentaries 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:46.720 did he make that are still very valid today? And 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:51.480 so his work is largely full of that sort of thing. Now, 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.720 as far as adaptations of the time Machine go, this 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.840 was not the first adaptation. There was a nineteen forty 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:02.600 nine BBC teleplay during Russell Napier. I have not seen it, 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:04.800 but Joe I included a couple of screenshots here for you. 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:09.000 The time machine looks like some sort of high tech toilet. 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.600 Yeah, yeah, sitting on the throne there, it's got lights 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:13.040 over it. 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:14.479 So there you go. 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:16.240 You know, in the version we have in this movie, 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:18.880 it's still essentially is a big chair. 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:22.480 But yeah, but the version we see here, and we'll 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:25.560 describe it a bit more in a little bit here, 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:28.480 it is the iconic time machine. It has become the 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:32.560 iconic iconic time machine. It's reasonably accurate to what was 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:35.399 described in the story, and it is the one that 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.840 is inevitably drawn or depicted in derivative works. 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:42.000 Yes, yeah, no, I love the design in this movie. 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.840 But it is a chair. It's a chair on Santa's sleigh. 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:45.440 Basically. 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:47.919 We'll talk about that more as we go on. But 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.480 this one is a little more compact and a little 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.560 bit yeah, less impressive. It does look like a toilet. 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:56.480 And then you've got another picture from a nineteen seventy 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:59.480 eight adaptation, which is more like a toilet with a 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:00.600 computer in front of it. 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:02.879 Yeah, this one looks like a nineteen seventy eight space 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.480 toilet for sure. This one starred John Beck. I also 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:08.919 have not seen it. I do not think it has 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:14.040 a very strong reputation. And then, as we previously mentioned, 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:16.480 there is the two thousand and two adaptations starring Guy 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:21.120 Pearce and Jeremy Irons, directed notably by H. G. Wells's 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.760 great grandson Simon Wells. How often do you get to 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:26.000 have a case like that? You know? 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:28.920 That is unusual? By the way, before this, I looked 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.040 up Simon Wells. I was like, what else did he direct? 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.199 He made a number of animated movies, some involving time travel. 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:39.080 He directed We're Back a Dinosaur Story. Oh remember that one? 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:41.080 Vaguely, vaguely. 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.560 Maybe one day on Weird House. Well, we'll have to 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:47.240 check that out, see how it holds up. I associate 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:52.080 that one with being a kid and maybe like getting 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:54.960 a babysitter and having pizza or something. 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.560 Yeah, that sounds like a good time. Yeah, yeah, two 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:01.000 thousand and two. That was the last time I saw. 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:05.320 Two thousand and two is the time Machine, But I 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:09.320 remember enjoying it. You know, Guy Peers is great, Jeremy 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:12.080 Irons is great. It had more locks in it, Like 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.960 those are kind of just the basic things I need 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.240 for a good film experience. There are some good actors 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:22.200 in there, and some reasonably effective monsters that live underground, 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.000 and I'm generally on board, But I do not remember 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:26.800 any of like the real broad Strokes. I think there's 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.040 some sort of subplot about the moon getting split in half. 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:35.119 Like there are moon colonists and they screw something up 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:36.040 and blow up the moon. 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:38.720 Yeah, that also happens in the opening to Thunder the 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:41.600 Barbarian from back in the day. The moon gets like 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:42.760 torn in half by something. 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:43.760 I didn't know that. 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:47.760 Oh, and then, just for comparison's sake, here Joe I 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:50.760 included a screenshot from Time after Time, which again we've 0:22:50.760 --> 0:22:54.000 previously discussed on Weird House Cinema. They use a different 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:57.800 design for the time Machine. It's more like a canopied 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:01.920 little deal, but it also looked fittingly late Victorian. 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:06.119 Yeah, Time after Time looks more like an insectoid helicopter 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:07.000 without a rotor. 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:11.880 Yeah. It's interesting because clearly in all versions, the time 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:14.440 Traveler didn't really think about all of the features you 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:17.280 might really want on this thing, you know. Definitely a 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:21.600 canopy to keep subterranean monsters from pulling you off the chair. 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:24.720 Air Conditioning, yeah, air conditioning. 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:27.600 Which comes up in this film. 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:30.560 Yeah, all right, so let's get let's get to the 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:34.800 cast here playing the time Traveler h George Wells is 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.320 Rod Taylor, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fifteen. Taylor 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:41.040 was an Australian born actor, best remembered for this film, 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.399 Hitchcock's The Birds in nineteen sixty three, and the Disney 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:46.840 animated film one hundred and one Dalmatians, in which he 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:48.600 plays the lead Dalmatian Pogo. 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:49.919 Oh, I didn't know that. 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:53.800 Yeah. Other credits include fifty six's World Without End, sixty 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:57.679 eight's Dark of the Sun, and a nineteen eighty five 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:02.040 Christopher Lee film titled Mask of Oh and then very 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:04.520 late I think this might actually be his last film credit. 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:08.840 He shows up in Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards in two thousand 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:10.480 and nine, playing Winston Churchill. 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:13.280 Never would have made this connection. It's basically a cameo. 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:15.240 He has like one or two lines. He sits in 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:19.159 the background while while what's his name is getting briefed. 0:24:19.600 --> 0:24:21.560 Yeah, so I have to say Taylor, I think is 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:23.240 pretty great in this. He brings a lot of charm 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:26.320 to the to a character that would have they could 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:28.240 have at least certainly come off a good bit more 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:30.399 wooden and preachy in the hands of another actor. 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:35.119 No, they make him passionate. He's Yeah, he's likable in 0:24:35.200 --> 0:24:40.439 this role because I mean, he does have to do 0:24:40.520 --> 0:24:43.080 a bit of sermonizing in the film about the woes 0:24:43.119 --> 0:24:46.679 of humankind and the you know, the devious stupidity of 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:49.760 war and all that, which if they had gone with 0:24:49.800 --> 0:24:51.520 a different kind of like I think I read somewhere 0:24:51.560 --> 0:24:53.480 that they were maybe thinking about getting like an older 0:24:53.520 --> 0:24:57.280 actor looking at David Niven or something, and I don't know, 0:24:57.400 --> 0:25:00.080 could have gone a different way. But Rod Taylor, he 0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:03.440 just feels it like he's expressing his feelings and you're 0:25:03.480 --> 0:25:05.359 sort of there on the ground with him instead of 0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:06.920 being preached down at by him. 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:10.800 Yeah. Yeah, And I don't think I've seen any other 0:25:10.880 --> 0:25:12.720 film that he was I mean, I guess I've seen 0:25:12.760 --> 0:25:15.880 the birds, but it's been a long time, and I've 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:18.119 seen one hundred and one Dalmatians. But maybe that's not 0:25:18.200 --> 0:25:21.880 the best way to really a praise an actor's ability, 0:25:22.560 --> 0:25:25.880 But yeah, I think he's really good in this one, 0:25:26.080 --> 0:25:31.399 all right. Now. Of note, mostly the main characters in 0:25:31.440 --> 0:25:33.720 this film are going to be the time traveler Wells 0:25:33.880 --> 0:25:38.360 and then the character Weena, who is a far future Eloy. 0:25:39.240 --> 0:25:43.720 But there are some contemporary late Victorian characters that are 0:25:43.800 --> 0:25:47.000 encountered early on, and then we have some like some 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:50.960 descendants of one of those characters. The main character here 0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:54.720 that is one of the time traveler's friends is the 0:25:54.800 --> 0:25:59.760 character David Philby and then later James Philby his descendant, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:02.080 and they are both played by Alan Young who lived 0:26:02.160 --> 0:26:04.080 nineteen nineteen through twenty sixteen. 0:26:04.960 --> 0:26:09.119 Our protagonist has a group of several friends when the 0:26:09.160 --> 0:26:12.760 action begins in eighteen ninety nine or nineteen hundred, who 0:26:12.840 --> 0:26:15.439 are like three of the four guys are just like 0:26:15.560 --> 0:26:19.360 cigar eating machines, but the fourth guy, the fourth guy 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:22.320 has more of a heart. He has a soft Scottish accent, 0:26:22.400 --> 0:26:25.560 and he's a nice, thoughtful guy. That's the Allan Young 0:26:25.680 --> 0:26:26.320 character here. 0:26:26.600 --> 0:26:29.720 Yeah. Yeah. The soft Scottish accent is especially present in 0:26:29.800 --> 0:26:34.320 the elder Philby character, and many of you, if you're 0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:36.600 rewatching this film, you might be like, man, that Scottish 0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:40.080 accent sounds familiar. It sounds a little bit like Scrooge McDuck. 0:26:40.240 --> 0:26:46.120 It is absolutely Scrooge McDuck. Because Alan Young played Scrooge McDuck. 0:26:46.160 --> 0:26:49.639 It provided Scrooge McDuck's voice for four decades, beginning with 0:26:49.680 --> 0:26:53.199 the nineteen seventy four Disneyland Records album an adaptation of 0:26:53.200 --> 0:26:56.520 Dickens's Christmas Carol performed by the Walt Disney Players, and 0:26:56.560 --> 0:27:01.200 this eventually became, in my opinion, x Mickey's Christmas Carol 0:27:01.240 --> 0:27:04.480 from nineteen eighty three like if you want a Christmas 0:27:04.520 --> 0:27:08.119 Carol boiled down to like what thirty minutes with some 0:27:08.200 --> 0:27:12.560 genuine laughs, but still retaining the spirit of a Christmas Carol, 0:27:12.680 --> 0:27:15.000 you can't go wrong with with Mickey's Christmas Carol? 0:27:15.160 --> 0:27:17.280 Is it better than the Mister Magoo Christmas Carrol? 0:27:17.680 --> 0:27:20.760 Well, I don't. I think I've only seen that one once, 0:27:20.760 --> 0:27:22.400 but I'm gonna go and say absolutely yes. 0:27:22.520 --> 0:27:26.520 Yes, I don't remember that much either, but I'm sure 0:27:26.800 --> 0:27:28.080 I saw this when I was a kid, but I 0:27:28.080 --> 0:27:29.000 don't recall much all. 0:27:29.040 --> 0:27:32.280 Oh yeah, I recommend potentially revisiting it. I think it 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:35.120 holds up really well. I think it's one of those 0:27:35.119 --> 0:27:38.359 that I inevitably end up watching every Christmas, in part 0:27:38.400 --> 0:27:41.280 because it's such a it's so short, like how can 0:27:41.320 --> 0:27:44.119 you not sit down and watch it? But anyway, Alan 0:27:44.200 --> 0:27:48.359 Young played Scrooge McDuck so many times, like he's Scrooge 0:27:48.400 --> 0:27:51.800 McDuck on the duck Tails TV series and the Kingdom 0:27:51.800 --> 0:27:55.800 Heart video games and so much more like he was 0:27:55.840 --> 0:27:56.680 Scrooge McDuck. 0:27:57.400 --> 0:28:00.480 Also, there were some great duck Tails at uptates to 0:28:00.880 --> 0:28:03.119 like the eight and sixteen bit video game Eras. 0:28:03.240 --> 0:28:05.200 Oh that's right, Yeah, there was a great. 0:28:05.080 --> 0:28:07.679 Duct Tails game for the nes And then do you 0:28:07.680 --> 0:28:09.560 remember there was there was a ducktails game for the 0:28:09.600 --> 0:28:12.440 Sega Genesis called quack Shot. Did you ever play that one? 0:28:12.680 --> 0:28:14.640 I don't know that I did, But I've noticed that 0:28:14.800 --> 0:28:17.720 the Ducktails games have been some of the ones over 0:28:17.720 --> 0:28:20.960 the years that have been like revisited and put back 0:28:20.960 --> 0:28:23.080 out there that you know, people were really fond of, 0:28:23.240 --> 0:28:25.320 So I'm to understand they were quality. 0:28:25.040 --> 0:28:27.680 Games, just great side scrollers. Though there was one thing 0:28:27.720 --> 0:28:30.159 I recall about Quackshot that was really funny, which is 0:28:30.400 --> 0:28:33.080 it's one of these games where you can you can 0:28:33.200 --> 0:28:35.800 get life back by picking up power ups like food, 0:28:35.960 --> 0:28:37.920 so you can like pick up an ice cream cone 0:28:37.960 --> 0:28:40.560 to heal yourself. But one of the things Scrooge McDuck 0:28:40.600 --> 0:28:43.800 can pick up to heal himself is a roast chicken. 0:28:45.160 --> 0:28:48.440 Something seems a little wrong there, but yeah. 0:28:49.360 --> 0:28:52.520 All right, let's see. Alan Young also did other voice 0:28:52.520 --> 0:28:55.920 acting gigs and appeared in such films as Tom Thumb 0:28:55.920 --> 0:28:58.840 in fifty eight, seventy eight's The Cat from Outer Space 0:28:59.200 --> 0:29:02.560 and nineteen ninety Wars Beverly Hills Cop. I think Beverly 0:29:02.640 --> 0:29:04.040 Hills Cop Three is the one that came out in 0:29:04.080 --> 0:29:07.720 ninety four. And then he was also a cast member 0:29:07.720 --> 0:29:10.640 on the nineteen sixties talking horse TV show Mister Ed. 0:29:11.240 --> 0:29:14.080 At any rate, of all of the Time Traveler's friends, 0:29:15.160 --> 0:29:18.800 this character David Philby and then later James Philbey, this 0:29:18.840 --> 0:29:20.960 is the only one that really matters. This is the 0:29:21.000 --> 0:29:23.400 one that actually has a little more character to him. 0:29:23.440 --> 0:29:27.880 He cares about the time Traveler and plays a more 0:29:27.920 --> 0:29:29.080 important part in the plot. 0:29:29.280 --> 0:29:31.240 Yeah, with these other three guys, it really is a 0:29:31.240 --> 0:29:34.160 case of like, it's like the slasher movie question, why 0:29:34.160 --> 0:29:35.200 are these people friends? 0:29:35.400 --> 0:29:38.680 Yeah? Yeah, I guess they just attend the same club. 0:29:38.720 --> 0:29:52.720 It's just how it worked, right, Yeah, all right, Now 0:29:52.800 --> 0:29:57.040 let's come back to Wiena, played by Yavette Mimeeux. We've 0:29:57.360 --> 0:30:00.000 talked about her before because she was in nineteen six 0:30:00.000 --> 0:30:02.240 seventy nine's The Black Hole, which we discussed in a 0:30:02.280 --> 0:30:02.840 Weird House. 0:30:03.160 --> 0:30:03.800 Yeah, that's right. 0:30:04.240 --> 0:30:07.080 She is the Elloy love interest, though again not a 0:30:07.120 --> 0:30:10.600 love interest in the original book. Later credits include nineteen 0:30:10.640 --> 0:30:14.760 seventy three's The Neptune Factor, nineteen seventy five's Journey into Fear, 0:30:15.200 --> 0:30:18.360 and of course nineteen seventy eight's Devil Dog The Hound 0:30:18.440 --> 0:30:21.960 of Hell, along with other various TV appearances. 0:30:22.440 --> 0:30:25.160 Now, Rob, did you notice in her filmography that she's 0:30:25.200 --> 0:30:28.200 in two not quite back to back, but almost back 0:30:28.240 --> 0:30:31.240 to back Factor movies. You said The Neptune Factor from 0:30:31.280 --> 0:30:33.480 seventy three, but in nineteen seventy she was also in 0:30:33.560 --> 0:30:34.720 The Delta Factor. 0:30:35.080 --> 0:30:38.280 Oh wow, A lot of factors to consider there. 0:30:38.400 --> 0:30:42.360 Yeah, Delta Factor appears to be a Mickey Spillane adaptation. 0:30:44.200 --> 0:30:47.320 Okay, well, the Disney voice acting credits continue here. Though, 0:30:47.400 --> 0:30:53.360 because the more rotund bearded member of the crew here 0:30:53.400 --> 0:30:58.360 that's hanging out. Doctor Philip Hillier is played by Sebastian Cabot, 0:30:58.680 --> 0:31:02.440 who lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen seventy seven. He is 0:31:02.480 --> 0:31:05.560 a repeat Disney voice actor. He narrated the Winnie the 0:31:05.560 --> 0:31:09.320 Pooh series in the original films. He narrated nineteen sixty 0:31:09.320 --> 0:31:11.800 threes The Sword and the Stone and did the voice 0:31:11.800 --> 0:31:14.720 of Lord actor in that, and he played the panther 0:31:14.840 --> 0:31:17.560 Bagheira in nineteen sixty seven's The Jungle Book. 0:31:17.880 --> 0:31:22.200 That makes sense. I'm familiar with these voices, but I 0:31:22.200 --> 0:31:24.400 wouldn't have pegged them to him, but now I can 0:31:24.440 --> 0:31:24.760 hear it. 0:31:25.880 --> 0:31:29.520 Another one of the friends is the character Walter Kemp, 0:31:29.600 --> 0:31:32.760 played by Wit Dissel. He lived nineteen oh nine through 0:31:32.840 --> 0:31:38.960 nineteen ninety six. Prolific TV and film actor, initially notable 0:31:39.200 --> 0:31:41.640 to me because he was a nineteen fifty four creature 0:31:41.680 --> 0:31:43.840 from the Black Lagoon, as well as nineteen seventy three 0:31:44.400 --> 0:31:48.920 Soylent Green. Other credits include fifty one's Lost Continent, fifty 0:31:48.960 --> 0:31:52.920 six's Invasion of the Body Snatchers nineteen sixties. The Magnificent 0:31:52.960 --> 0:31:55.720 seven sixty two is the Manchurian candidate plus in a 0:31:55.760 --> 0:31:59.520 crowning achievement. Dissel was in all three fifty seven and 0:31:59.560 --> 0:32:02.320 fifty eight films. I was a teenage wear Wolf, I 0:32:02.360 --> 0:32:07.040 was a teenage Frankenstein, and Monster on the Campus. He 0:32:07.120 --> 0:32:09.760 also pops up in that nineteen seventy eight Time Machine 0:32:09.800 --> 0:32:13.240 TV film. So this guy just has a lot of credits. 0:32:13.040 --> 0:32:16.320 Now, I assume for the late fifties films he was 0:32:16.360 --> 0:32:19.600 not himself the teenage were Wolf, the teenage Frankenstein, or 0:32:19.600 --> 0:32:20.480 the Monster on Campus. 0:32:20.600 --> 0:32:22.680 No, I think he's a professor or a teacher in 0:32:22.720 --> 0:32:25.080 all of them. Yeah, this was like your staple professor 0:32:25.200 --> 0:32:29.400 teacher actor during that period. I get it, Okay. Paul 0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:32.280 Freese is in this one as well. He provides the 0:32:32.360 --> 0:32:34.880 voice of the Rings, which will be explained in a 0:32:34.880 --> 0:32:38.560 bit here. With nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six prolific 0:32:39.360 --> 0:32:43.360 actor and voice actor who isn't actually always credited, but 0:32:43.520 --> 0:32:45.600 if you look at the episode stats for Weird House 0:32:45.600 --> 0:32:49.200 Cinema on Letterbox, for example, he's currently right up there 0:32:49.200 --> 0:32:52.440 behind Christopher Lee, Dick Miller, Vincent Price, and Peter Cushing 0:32:52.480 --> 0:32:55.360 for actors with the most films that we've covered. Because 0:32:55.560 --> 0:32:58.200 he or his voice pop up in The Thing from 0:32:58.240 --> 0:33:02.040 Another World, The Abominable Doctor Fivees, The Flight of Dragons, 0:33:02.320 --> 0:33:05.520 the Magic Sword, and now the Time Machine. It was 0:33:05.560 --> 0:33:07.640 pretty prolific. He has I think three hundred and seventy 0:33:07.680 --> 0:33:12.160 credits on IMDb. Wow. All right, let's get into some 0:33:12.240 --> 0:33:15.360 of the behind the scenes folks. Here there will again 0:33:15.400 --> 0:33:19.440 we can't cover everybody, but cinematography here was by Paul C. Vogel, 0:33:19.480 --> 0:33:22.760 who lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen seventy five. Oscar 0:33:22.800 --> 0:33:27.320 winner for nineteen fifties Battleground and nominated for sixty threes 0:33:27.560 --> 0:33:30.400 The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grim. He also worked 0:33:30.440 --> 0:33:31.600 on The Magic Sword. 0:33:32.000 --> 0:33:33.640 I was reading a bit about the look of this 0:33:33.800 --> 0:33:36.440 film in a twenty twenty two historical review for The 0:33:36.440 --> 0:33:40.640 American Cinematographer magazine by Darren Scott, and it mentions the 0:33:40.680 --> 0:33:43.240 contributions of several people we'll talk about in a bit, 0:33:44.040 --> 0:33:48.720 Geene Davis or sorry, George Davis and William Ferrari, Gene Warren, 0:33:48.760 --> 0:33:52.440 and Wa Cheng, and the color cinematography by Paul Vogel. 0:33:53.960 --> 0:33:57.000 It mentions a few things about Vogel's approach. One was 0:33:58.080 --> 0:34:02.720 trying to find a and otherworldly look for the film 0:34:02.840 --> 0:34:06.360 that did not make it look like fantasy, because you 0:34:06.400 --> 0:34:08.600 would have a lot of cues that might have been 0:34:09.120 --> 0:34:13.000 associated with fantasy films of the time, such as the 0:34:13.120 --> 0:34:18.919 article mentions fog filters or other devices that people would 0:34:19.560 --> 0:34:21.480 think gave it a kind of magical look. And he 0:34:21.520 --> 0:34:24.640 wanted it to look strange and not like our world, 0:34:24.640 --> 0:34:28.880 but also grounded in science and reality, not magical, and 0:34:28.960 --> 0:34:32.360 I think that is absolutely well achieved by what we 0:34:32.440 --> 0:34:32.880 have it. 0:34:34.480 --> 0:34:34.719 Has. 0:34:35.200 --> 0:34:38.680 Yeah, it's not our world, but it's also reality. 0:34:39.360 --> 0:34:41.239 Yeah. I think this is a great point. This is 0:34:41.239 --> 0:34:43.279 one of those things that it's so effective that it 0:34:43.320 --> 0:34:46.719 can be pretty much invisible to the viewer because you 0:34:46.800 --> 0:34:48.920 just you buy into the whole thing. But yeah, when 0:34:48.960 --> 0:34:52.640 we travel into the far future of the Morlocks, it 0:34:53.400 --> 0:34:56.640 feels real. It feels like we are still on Earth. 0:34:57.600 --> 0:35:00.480 It doesn't feel like we're on another planet. It feels 0:35:00.480 --> 0:35:03.040 like we were just in a distant time. Yea. So 0:35:03.280 --> 0:35:04.400 it's perfectly executed. 0:35:04.560 --> 0:35:06.880 There are a lot of great visual stylistic choices in 0:35:06.920 --> 0:35:10.480 the film. To read one thing from this article talking 0:35:10.480 --> 0:35:14.400 about the look of the Morlocks caverns underground, I mean, 0:35:14.440 --> 0:35:17.120 which is one of the best spectacles in the movie. 0:35:17.960 --> 0:35:20.960 Scott writes, quote. Theoretically, there was no light at all 0:35:21.000 --> 0:35:23.520 in the underground caverns, and yet the action had to 0:35:23.560 --> 0:35:26.919 be visible. Vogel gained the desired visual effect by using 0:35:27.000 --> 0:35:31.439 almost no front lighting, rimming the Morlocks with back light, 0:35:31.520 --> 0:35:35.000 and employing cross light of a greenish hue that seemed 0:35:35.040 --> 0:35:38.440 to emanate from odd machines that bubbled and sputtered in 0:35:38.480 --> 0:35:41.200 the background. And Rob, I've got a screen shot for 0:35:41.239 --> 0:35:43.640 you to look at here that shows off that effect. 0:35:43.800 --> 0:35:46.760 I see exactly what he's talking about. It's like these 0:35:46.800 --> 0:35:49.960 creatures in a way, it helps keep their features kind 0:35:50.000 --> 0:35:52.480 of obscure and make them a little more mysterious because 0:35:52.480 --> 0:35:54.919 there's no light hitting them from the front, it's coming 0:35:54.960 --> 0:35:58.479 from behind, and then this colored green blue light coming 0:35:58.520 --> 0:35:59.400 from the sides. 0:35:59.760 --> 0:36:03.040 Yeah. Absolutely, the Morlocks look incredible. We'll discuss some more 0:36:03.080 --> 0:36:06.200 when we get into the plot. But as always, a 0:36:06.280 --> 0:36:08.160 huge part of any monster in a film is not 0:36:08.200 --> 0:36:10.800 only what the costume consists of, but how is it shot, 0:36:11.360 --> 0:36:13.359 how is it lit? And they did a great job 0:36:13.400 --> 0:36:14.359 with these guys. 0:36:14.360 --> 0:36:16.080 Though there are a bunch of people I think who 0:36:16.160 --> 0:36:19.320 should get partial credit for the look of the Morlocks 0:36:19.320 --> 0:36:22.680 as well, including like William Tuttle and Wachang. 0:36:22.640 --> 0:36:27.040 That's right, Wa Ming Cheng Visual Effects. He lived nineteen 0:36:27.120 --> 0:36:32.240 seventeen through two thousand and three. Hawaiian born Chinese American designer, sculptor, 0:36:32.280 --> 0:36:35.480 and artist, who we previously discussed on our episode concerning 0:36:35.560 --> 0:36:39.640 nineteen fifty five's Tarantula because he built the titular tarantula 0:36:39.800 --> 0:36:43.279 in that picture. He was later responsible for key prop 0:36:43.360 --> 0:36:46.839 design on Star Trek the original series, including the tricorder 0:36:46.880 --> 0:36:50.600 and communicator. He also did a lot of costumes on 0:36:50.640 --> 0:36:52.600 some key track episodes. 0:36:52.360 --> 0:36:55.040 Including he did some work on a costume for a 0:36:55.080 --> 0:36:57.640 Star Trek alien that we may be talking about in 0:36:57.680 --> 0:36:58.919 a core episode next week. 0:36:59.120 --> 0:37:02.279 That's right, that's right. And in addition to what we 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:04.640 may be talking about next week, he created the tribles. 0:37:05.640 --> 0:37:07.399 I don't know, maybe we'll talk about the triples next week. 0:37:07.400 --> 0:37:10.240 I think I've maybe done the triples on Monster Fact before. 0:37:11.040 --> 0:37:13.360 But yeah. He also worked on the original Outer Limits, 0:37:13.360 --> 0:37:16.120 the original Planet of the Apes, and the TV series 0:37:16.239 --> 0:37:21.120 Land of the Lost. His adoptive father was James Blanding, Sloan, 0:37:21.239 --> 0:37:25.360 an American etcher, printmaker, theatrical designer, educator, painter, and puppeteer. 0:37:25.880 --> 0:37:27.840 I went down the rabbit hole earlier this week of 0:37:27.880 --> 0:37:30.080 looking just at a bunch of different things that Chang 0:37:30.120 --> 0:37:34.600 designed for Star Trek, the original series, and one of 0:37:34.600 --> 0:37:36.279 the things that caught my eye is what I just 0:37:36.320 --> 0:37:39.439 alluded to, this thing we might be talking about next week, 0:37:39.920 --> 0:37:44.920 which is the salt vampire creature from the original series 0:37:44.920 --> 0:37:47.840 episode Man Trap actually season one, episode one, the first 0:37:47.920 --> 0:37:50.680 ever episode of Star Trek, I guess, apart from the pilot, 0:37:52.000 --> 0:37:56.080 and this caught my eye because this costume slightly reminds 0:37:56.080 --> 0:37:59.080 me of something, doesn't It look a bit like a warlock, 0:37:59.239 --> 0:38:02.080 not entirely, but it's got a kind of sad, drooping 0:38:02.239 --> 0:38:06.920 monster face, long white silver hair, both kind of features 0:38:06.920 --> 0:38:09.359 we see again in the Morlock design, or I guess beforehand, 0:38:09.400 --> 0:38:10.360 in the Morlock design. 0:38:10.520 --> 0:38:13.839 Yeah. Yeah, the design is similar in ways for sure, 0:38:13.920 --> 0:38:16.160 as some of the same, like that the shaggy hair 0:38:16.200 --> 0:38:20.280 and all. Yeah, different different mouth parts, which makes sense. 0:38:20.360 --> 0:38:25.040 One sucks salt and the other. As we'll discuss, eats 0:38:25.400 --> 0:38:32.000 exclusively man meat, exclusively human flesh yum yo. All right, 0:38:32.200 --> 0:38:34.439 a few other It's worth noting that this film, again 0:38:34.560 --> 0:38:37.040 was an Academy Award winner for its Special Effects or 0:38:37.120 --> 0:38:40.279 its Visual Effects, and the two individuals like named on 0:38:40.320 --> 0:38:42.440 the award, though of course you know, it's always a 0:38:42.520 --> 0:38:44.600 huge team making any of the things. Any of these 0:38:44.600 --> 0:38:47.920 things happen. Happened to be Gene Warren and Tim Barr. 0:38:48.520 --> 0:38:51.880 Gene Warren lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety seven. His 0:38:51.960 --> 0:38:55.719 other credits include fifty seven's Chronos, sixty one's Master of 0:38:55.760 --> 0:38:57.680 the World, and the TV series Land of the Lost. 0:38:58.160 --> 0:39:00.440 He worked on some other pal pictures as well well. 0:39:00.480 --> 0:39:03.760 And then Tim Barr lived nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy seven. 0:39:04.400 --> 0:39:06.719 Academy Award winner again for this film and his other 0:39:06.760 --> 0:39:10.080 special effects credits, though sometimes uncredit, include forty two's The 0:39:10.160 --> 0:39:13.239 Mummy's Tomb, forty three's Phantom of the Opera, fifty six 0:39:13.320 --> 0:39:16.479 is The Ten Commandments, and the TV series hr puff 0:39:16.520 --> 0:39:16.960 and Stuff. 0:39:17.320 --> 0:39:20.480 Hmmm, I don't know what that is, but there's a 0:39:20.520 --> 0:39:22.000 song about it somewhere in my head. 0:39:22.239 --> 0:39:24.759 Yeah, I don know hr puffin Stuff. I don't think 0:39:24.760 --> 0:39:26.920 I've ever actually watched it, but I'm just familiar with 0:39:26.960 --> 0:39:31.640 it from the people sharing weird clips and images. And 0:39:31.680 --> 0:39:35.480 then finally, William Tuttle is credited as makeup creator, who 0:39:35.480 --> 0:39:38.080 lived nineteen twelve through two thousand and seven. His other 0:39:38.160 --> 0:39:41.200 makeup special effects are otherwise. Films include thirty five's Mark 0:39:41.239 --> 0:39:43.360 of the Vampire, thirty nine is The Wizard of Oz, 0:39:43.719 --> 0:39:47.680 fifty six is Forbidden Planet, sixty one's Atlantis, The Lost Continent, 0:39:48.000 --> 0:39:51.200 The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grim twelve episodes of 0:39:51.200 --> 0:39:54.400 the original Twilight Zone, seventy four is Young Frankenstein in 0:39:54.480 --> 0:39:57.959 seventy eight's The Fury, and then finally, the composer here 0:39:58.000 --> 0:40:01.360 for the score Russell Garcia, who nineteen sixteen through twenty 0:40:01.480 --> 0:40:06.720 eleven American composer whose other scores include Atlantis, the Lost Continent, 0:40:06.960 --> 0:40:09.600 and he was a composer for NBC Studios and worked 0:40:09.640 --> 0:40:12.760 on such shows as Rawhide in sixty two and Laredo 0:40:12.880 --> 0:40:15.920 from sixty five through sixty seven. I think it's a 0:40:15.920 --> 0:40:18.160 fun score here. It has some nice creepy notes, a 0:40:18.160 --> 0:40:21.279 little bit of futuristic intrigue at times. Yeah. 0:40:21.400 --> 0:40:24.360 Yeah, it's able to action, and I think especially the 0:40:24.840 --> 0:40:26.480 scenes of horror quite well. 0:40:26.719 --> 0:40:29.239 Yeah, and then the action, because you know, we do 0:40:29.480 --> 0:40:32.279 we don't quite buckle some swash or anything, but we 0:40:32.320 --> 0:40:35.000 do get a lot of fun action. Well, there's a 0:40:35.000 --> 0:40:38.600 big mor Lock battle Royale late in the picture. Yeah, 0:40:38.640 --> 0:40:39.359 it's a lot of fun. 0:40:40.880 --> 0:40:43.280 Uh okay, are you ready to talk about the plot? 0:40:43.480 --> 0:40:47.040 Let's jump in so we get a pre credit sequence 0:40:47.200 --> 0:40:51.800 that is just a cannonade of clocks flying through black space. 0:40:52.480 --> 0:40:55.040 This type of imagery I know I've seen used in 0:40:55.080 --> 0:40:58.640 other time travel stories. I wonder does it originally come 0:40:58.680 --> 0:41:01.440 from this film or did it appear earlier? Is this 0:41:01.480 --> 0:41:02.880 film reusing the convention? 0:41:03.440 --> 0:41:06.120 I'm not sure either, but you certainly see allusions to 0:41:06.200 --> 0:41:09.160 it a lot, and including to a certain extent the 0:41:09.200 --> 0:41:12.520 Treehouse of Horror episode where Homer Simpson travels through time, 0:41:12.680 --> 0:41:15.400 and in traveling through time, he kind of like falls 0:41:15.440 --> 0:41:18.840 through an infinite space filled with clocks. 0:41:19.320 --> 0:41:22.360 You know, I think we reference the Treehouse of Horror, 0:41:22.400 --> 0:41:25.520 Short Time and Punishment more than any other piece of 0:41:25.640 --> 0:41:28.800 media that exists. Do you think it comes up on 0:41:28.840 --> 0:41:30.000 the show more than anything? 0:41:30.520 --> 0:41:33.120 I mean, it might. It comes up in my life 0:41:33.120 --> 0:41:36.640 a lot. It's up there with Willy Wank and the 0:41:36.680 --> 0:41:39.319 Chocolate Factory is something that I probably think about every day. 0:41:39.560 --> 0:41:44.560 Yeah, it's so rich. It's like the Iliad or something anyway. 0:41:44.800 --> 0:41:47.840 The action opens for this film on a street in 0:41:47.880 --> 0:41:50.279 London around the turn of the twentieth century, where there's 0:41:50.320 --> 0:41:52.600 a large manor house on one side of the street 0:41:52.960 --> 0:41:55.319 and on the other a row of stores, notably a 0:41:55.320 --> 0:41:59.040 department store with a women's fashion display in the window. 0:41:59.360 --> 0:42:01.680 This will have more plot relevance than you might guess. 0:42:01.960 --> 0:42:02.160 Yeah. 0:42:03.360 --> 0:42:06.360 Out of the store comes the owner, David Philby, played 0:42:06.360 --> 0:42:08.759 by Alan Young. He's dressed in a bowler hat, a 0:42:08.760 --> 0:42:11.560 scarf and a heavy overcoat. He locks up for the 0:42:11.680 --> 0:42:13.719 night and runs across the street to the house of 0:42:13.760 --> 0:42:16.880 his friend, our protagonist, who is referred to by the 0:42:16.960 --> 0:42:19.640 other characters as George, but in the credits he is 0:42:19.920 --> 0:42:24.440 h George Wells. So Philby is let inside by the 0:42:24.480 --> 0:42:29.560 housekeeper mis Watchett played by Doris Lloyd, and once inside, 0:42:29.680 --> 0:42:33.279 Philby reaches the sitting room and we meet three other 0:42:33.400 --> 0:42:37.000 characters already nestled into high backed armchairs, and they're just 0:42:37.239 --> 0:42:41.200 peeling through the house stash of cigars and brandy, issuing 0:42:41.239 --> 0:42:46.520 the occasional harumph. These guys are doctor Hillier, Bridewell or Bridy, 0:42:47.160 --> 0:42:51.200 and Kemp. It is not terribly important to distinguish these 0:42:51.239 --> 0:42:54.480 other three guys. They're your standard late nineteenth century gold 0:42:54.560 --> 0:42:58.120 pocket watch creatures. They love to suck cigars and they're 0:42:58.200 --> 0:43:01.880 yammering about the price of a bushel of They're basically 0:43:03.200 --> 0:43:06.080 picture like that dude from Titanic who talks about how 0:43:06.080 --> 0:43:08.160 God could not sink the ship. They're all kind of 0:43:08.160 --> 0:43:11.440 that guy. The main thing is that Philby is not 0:43:11.640 --> 0:43:14.440 like the other three. He is more sensitive, thoughtful, and 0:43:14.560 --> 0:43:18.080 open minded, and he's a better friend to our protagonist George. 0:43:19.320 --> 0:43:22.520 So anyway, these guys have clearly been sitting here for 0:43:22.600 --> 0:43:27.080 some time. When Philby joins them, the room is filled 0:43:27.160 --> 0:43:30.600 with clocks, so they're all ticking away, not in perfect unison, 0:43:31.120 --> 0:43:34.680 and all of the disorganized ticking summed up amounts to 0:43:34.760 --> 0:43:38.200 this ambient clatter, almost kind of a cranking sound in 0:43:38.239 --> 0:43:38.960 the background. 0:43:39.560 --> 0:43:41.719 Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of clocks. But as we're 0:43:41.719 --> 0:43:44.160 gonna learn here, George is big on time. He's a 0:43:44.360 --> 0:43:46.359 researcher of time, and you've got to buy a lot 0:43:46.400 --> 0:43:47.960 of clocks if you can study it properly. 0:43:48.440 --> 0:43:51.040 They don't seem like research instruments to me. I mean, 0:43:51.080 --> 0:43:54.759 it seems like he's just like they're all like, they're 0:43:54.800 --> 0:43:58.080 not scientific time pieces. It's just like grandfather clocks and 0:43:58.160 --> 0:44:01.040 wall clocks and weird little cook two clocks everywhere. 0:44:01.200 --> 0:44:03.440 I mean, he could be a situation where friends and 0:44:03.520 --> 0:44:07.440 family know that he's really into potentially developing a time machine, 0:44:07.440 --> 0:44:09.879 and they're like, what should we get him for a Christmas? Oh, 0:44:09.920 --> 0:44:11.920 that dude loves time. Let's get him another clock. 0:44:12.000 --> 0:44:15.759 That's right, socks and clocks every year. Yeah. So the 0:44:15.800 --> 0:44:19.120 other three cigar guys are annoyed because their host has 0:44:19.239 --> 0:44:22.479 kept them waiting. He invited the four of them over 0:44:22.520 --> 0:44:24.919 to dinner several days ago, but now they are here 0:44:25.120 --> 0:44:27.560 at the appointed time and he is nowhere to be found. 0:44:28.040 --> 0:44:30.719 The housekeeper has made excuses for him and said that 0:44:30.760 --> 0:44:34.080 he'll be along shortly, and the cigar guys are irritated 0:44:34.120 --> 0:44:36.800 and they are taking offense. These guys are having a 0:44:36.840 --> 0:44:40.880 lot of fun getting offended. Eventually, miswatch It comes in 0:44:41.320 --> 0:44:43.480 with a note saying that if he is not here 0:44:43.560 --> 0:44:46.200 on time, the four of them should begin dinner without him. 0:44:46.560 --> 0:44:50.000 So they proceed into the dining room and Philby tries 0:44:50.040 --> 0:44:52.400 to make excuses for his friends, saying that George is 0:44:52.480 --> 0:44:57.399 usually prompt, precise, and punctual. Now you know, I love 0:44:57.840 --> 0:44:59.560 a good freeze frame to get a look at the 0:44:59.600 --> 0:45:02.319 spread food in a movie. So I did one. Here 0:45:02.719 --> 0:45:05.760 looks like we have got a big blackened meat roast 0:45:05.800 --> 0:45:08.439 of some kind in the center of the table. There's 0:45:08.480 --> 0:45:11.440 a little plate of something white next to it. I 0:45:11.440 --> 0:45:13.960 couldn't tell what that is. Maybe hard boiled eggs. 0:45:14.440 --> 0:45:14.880 Okay. 0:45:15.120 --> 0:45:18.239 Each man has a yeast roll on a dish next 0:45:18.239 --> 0:45:21.359 to his plate, and then, apart from the green, let 0:45:21.440 --> 0:45:24.240 us garnish underneath the meat, I see not a single 0:45:24.480 --> 0:45:25.840 identifiable vegetable. 0:45:26.280 --> 0:45:29.080 Yeah, yeah, I guess maybe tobacco is the vegetable. 0:45:28.640 --> 0:45:31.920 For there you go. That's how you get your fiber. Yeah, 0:45:31.920 --> 0:45:35.000 and plenty of wine. Of course, we're told that the host, George, 0:45:35.000 --> 0:45:37.520 has the best wine cellar in the South of England. 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:40.239 So while George is presented as a bit of a 0:45:40.320 --> 0:45:44.000 dreamer and an idealist, he is not above appreciating some luxuries. 0:45:44.040 --> 0:45:44.920 He loves a good wine. 0:45:45.280 --> 0:45:48.719 Yeah, and maybe he values wine because it also sort 0:45:48.760 --> 0:45:52.600 of travels in time in the basement. Yeah, there you go. 0:45:53.360 --> 0:45:56.040 So suddenly, while the four men are about to tuck 0:45:56.080 --> 0:45:58.760 into their meal, the door to the dining room flies 0:45:58.800 --> 0:46:02.840 open and install stumbles the figure of their host George. 0:46:02.880 --> 0:46:06.640 This is Rod Taylor again. He is not dressed for dinner. Instead, 0:46:06.680 --> 0:46:11.880 he is filthy in tattered clothing, bleeding from some superficial wounds, 0:46:11.920 --> 0:46:16.000 and trembling with exhaustion. He collapses into a chair and 0:46:16.000 --> 0:46:18.799 he calls out some food a drink, and then one 0:46:18.840 --> 0:46:21.720 of the guys, Bridewell, I think, he quickly gives George 0:46:21.719 --> 0:46:24.799 a glass of medicinal wine, which he slams down, and 0:46:24.800 --> 0:46:27.120 then Bridewell has a drink too, Because I don't know, 0:46:27.160 --> 0:46:30.879 I guess what he's seeing is so disturbing, and he's 0:46:30.880 --> 0:46:33.920 got to tell them his tail while he still remembers 0:46:33.960 --> 0:46:37.840 it all clearly. Philby tries to get George to relax. 0:46:37.880 --> 0:46:39.719 He says, don't worry, you have all the time in 0:46:39.760 --> 0:46:42.640 the world, and George gets a good ironic moment here. 0:46:42.680 --> 0:46:45.600 He's like, yes, that's right, that's exactly what I have. 0:46:46.640 --> 0:46:49.800 So to tell his tale, we start five days earlier, 0:46:49.840 --> 0:46:52.239 when George was meeting with the same four men in 0:46:52.280 --> 0:46:55.319 his living room on New Year's Eve, eighteen ninety nine. 0:46:56.239 --> 0:47:00.799 George is giving a demonstration inside a box. On the 0:47:00.880 --> 0:47:04.440 table before them is the culmination of years of work 0:47:04.440 --> 0:47:07.480 in his laboratory. He wanted to unveil it to them 0:47:07.520 --> 0:47:11.040 before the New century began, and he finished just in time. 0:47:11.680 --> 0:47:14.480 What is it, well, George says, his invention has to 0:47:14.560 --> 0:47:18.200 do with time and doctor hill Doctor Hillier, here this 0:47:18.320 --> 0:47:21.319 is the kind of harrumphing guy with the beard who 0:47:21.400 --> 0:47:25.480 loves the scars. He's like, ah, wonderful. What our country 0:47:25.520 --> 0:47:28.160 needs now more than anything, is a more accurate time 0:47:28.239 --> 0:47:31.040 piece to be used by the Army and the Royal Navy, 0:47:31.160 --> 0:47:36.600 especially important for coordinating artillery brigades. And George smiles a 0:47:36.600 --> 0:47:39.080 little smile. He says, no, no, no, it's not a 0:47:39.120 --> 0:47:41.960 time piece. He says, when he speaks of time, he 0:47:42.040 --> 0:47:47.719 is referring to the fourth dimension. Hillier is immediately dismissive. 0:47:47.800 --> 0:47:50.080 He says, oh, that's mere theory. No one knows if 0:47:50.080 --> 0:47:53.759 it really exists. And then we get a little scene 0:47:53.760 --> 0:47:57.080 where George gives us a lecture on the three dimensions 0:47:57.120 --> 0:47:59.759 of space and how time can be imagined as an 0:48:00.040 --> 0:48:03.880 visible fourth dimension, the only one along which we cannot 0:48:03.880 --> 0:48:04.960 travel at will. 0:48:05.840 --> 0:48:08.279 The film really takes its time in a good way, 0:48:08.400 --> 0:48:11.720 presenting some of the concepts of time and time travel here, 0:48:12.320 --> 0:48:16.680 which again I think is pretty admirable. Because you know, 0:48:16.760 --> 0:48:19.400 time travel films were not new at this point, but 0:48:19.480 --> 0:48:23.400 a lot of time travel films prior to nineteen sixty 0:48:23.680 --> 0:48:26.840 dependent on more dependent on more mystical time travel techniques, 0:48:27.239 --> 0:48:30.279 you know, like hypnosis or falling asleep, that sort of thing, 0:48:31.360 --> 0:48:33.440 and falling to sleep is kind of like time travel. 0:48:33.480 --> 0:48:37.880 But so on one hand, maybe Christmas ghost Yeah, Christmas ghosts, 0:48:37.920 --> 0:48:41.080 So maybe it was more essential at this time. But 0:48:41.239 --> 0:48:43.959 also it's worth noting that the particulars of the time 0:48:44.000 --> 0:48:48.160 machine here are also rather distinct, namely in the way 0:48:48.200 --> 0:48:52.440 that it travels through time but not space though don't 0:48:52.760 --> 0:48:56.600 nitpick that concept too closely either, But still essentially, as 0:48:56.600 --> 0:48:59.040 far as we're concerned, to travel through time, not space, 0:48:59.320 --> 0:49:02.600 and it's it's it's very important that that be cemented 0:49:02.640 --> 0:49:03.640 in the viewer's. 0:49:03.239 --> 0:49:06.880 Head, that's right. And it's also this lecture is good 0:49:07.280 --> 0:49:10.080 because of the interesting way the script uses the lecture 0:49:10.120 --> 0:49:14.720 to further characterize George. Like when he speaks of time 0:49:14.840 --> 0:49:18.280 in this scene, he uses a lot of vocabulary having 0:49:18.320 --> 0:49:21.800 to do with constraint and the lack of freedom. He says, 0:49:22.080 --> 0:49:24.960 when it comes to the other three dimensions, we are free. 0:49:25.440 --> 0:49:28.560 But when it comes to the fourth dimension, we are prisoners, 0:49:29.200 --> 0:49:32.280 and you get this feeling of George as a man 0:49:32.320 --> 0:49:36.160 of action, a man who breaks through barriers and feels 0:49:36.160 --> 0:49:39.920 a kind of access and mastery over many domains due 0:49:39.960 --> 0:49:43.720 to his strength and his economic privilege and his will power. 0:49:44.280 --> 0:49:49.040 George's He's strong, handsome, brilliant, rich and bold. So in 0:49:49.080 --> 0:49:53.320 a way, it's like anything feels possible to him, except 0:49:53.520 --> 0:49:56.359 for time. There's nothing we can do about time. We 0:49:56.440 --> 0:49:59.520 live in bondage in one part of it, and it 0:49:59.560 --> 0:50:02.640 moves at its own pace rather than us moving through 0:50:02.680 --> 0:50:05.000 it at ours right right. 0:50:05.080 --> 0:50:08.680 And then also this this larger sense too right, that 0:50:08.680 --> 0:50:13.919 that human destiny is like is a track leading into 0:50:13.920 --> 0:50:16.719 an unknown future, and therefore we just have we have 0:50:16.920 --> 0:50:21.040 limited vision of what's to come and of and as 0:50:21.080 --> 0:50:23.960 we've been saying, like a complete inability to like shift 0:50:24.000 --> 0:50:24.680 from that path. 0:50:36.360 --> 0:50:38.400 This is a bit of a tangent, but I found 0:50:38.400 --> 0:50:41.520 this part of the movie really interesting in the way 0:50:41.640 --> 0:50:48.400 it's revealing George's personality. It made me think about tendencies 0:50:48.760 --> 0:50:52.480 I've observed in reality of like once people reach a 0:50:52.520 --> 0:50:56.840 certain level of power and freedom. I'm thinking specifically of 0:50:56.880 --> 0:50:59.040 like a lot of tech billionaires. If you listen to 0:50:59.080 --> 0:51:02.280 them talk. It's it seems very often like the next 0:51:02.320 --> 0:51:05.000 thing that develops in their mind is a desire to 0:51:05.400 --> 0:51:09.480 escape the circumstances of reality. They find it like, I 0:51:09.520 --> 0:51:12.440 want to escape this world. You know, I've already like 0:51:12.560 --> 0:51:15.879 mastered a kind of freedom within this world, and now 0:51:15.880 --> 0:51:18.040 the problem is that I'm stuck in this world. 0:51:18.400 --> 0:51:21.480 Yeah, yeah, what do we hear? Yeah, some of our 0:51:21.520 --> 0:51:24.840 billionaires talking about it's about going to other planets or 0:51:24.880 --> 0:51:28.680 digitizing consciousness, or if you happen to be like a 0:51:28.760 --> 0:51:33.000 leader of a powerful nation, you may you maybe chatting 0:51:33.000 --> 0:51:35.200 about ways to replace all your organs and live to 0:51:35.280 --> 0:51:36.960 be one hundred and fifty years old. That, of course, 0:51:37.040 --> 0:51:39.160 was in the news cycle recently. So yeah, I think 0:51:39.160 --> 0:51:40.239 it's a very accurate rate. 0:51:40.480 --> 0:51:45.120 To escape mortality, to escape morality, to escape the planet, 0:51:45.239 --> 0:51:49.920 to escape whatever, or the limitations of Yeah. Anyway, So 0:51:50.560 --> 0:51:55.360 after this, George he stages a demonstration of quote the 0:51:55.440 --> 0:51:59.080 possibility of movement within the fourth dimension. So he opens 0:51:59.120 --> 0:52:02.120 the box up on the before them, which contains a 0:52:02.239 --> 0:52:05.920 tiny model of the film's famous time machine. So this 0:52:06.000 --> 0:52:07.319 is just a toy size thing. 0:52:07.680 --> 0:52:10.200 Fight as well, learn this is a working model. 0:52:09.880 --> 0:52:13.560 Correct, Yes, yes, it worked. Yeah, So imagine Santa's sleigh 0:52:13.600 --> 0:52:16.160 with a giant dish antenna on the back of it. 0:52:16.920 --> 0:52:19.560 The seat for the passenger is a polished wooden arm 0:52:19.680 --> 0:52:23.480 chair with dark red upholstery. And of course this is 0:52:23.520 --> 0:52:26.719 only a toy sized replica. I was reading that the 0:52:26.760 --> 0:52:30.520 resemblance to Santa's sleigh is not an accident. George Powell 0:52:30.560 --> 0:52:34.560 allegedly modeled this design on a horse drawn sleigh because 0:52:34.600 --> 0:52:37.319 he rode in horse drawn sleighs a lot when he 0:52:37.400 --> 0:52:40.279 was young and he had fond memories of that. It 0:52:40.320 --> 0:52:43.960 was created by the designers Bill Ferrari and Wacheng And 0:52:44.320 --> 0:52:47.480 I remember I read somewhere that the chair here was 0:52:47.520 --> 0:52:50.640 a barber's chair. I don't know, or either the chair 0:52:50.680 --> 0:52:53.040 in the toy version or in the full size version 0:52:53.120 --> 0:52:56.040 was a barber's chair, which doesn't quite look like to me, 0:52:56.160 --> 0:52:56.920 but that's funny. 0:52:57.360 --> 0:53:02.080 Yeah, yeah, again, this becomes the iconic time machine. This 0:53:02.200 --> 0:53:05.480 is like the primary vision of the late Victorian time machine, 0:53:05.719 --> 0:53:07.239 and it's pretty accurate to the book, I believe. In 0:53:07.280 --> 0:53:11.480 the book it's described as having rails, levers and also 0:53:11.520 --> 0:53:15.560 a saddle. I think we're fine to get away from 0:53:15.600 --> 0:53:17.400 the idea of it being more of a saddle and 0:53:17.640 --> 0:53:18.279 more of a chair. 0:53:18.640 --> 0:53:23.319 Yeah, So George, he's gazing at this thing with excitement 0:53:23.440 --> 0:53:27.759 and pride, and the revelation of this machine gives way 0:53:27.800 --> 0:53:30.400 to a discussion. Bridewell says, hey, you know, don't go 0:53:30.520 --> 0:53:33.560 messing around with the future, because George, of course says 0:53:33.600 --> 0:53:35.120 you can travel to the future with it. He says, 0:53:35.120 --> 0:53:37.040 don't go messing around with the future. You could screw 0:53:37.080 --> 0:53:40.600 it up for the rest of us. And then Hillier says, no, no, no, 0:53:40.600 --> 0:53:43.840 the future cannot be changed. Even if you could travel 0:53:43.880 --> 0:53:46.800 through time, you couldn't change the course of history because 0:53:46.840 --> 0:53:51.359 what happens will happen either way. And George says, this 0:53:51.480 --> 0:53:54.280 is the question he wants to answer. Can man control 0:53:54.320 --> 0:53:57.440 his destiny? Can he change the shape of things to come? 0:53:58.080 --> 0:54:00.440 That latter phrase, I believe would become the title of 0:54:00.560 --> 0:54:03.160 a Wells associated film later on. 0:54:03.320 --> 0:54:04.000 Yes, that's right. 0:54:04.880 --> 0:54:07.760 So to prove he has not lost his mind to George, 0:54:07.760 --> 0:54:11.520 stage's a demonstration with the four gentlemen as witnesses. He 0:54:11.600 --> 0:54:14.160 takes a cigar from doctor Hillier's pocket, and then he 0:54:14.520 --> 0:54:17.240 bends the cigar into the shape of a seated man, 0:54:17.840 --> 0:54:19.360 and then he puts it in the seat, and he 0:54:19.440 --> 0:54:23.000 sends the machine off. The dish starts whirling, and the 0:54:23.080 --> 0:54:25.680 room rattles around them like the champagne and the ice 0:54:25.719 --> 0:54:29.520 bucket is rattling. And then suddenly the toy time machine disappears, 0:54:29.640 --> 0:54:32.640 leaving only this fading yellow glow on the table where 0:54:32.640 --> 0:54:36.600 it was. Where has it gone? Not anywhere in space, 0:54:36.680 --> 0:54:39.759 but somewhere through time. George says it could be one 0:54:39.800 --> 0:54:41.080 hundred years away by now. 0:54:42.880 --> 0:54:45.000 We never see it again, right, never again. 0:54:45.200 --> 0:54:47.200 When he tells us we're not going to he's just like, 0:54:47.280 --> 0:54:49.919 it's not coming back because there's no operator in it. 0:54:49.960 --> 0:54:52.680 In the future. This thing's just going to appear and 0:54:52.800 --> 0:54:56.920 deliver a late Victorian cigar to somebody, but also deliver 0:54:57.040 --> 0:55:02.080 to them I miniaturized working replica of time travel seems 0:55:02.160 --> 0:55:03.960 kind of reckless in many respects. 0:55:04.120 --> 0:55:06.719 There you go, Yeah, you don't know who's going to 0:55:06.719 --> 0:55:09.880 get hold of that thing though, presumably because there's nobody 0:55:09.880 --> 0:55:12.240 inside to turn the lever back and make it stop, 0:55:12.320 --> 0:55:14.440 it's just going to keep speeding through time forever. 0:55:14.719 --> 0:55:17.760 Oh goodness all that. I don't know that that sounds 0:55:17.760 --> 0:55:21.319 safe either. I'm not sure what happens when something kind 0:55:21.320 --> 0:55:23.799 of accelerates endlessly through time. 0:55:24.680 --> 0:55:26.879 In the heat death of the universe. Suddenly this thing 0:55:26.920 --> 0:55:27.480 pops out. 0:55:28.239 --> 0:55:31.719 This is maybe this is why the universe ultimately is destroyed. 0:55:32.080 --> 0:55:32.560 Who knows. 0:55:34.040 --> 0:55:38.600 Okay, let's see after the demonstration, the guests funny thing, 0:55:38.640 --> 0:55:41.719 they're not very impressed, Like they don't believe that his 0:55:41.840 --> 0:55:45.080 disappearing toy actually traveled through time. But even if he 0:55:45.320 --> 0:55:49.680 had invented a time machine, of what use would it be? Yeah, 0:55:50.160 --> 0:55:55.200 which is an insight that's is both incredibly thick headed, 0:55:55.360 --> 0:55:57.520 Like if it were real, wouldn't that be the most 0:55:57.600 --> 0:56:01.160 important invention of all time? Could apply knowledge of the 0:56:01.200 --> 0:56:03.680 future to the past. You could fix any mistake or 0:56:03.680 --> 0:56:06.600 revert any disaster. But on the other hand, when you 0:56:06.640 --> 0:56:10.640 think about it, it might also be accidentally profound. Since 0:56:11.520 --> 0:56:12.960 you know, we've talked about this on the show with 0:56:13.000 --> 0:56:16.720 like time travel stories before, you can imagine scenarios where essentially, 0:56:16.800 --> 0:56:21.600 as soon as time travel is invented, it becomes catastrophically weaponized. 0:56:21.840 --> 0:56:25.200 Like the parties who possess time travel would have so 0:56:25.400 --> 0:56:28.400 much power over those that don't they would become living 0:56:28.440 --> 0:56:33.560 gods among mortals. So anyway, the friends here are not 0:56:33.680 --> 0:56:37.480 impressed with the time machine, doctor Hillier says, He says, 0:56:37.480 --> 0:56:40.880 why don't you do something useful like make weapons. You 0:56:40.920 --> 0:56:43.640 know we're at war right now in South Africa. The 0:56:43.680 --> 0:56:46.759 country needs brilliant inventors like you to design things that 0:56:46.800 --> 0:56:49.640 can help us win the fight. And he promises to 0:56:49.640 --> 0:56:52.520 put George in touch with his contacts in the war office. 0:56:52.800 --> 0:56:55.719 And then Hillier, Bridewell, and Kemp all depart, all with 0:56:55.760 --> 0:56:58.640 their own plans for New Year's Eve, and George looks 0:56:58.760 --> 0:57:02.560 mighty depressed. But Philby remember he's the good friend. He's 0:57:02.640 --> 0:57:05.440 a sensitive friend with a soft Scottish accent. He stays 0:57:05.440 --> 0:57:09.560 behind to counsel his friend. Philby asks why this preoccupation 0:57:09.680 --> 0:57:13.760 with time, and George resists talking about this at first, 0:57:13.800 --> 0:57:16.800 but eventually he's persuaded to explain. He says, if you 0:57:16.840 --> 0:57:19.240 want to know the truth, I don't much care for 0:57:19.280 --> 0:57:22.640 the time I was born into. He explains that he 0:57:22.760 --> 0:57:27.120 finds the world of the present intolerably cruel and shortsighted, 0:57:27.200 --> 0:57:30.600 where even the most marvelous discoveries of the new science 0:57:31.080 --> 0:57:34.840 are captured and perverted by evil men who care only 0:57:34.880 --> 0:57:38.160 about the destruction of their enemies, and the quest for power, 0:57:38.560 --> 0:57:42.439 and George wants to escape this bloodthirsty time, to find 0:57:42.440 --> 0:57:46.320 a world without all of this hatred and stupidity and warmongering, 0:57:46.600 --> 0:57:50.280 when humankind can build and learn and live in peace. 0:57:51.320 --> 0:57:54.120 It's a powerful sentiment that I think the audience is 0:57:54.200 --> 0:57:56.920 tempted to have mixed feelings about, because on one hand 0:57:57.560 --> 0:58:03.320 it is an insightful and moral indictment of human of 0:58:03.440 --> 0:58:06.480 humankind and the way we are and of our ills. 0:58:06.920 --> 0:58:10.280 But also it is it's a he has a sense 0:58:10.320 --> 0:58:14.440 of resignation that he can't stop it, like he can't 0:58:14.560 --> 0:58:17.200 change it. All he can do is escape it to 0:58:17.320 --> 0:58:20.800 like take him to remove himself away to a time 0:58:20.880 --> 0:58:22.760 when humankind has become better. 0:58:23.200 --> 0:58:26.040 It's like he goes even beyond the privilege that he 0:58:26.080 --> 0:58:30.240 already has in life. Yeah, to like to distance himself 0:58:30.360 --> 0:58:34.160 economically and geographically from a lot of the problems in 0:58:34.200 --> 0:58:37.680 the world now potentially traveling through time to do so. 0:58:38.040 --> 0:58:42.960 Yeah, So George and Philby argue. Philby says he agrees 0:58:43.000 --> 0:58:45.400 with his friend. He says, you know you're you're right, 0:58:45.440 --> 0:58:47.480 You're right about the age we live in. But this 0:58:47.520 --> 0:58:51.520 obsession with escape is unhealthy, he says, destroy that machine 0:58:51.600 --> 0:58:54.440 before it destroys you. So I think Philby is in 0:58:54.480 --> 0:58:57.520 a way seen as the voice of sanity here, like 0:58:57.560 --> 0:59:00.360 he's you know, he's there's some wisdom in what he's saying. 0:59:01.120 --> 0:59:03.880 And then Philby tries to invite George to his home 0:59:04.040 --> 0:59:06.440 for New Year's Eve to spend it with him and 0:59:06.480 --> 0:59:10.160 his wife and his young son, Jamie. So this is 0:59:10.200 --> 0:59:13.880 almost kind of the alternative, you know, the alternative to 0:59:14.240 --> 0:59:18.640 the escape that George is suggesting is his love and 0:59:18.720 --> 0:59:23.560 brotherhood that Philby is suggesting. But George refuses. Philby asks 0:59:23.640 --> 0:59:26.320 him to promise that he won't go anywhere else tonight, 0:59:26.840 --> 0:59:30.360 and George, before Philby leave, says, I promise I won't 0:59:30.520 --> 0:59:31.480 walk out the door. 0:59:32.240 --> 0:59:34.479 Don't say anything about traveling through time. 0:59:34.760 --> 0:59:38.280 That's right. So George sits down and he writes an 0:59:38.320 --> 0:59:40.760 invitation for Philby and the other three men to come 0:59:40.800 --> 0:59:43.720 back to the house for dinner the following Friday, five days. 0:59:43.760 --> 0:59:46.800 Hence we hear people on the street outside the blowing 0:59:46.840 --> 0:59:50.480 party horns and yelling Happy New Year. And after this, 0:59:50.600 --> 0:59:54.560 George retires to his laboratory where the full sized time 0:59:54.600 --> 0:59:57.720 machine awaits, and we get a sharp music sting when 0:59:57.760 --> 1:00:02.320 it's revealed the laboratory is in George's conservatory, which is 1:00:02.360 --> 1:00:06.560 full of plants and work benches and tools. The windows 1:00:06.560 --> 1:00:09.520 are frosted over with ice, and outside it is dark. 1:00:10.200 --> 1:00:15.120 George he hastily makes a few mechanical preparations, like sharpening 1:00:15.200 --> 1:00:17.120 the He's sort of got a car key for his 1:00:17.200 --> 1:00:19.640 time machine. It's this lever that he has to insert 1:00:19.760 --> 1:00:23.120 to make the machine go. He does something to it 1:00:24.040 --> 1:00:27.760 and he hops in. Now the next thing. People who 1:00:27.800 --> 1:00:30.480 remember the broad outline of the story might think he 1:00:30.560 --> 1:00:33.120 is about to flip a switch and then PLoP down 1:00:33.120 --> 1:00:35.040 in the year eight hundred thousand in the land of 1:00:35.080 --> 1:00:38.280 the Eloy and the Morlocks. But there is actually a 1:00:38.440 --> 1:00:41.800 long and I think quite interesting middle section of the 1:00:41.840 --> 1:00:45.840 story here, where the time traveler is experimenting with the machine, 1:00:46.160 --> 1:00:49.080 taking it slow at first, and seeing what happens in 1:00:49.120 --> 1:00:52.520 the century after his departure. This part of the movie 1:00:52.520 --> 1:00:55.400 involves a lot of time laps and stop motion effects, 1:00:55.400 --> 1:00:58.440 which again I believe these are the main parts that 1:00:58.520 --> 1:01:00.280 won this film and Oscar. 1:01:00.600 --> 1:01:03.760 Yeah, yeah, they're incredible. They hold up quite well. I 1:01:03.760 --> 1:01:05.840 also want to quickly throw in that is it is. 1:01:06.040 --> 1:01:10.960 It always amuses me that the time machine like really 1:01:11.000 --> 1:01:14.280 like the centerpiece of so much time travel fiction. It 1:01:14.400 --> 1:01:17.480 sets its sites eight hundred thousand years in the future 1:01:18.440 --> 1:01:21.000 like such a safe distance when it comes to depicting 1:01:21.000 --> 1:01:23.360 what the future will be like, when pretty much everything 1:01:23.360 --> 1:01:26.000 else decides to look at the far future of nineteen 1:01:26.040 --> 1:01:31.200 eighty seven, yeah, or the you know, apocalyptic hell scape 1:01:31.240 --> 1:01:34.680 of two thousand and three and so forth. But you know, 1:01:34.880 --> 1:01:36.560 I don't know, maybe people will have a good laugh 1:01:36.880 --> 1:01:38.520 eight hundred thousand years from now. 1:01:38.920 --> 1:01:41.960 I think it's easier to feel emotionally involved with a 1:01:42.040 --> 1:01:45.560 story that is within a generation or two of your own, 1:01:45.680 --> 1:01:46.480 of your own time. 1:01:46.560 --> 1:01:46.840 You know. 1:01:47.080 --> 1:01:49.720 It's like, once you start getting further out from that, 1:01:50.920 --> 1:01:53.560 you can still have drama take place in the place 1:01:53.600 --> 1:01:55.560 you go to, but it just it almost starts to 1:01:55.560 --> 1:01:58.600 feel like a fantasy world that's just not connected to 1:01:58.720 --> 1:01:59.840 your present reality. 1:02:00.200 --> 1:02:02.760 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as humans, we have a difficult 1:02:02.880 --> 1:02:08.000 time really viewing things beyond our own personal horizon. Maybe 1:02:08.000 --> 1:02:10.880 we can see it one generation out, so yeah, it 1:02:10.880 --> 1:02:12.920 makes sense that we tend to limit our storytelling to 1:02:12.960 --> 1:02:13.560 that time frame. 1:02:14.480 --> 1:02:17.880 So anyway, he first goes slow, making sure the machine works. 1:02:17.880 --> 1:02:19.960 He like skips ahead several hours, and he sees a 1:02:20.000 --> 1:02:23.040 candle burned down several inches in an instant, and then 1:02:23.080 --> 1:02:25.760 he goes faster, and he sees the environment change quickly 1:02:25.800 --> 1:02:28.640 in these cyclical ways, like the hands on the clocks 1:02:28.640 --> 1:02:31.800 spinning round and round, and the sun rising and setting quickly, 1:02:32.800 --> 1:02:36.120 frost growing on the windows and then receding. He sees 1:02:36.200 --> 1:02:39.439 the flowers in his greenhouse opening and closing, their little 1:02:39.600 --> 1:02:43.000 their blossoms, like these leapping mouths. There's a great part. 1:02:43.120 --> 1:02:47.200 We sees a snail racing across the floor, going fast, 1:02:47.760 --> 1:02:51.640 and then through the glass window he sees the department 1:02:51.720 --> 1:02:54.000 store across the street, and in the window of the 1:02:54.040 --> 1:02:58.120 store there is a mannequin displaying a fancy dress. And 1:02:58.160 --> 1:03:01.400 there's this whole little subplot here where we see years 1:03:01.440 --> 1:03:05.360 flit by through the changes in women's fashion, and the 1:03:05.400 --> 1:03:08.360 time traveler is like, good, heavens, that's a dress. This 1:03:09.040 --> 1:03:11.960 was intriguing. I wonder just how far women would permit 1:03:12.000 --> 1:03:12.520 this to go. 1:03:14.240 --> 1:03:17.400 Yeah, it's legitimately a hilarious line. 1:03:17.520 --> 1:03:20.600 Yeah, he says, I began to grow very fond of 1:03:20.600 --> 1:03:24.280 that mannequin, maybe because like me, she didn't age. So 1:03:24.320 --> 1:03:27.080 we see the fashions change. He stops briefly in the 1:03:27.200 --> 1:03:30.800 year nineteen seventeen, when he discovers the lights have gone 1:03:30.840 --> 1:03:33.640 out in his house. His home is now filled with 1:03:33.720 --> 1:03:36.840 cobwebs and dust, and there's sheets over all the furniture. 1:03:37.440 --> 1:03:40.080 He leaves the lab and wanders out into the street, 1:03:40.200 --> 1:03:42.640 where going into the department store, he sees a man 1:03:42.680 --> 1:03:45.760 in a military uniform who looks exactly like his friend 1:03:45.880 --> 1:03:48.880 David Philby. He thinks it is Philby, but when he 1:03:48.880 --> 1:03:51.760 greets him, the man is confused. We learn this is 1:03:51.840 --> 1:03:55.920 not David Philby, but his young son, Jamie, now grown 1:03:56.000 --> 1:03:58.920 up to the age his father was when George left. 1:03:59.160 --> 1:04:02.640 Yeah, same act, but now without the distinct scooge McDuck accent. 1:04:02.840 --> 1:04:06.880 That's right. Jamie tells George that his father was killed 1:04:07.200 --> 1:04:11.280 in the war a year earlier. Just sad moment. And 1:04:11.280 --> 1:04:14.000 then we also learned the story of the inventor Chap 1:04:14.040 --> 1:04:17.320 who lived across the street. He apparently disappeared in the 1:04:17.400 --> 1:04:20.520 year nineteen hundred and left the house in the care 1:04:20.560 --> 1:04:23.640 of Jamie's father, and Jamie always wanted his father to 1:04:23.680 --> 1:04:26.640 sell it, but David forbade it, believing his friend would 1:04:26.680 --> 1:04:30.360 come back someday, and he says, people hereabouts think it's 1:04:30.360 --> 1:04:33.520 haunted anyway. Have you been at the front? And George 1:04:33.560 --> 1:04:37.000 is quite confused. He's like, what front? And Jamie says 1:04:37.000 --> 1:04:40.200 why the war, of course, and George smiles, but with 1:04:40.560 --> 1:04:44.280 a clear sadness. This time seems no better than his own. 1:04:44.400 --> 1:04:58.680 Everywhere live's wrecked by violence again and again. So he 1:04:58.720 --> 1:05:00.000 goes back to the time machine. 1:05:00.040 --> 1:05:02.240 That's right. Time to jump back in and fast forward 1:05:02.280 --> 1:05:05.040 to the part where we solve this whole war thing. 1:05:05.400 --> 1:05:07.520 That's right. So he's going to go faster now. The 1:05:07.560 --> 1:05:11.080 months fly by. Suddenly in nineteen forty something rattles the 1:05:11.120 --> 1:05:14.600 world around him and he stops. He comes out and 1:05:14.600 --> 1:05:17.640 we get this nightmarish glimpse of the Blitz of London. 1:05:18.240 --> 1:05:21.360 There are fires raging, there's anti aircraft fire going up 1:05:21.400 --> 1:05:23.800 into the dark, and it's like the god of war 1:05:23.920 --> 1:05:27.200 still rules this cursed planet. So he pushes on in 1:05:27.240 --> 1:05:30.640 the machine. His house is destroyed, I guess, in the blitz, 1:05:30.720 --> 1:05:33.880 and the machine is speeding through time just now out 1:05:33.880 --> 1:05:36.320 in the open in a grassy field, and he has 1:05:36.360 --> 1:05:39.760 a view all around of buildings being rebuilt quickly with 1:05:39.880 --> 1:05:43.640 time laps and stop motion effects. The mannequin. Time lapse 1:05:43.640 --> 1:05:46.440 also continues. We get to see more modern fashions, including 1:05:46.480 --> 1:05:50.760 a bikini, and he stops again in the mid sixties 1:05:50.800 --> 1:05:55.400 because he hears high pitched sounds all around, and so 1:05:55.440 --> 1:05:57.960 the years stop racing by. The sounds come into focus 1:05:58.000 --> 1:06:03.000 and we realize these sounds are air raid sirens. Now 1:06:03.040 --> 1:06:05.320 we are in the era of the Cold War, with 1:06:05.400 --> 1:06:08.320 the threat of nuclear weapons always looming over us. But 1:06:08.960 --> 1:06:11.480 George doesn't know about this yet. Of course, he doesn't 1:06:11.520 --> 1:06:13.440 know what the sounds are. He sees crowds of people 1:06:13.520 --> 1:06:17.440 running somewhere, being ushered by civil defencemen in gray jumpsuits 1:06:17.440 --> 1:06:20.280 with white helmets, and people are trying to get him 1:06:20.280 --> 1:06:22.440 to hurry along with them, but he resists. He's like, 1:06:22.440 --> 1:06:25.200 what's the rush. He's like checking out a outside the 1:06:25.200 --> 1:06:28.120 department story. He is checking out a shaving kit display 1:06:28.560 --> 1:06:31.280 that has a nuclear civil defense sign right above it 1:06:31.280 --> 1:06:32.760 with the picture of a mushroom cloud. 1:06:33.920 --> 1:06:38.200 And but by your clean shave razor. Today, Yes, people 1:06:38.200 --> 1:06:40.640 still had the moxy to be like, you know, people 1:06:40.680 --> 1:06:43.760 were heading off to the bomb shelters, but diagnam it. 1:06:43.880 --> 1:06:45.920 They still need a shave, They still need a quality 1:06:45.960 --> 1:06:46.680 shaving device. 1:06:46.880 --> 1:06:51.600 Yeah, so he eventually meets a now aged version of 1:06:51.640 --> 1:06:55.640 the once young Jamie Philby. George wants to speak with 1:06:55.720 --> 1:06:59.200 him about the splendid technological achievements he sees all around them. 1:06:59.320 --> 1:07:02.000 You know, it's now the sixties. There's technology everywhere. But 1:07:02.440 --> 1:07:05.400 Jamie does not have time to chat. He's like, I 1:07:05.440 --> 1:07:07.200 can't talk to you about flat screen TVs. 1:07:07.280 --> 1:07:07.440 There. 1:07:07.560 --> 1:07:10.560 We're all going down to the bomb shelters because a 1:07:10.680 --> 1:07:13.680 nuclear strike is imminent. He says, we got a hurry, 1:07:13.760 --> 1:07:15.960 or the mushrooms will be sprouting, and he points to 1:07:16.000 --> 1:07:19.120 a thing in the sky that he calls the atomic satellite. 1:07:19.160 --> 1:07:23.040 He says it's zeroing in, and George gets back into 1:07:23.120 --> 1:07:25.760 his time machine just in time to avoid being destroyed. 1:07:25.960 --> 1:07:28.400 He sees in fast motion how the fire of war 1:07:28.520 --> 1:07:32.200 destroys everything. The labor of centuries gone in an instant, 1:07:32.240 --> 1:07:35.920 he says. And then after this, this part's a little hazy, 1:07:35.960 --> 1:07:39.000 but he says, mother nature responds somehow, like all of 1:07:39.040 --> 1:07:43.640 the human warfare causes volcanic eruptions from below, which flood 1:07:43.720 --> 1:07:47.320 the city with glowing hot lava. Apparently this special effect 1:07:47.400 --> 1:07:50.880 was done with a model city set and a big 1:07:50.960 --> 1:07:55.840 vat of orange oatmeal oatmeal made orange with food coloring, 1:07:56.120 --> 1:07:59.480 poured out onto the model set. And then the story 1:07:59.520 --> 1:08:01.919 is the oatme was left sitting out for several days, 1:08:01.960 --> 1:08:04.240 long enough that it started to ferment, and it smelled 1:08:04.240 --> 1:08:05.320 incredibly foul. 1:08:06.600 --> 1:08:08.240 It looks great though. Yeah. 1:08:09.280 --> 1:08:12.720 So after this, George pilots his time machine fast into 1:08:12.760 --> 1:08:16.320 the future. He gets encased in lava and is completely 1:08:16.320 --> 1:08:18.479 covered in stone, so he has to keep running the 1:08:18.520 --> 1:08:21.360 machine until the rock around him erodes away so he 1:08:21.400 --> 1:08:25.040 can escape, and that takes a long time. He eventually 1:08:25.080 --> 1:08:28.599 pops out of the rock, like eight hundred thousand years later, 1:08:29.200 --> 1:08:33.240 when the world is greatly changed, he finds himself deposited 1:08:33.400 --> 1:08:37.040 in what seems to be a peaceful land of perpetual summer. 1:08:37.880 --> 1:08:41.000 The earth stays green and lush year round, and no 1:08:41.160 --> 1:08:43.160 war seemed to come in and destroy all the human 1:08:43.200 --> 1:08:46.000 structure as he sees in the distance, And so he 1:08:46.080 --> 1:08:47.960 brings the time machine finally to a. 1:08:47.920 --> 1:08:51.479 Halt, and in this we finally get to the portion 1:08:51.560 --> 1:08:55.000 of the film and book that most people remember. Though again, 1:08:55.160 --> 1:08:57.400 the journey here really makes us earn it. You know, 1:08:57.920 --> 1:09:00.160 we definitely needed all these steps to get here. 1:09:00.400 --> 1:09:03.160 Yeah, So the time traveler He tumbles out into a 1:09:03.200 --> 1:09:07.040 clearing of grass surrounded by this green jungle, in front 1:09:07.080 --> 1:09:10.760 of some kind of stone temple crowned with a monolithic 1:09:10.800 --> 1:09:13.960 statue of a human head, generally referred to as a sphinx. 1:09:14.800 --> 1:09:17.640 The doors of this temple are made of metal, and 1:09:17.720 --> 1:09:19.960 they are sealed shut. Georgie goes up. He tries to 1:09:20.040 --> 1:09:22.120 knock on the doors, but he finds no reply. 1:09:23.360 --> 1:09:26.280 I love the design here of the sphinx. It's, you know, 1:09:26.320 --> 1:09:31.519 it feels connected to various Earth traditions, but also feels 1:09:31.600 --> 1:09:35.440 very alien, so it really strikes a perfect note. Yeah. 1:09:35.640 --> 1:09:37.880 So he goes out wandering through the landscape and he 1:09:37.920 --> 1:09:43.479 finds beautiful flowers everywhere, fruit trees heavy with ripe, unfamiliar produce, 1:09:43.680 --> 1:09:47.439 wonk of fruits. Yeah, wank exactly, Yeah, he says, not 1:09:47.880 --> 1:09:51.240 a weed or a briar in sight, No unpleasant plants. 1:09:51.280 --> 1:09:54.200 So it's as if the entire natural world has become, 1:09:54.920 --> 1:09:56.440 in its wild state. 1:09:56.320 --> 1:09:56.919 A garden. 1:09:57.160 --> 1:10:00.479 It's like the wilderness itself is now a fruit orchard 1:10:00.479 --> 1:10:04.360 in a botanical garden. Humankind has fully tamed the plant 1:10:04.439 --> 1:10:08.320 kingdom and shaped it entirely to our liking. And he 1:10:08.479 --> 1:10:12.000 thinks he says, at last, I'd found a paradise, but 1:10:12.080 --> 1:10:14.599 it would be no paradise if it belonged to me alone. 1:10:15.400 --> 1:10:18.040 So he goes out looking for people. He wanders down 1:10:18.080 --> 1:10:20.559 a hill covered in ivy, and he comes to one 1:10:20.600 --> 1:10:23.400 of the structures he saw in the distance. It is 1:10:23.439 --> 1:10:28.160 a giant dome with stone rocky steps leading up from 1:10:28.160 --> 1:10:31.920 a plaza in front, flanked by two dark sphinxes, and 1:10:31.960 --> 1:10:35.080 there's a big metal door leading inside. And once he 1:10:35.120 --> 1:10:38.360 comes close, George sees that this building is actually in 1:10:38.479 --> 1:10:41.320 pretty bad disrepair. It seems it has not been kept 1:10:41.400 --> 1:10:45.680 up for centuries. So is it abandoned? Well, seems maybe not. 1:10:45.760 --> 1:10:48.360 He goes inside and he finds a hall filled with 1:10:48.439 --> 1:10:52.880 circular banquet tables covered with glasses and bowls and ripe fruit, 1:10:53.320 --> 1:10:55.600 so it seems like someone is coming in here on 1:10:55.640 --> 1:10:58.760 a regular basis. And when he makes sounds in here, 1:10:58.840 --> 1:11:02.320 the sounds echo through the hall with this eerie delay pattern, 1:11:02.439 --> 1:11:06.519 like they're like running away and coming back. Next, the 1:11:06.560 --> 1:11:10.000 time Traveler wanders down to a riverside where he finds people. 1:11:10.520 --> 1:11:14.200 A group of beautiful, fit young men and women, all 1:11:14.400 --> 1:11:19.919 blonde with like The men all have bowl cuts, lounging 1:11:19.960 --> 1:11:25.120 on a sandy bank next to the water. They are talking, laughing, dancing, 1:11:25.160 --> 1:11:26.080 and picking fruit. 1:11:26.560 --> 1:11:28.639 Quick question, do you think they're cutting their own hair 1:11:28.720 --> 1:11:30.280 or do you think the morlocks cut their hair? 1:11:30.800 --> 1:11:32.759 Very good question. I think they're cutting their own hair, 1:11:34.040 --> 1:11:38.040 but only for fun, right, because there's no work in 1:11:38.080 --> 1:11:38.439 this world. 1:11:38.640 --> 1:11:39.200 We'll get to that. 1:11:39.560 --> 1:11:42.320 So this is what he says. He sees them all 1:11:42.400 --> 1:11:45.200 lounging around. He says, so this is man's future, to 1:11:45.320 --> 1:11:48.280 bask in the sunlight, bathe in the clear streams, and 1:11:48.320 --> 1:11:50.439 eat the fruits of the earth, with all knowledge of 1:11:50.439 --> 1:11:54.680 work and hardship forgotten. Well and why not? So it 1:11:54.680 --> 1:11:57.280 seems he thinks he has finally found his long sought 1:11:57.320 --> 1:12:01.879 earthly paradise of peace. But then he hears a scream. 1:12:03.200 --> 1:12:05.599 A young woman is drowning in the river. She's being 1:12:05.640 --> 1:12:10.040 swept away by the current, and weirdly, her friends on 1:12:10.080 --> 1:12:14.120 the rocks nearby do nothing. They barely seem to notice 1:12:14.160 --> 1:12:17.360 her cries for help, and when they occasionally glance her way, 1:12:18.000 --> 1:12:20.479 they don't even bother to like reach down and offer 1:12:20.520 --> 1:12:24.000 her a hand up. So she's drifting away helplessly while 1:12:24.040 --> 1:12:26.160 the rest of the people just sit there and talk 1:12:26.200 --> 1:12:27.400 and laugh and ignore her. 1:12:27.760 --> 1:12:30.879 Yeah, well they're just yeah, they're just like, oh, something's happening, 1:12:31.080 --> 1:12:33.320 and that's it. Is dispassionate. 1:12:33.800 --> 1:12:37.280 So finally the time Traveler himself jumps in the water 1:12:37.360 --> 1:12:39.799 to rescue her. He brings her ashore and he puts 1:12:39.800 --> 1:12:43.280 his coat around her shoulders, and once she comes to, 1:12:43.479 --> 1:12:46.240 she doesn't say anything to George. She just gets up 1:12:46.320 --> 1:12:48.920 and walks away. And Rob I took a screen grab 1:12:48.960 --> 1:12:50.920 here because did you see this part where the other 1:12:51.040 --> 1:12:53.479 lady's here by the river giving the time traveler the 1:12:53.479 --> 1:12:59.599 stink face? They're just like, ew weird. Yeah, so George 1:12:59.640 --> 1:13:03.519 is plexed. He's like, what's wrong with these people? Later, 1:13:03.560 --> 1:13:06.240 they all wander away happily to the dome that he 1:13:06.280 --> 1:13:09.439 found earlier, and he follows them back. He sits down 1:13:09.720 --> 1:13:12.479 by himself on the stairs outside, and eventually the woman 1:13:12.560 --> 1:13:16.400 that George rescued from the water comes and sits behind him, 1:13:16.439 --> 1:13:20.439 and again this is evet Mimu. She asks why he 1:13:20.479 --> 1:13:23.639 saved her. He asks how come twenty of her friends 1:13:23.680 --> 1:13:25.640 did not save her, Like why were they watching her 1:13:25.760 --> 1:13:28.759 dying and doing nothing to help? And she says nothing. 1:13:28.840 --> 1:13:32.040 She doesn't even seem to understand the question, so they 1:13:32.040 --> 1:13:35.439 introduce themselves to each other. Her name is Weena, and 1:13:35.720 --> 1:13:40.519 George learns that despite speaking perfectly understandable twentieth century English 1:13:40.600 --> 1:13:43.920 eight hundred thousand years later, none of these people can 1:13:43.960 --> 1:13:46.800 read or write, and so when he shows her what 1:13:46.840 --> 1:13:49.439 writing is, he writes words in the dust. She laughs. 1:13:49.479 --> 1:13:52.760 She thinks this is funny, and in this scene and 1:13:52.800 --> 1:13:55.960 the following scene he learns a number of things. He 1:13:56.040 --> 1:13:59.639 learns that these people call themselves the ELOI, that they 1:13:59.720 --> 1:14:04.120 are profoundly incurious and don't seem to have thoughts about 1:14:04.200 --> 1:14:07.479 much of anything. That there is no one older than 1:14:07.520 --> 1:14:10.759 what looks like maybe mid twenties or so, only young people. 1:14:11.360 --> 1:14:15.120 They have no government, no laws, nobody works, and they 1:14:15.120 --> 1:14:18.560 don't seem to know where their food and clothing come from. 1:14:18.920 --> 1:14:21.160 They are afraid of the dark and believe that you 1:14:21.240 --> 1:14:24.000 have to hide inside the dome after the sun goes down. 1:14:24.680 --> 1:14:26.800 I had a nice chuckle observing that they're kind of 1:14:26.800 --> 1:14:29.040 all like thirteen year olds, you know, like, where does 1:14:29.080 --> 1:14:31.280 food and clothing come from? I don't know, It's just 1:14:31.400 --> 1:14:32.280 it's provided. 1:14:32.840 --> 1:14:36.840 Yeah, yeah, it's just here here for us. Yeah, So 1:14:36.920 --> 1:14:40.040 inside the dome, George eats fruit with the rest of them, 1:14:40.080 --> 1:14:43.080 and he's trying to figure out how their world works. 1:14:43.400 --> 1:14:46.360 He tries to make conversation, but nobody has much much 1:14:46.439 --> 1:14:49.599 to say to him. They just sit there, docile, dull, 1:14:49.680 --> 1:14:53.559 eyes down, giving these simple, half hearted responses to all 1:14:53.560 --> 1:14:54.439 his questions, and. 1:14:54.479 --> 1:14:58.400 He's he's coming up with some real softball questions here, 1:14:58.560 --> 1:15:00.799 some real leading questions, like you give me anything. 1:15:01.160 --> 1:15:05.080 Yeah. On one hand, he seems to be impressed because 1:15:05.080 --> 1:15:08.880 he believes they have eliminated war and automated all labor 1:15:08.920 --> 1:15:12.719 and production, so there is no more suffering or want. 1:15:13.160 --> 1:15:16.160 Everything these people need is produced and harvested for them 1:15:16.160 --> 1:15:19.360 by machines, so they can Yeah, they can spend their 1:15:19.400 --> 1:15:24.559 lives doing doing what George suggests, Well, maybe you spend 1:15:24.600 --> 1:15:28.400 all your time studying and experimenting, learning you know about 1:15:28.479 --> 1:15:32.360 about the world. Evidently not the other guy at the table. 1:15:32.560 --> 1:15:34.679 Look when he brings this up. This guy just acts 1:15:34.720 --> 1:15:38.400 annoyed and he's like, you ask too many questions. And 1:15:38.479 --> 1:15:41.240 the time traveler says, do you have books? You know 1:15:41.320 --> 1:15:43.280 he wants to He's like, books will tell me about 1:15:43.280 --> 1:15:46.479 your culture. And one of the eloy men takes George 1:15:46.520 --> 1:15:48.920 to a room in the dome, which is a dark 1:15:49.360 --> 1:15:52.519 library with shelves indeed full of books, but they are 1:15:52.720 --> 1:15:56.400 covered in thick dust, and as soon as the time 1:15:56.439 --> 1:15:59.559 traveler tries to open one, it falls apart into flakes 1:15:59.560 --> 1:16:04.439 in his hand. And finally George becomes enraged and he 1:16:04.560 --> 1:16:07.360 shouts at the eloy He says, what have you done? 1:16:07.760 --> 1:16:11.520 Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating. 1:16:11.880 --> 1:16:14.679 Also you can let it crumble to dust. A million 1:16:14.760 --> 1:16:17.600 years of sensitive men dying for their dreams for what, 1:16:18.000 --> 1:16:21.760 So you can swim and dance and play. Then he 1:16:21.800 --> 1:16:24.160 comes back out into the hall and he yells some more. 1:16:24.200 --> 1:16:26.679 He yells at the whole crowd of the Eloi. He says, 1:16:26.680 --> 1:16:28.760 I'm going back to my own time. I won't even 1:16:28.800 --> 1:16:31.320 bother to tell them of the useless struggle for a 1:16:31.360 --> 1:16:34.519 hopeless future. But at least I can die among men. 1:16:35.479 --> 1:16:37.920 So here we get to I think one of the 1:16:37.920 --> 1:16:42.960 most interesting paradoxes of the movie. The central desire of 1:16:43.040 --> 1:16:47.160 our hero is to escape the cruelty and stupidity of 1:16:47.200 --> 1:16:53.240 his time, war, greed, rapacious destruction, and he finally does 1:16:53.320 --> 1:16:55.639 come to a time in the future that seems free 1:16:55.760 --> 1:16:59.679 of these evils, but he discovers that the people here 1:16:59.720 --> 1:17:04.600 make him sick because they have no virtues, no intelligence 1:17:04.680 --> 1:17:10.559 or curiosity, no kindness or generosity or spirit of self sacrifice. 1:17:10.600 --> 1:17:13.559 He has escaped a world he saw as characterized by 1:17:13.920 --> 1:17:19.800 vicious stupidity, and arrived in one instead of docile, mindless, 1:17:20.000 --> 1:17:25.519 pointless self entertainment. Now one could be tempted here to 1:17:25.680 --> 1:17:28.960 interpret this as an inversion of the earlier themes of 1:17:29.000 --> 1:17:32.839 the film, like a maybe leaning back into a spartan 1:17:32.880 --> 1:17:35.800 ethic of war is life. I don't think that's it. 1:17:35.880 --> 1:17:38.479 I don't think that is the point of the film here. 1:17:39.760 --> 1:17:42.840 The point of view that I detect is more that 1:17:43.000 --> 1:17:46.479 the time George left behind was wrong. It was ruled 1:17:46.560 --> 1:17:50.799 by a vicious stupidity. It did cause the needless suffering 1:17:50.840 --> 1:17:53.479 of millions for the glory of a few selfish men. 1:17:54.200 --> 1:17:59.400 But he has discovered that merely eliminating war and material 1:17:59.479 --> 1:18:03.840 want do not automatically make life good. You might see 1:18:03.840 --> 1:18:07.240 the elimination of war and material want in George's new 1:18:07.400 --> 1:18:13.360 dawning consciousness as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for the 1:18:13.360 --> 1:18:17.680 earthly paradise that he dreamed of. So the eloy are 1:18:17.800 --> 1:18:21.360 abhorrent to him, even though they are at peace, or 1:18:21.400 --> 1:18:24.679 at least they appear to be at first, because there's 1:18:24.760 --> 1:18:28.360 more about this world he hasn't figured out yet. So next, 1:18:28.360 --> 1:18:30.920 the time traveler goes back out to hop into his 1:18:30.960 --> 1:18:32.719 time machine. I think he's going to go back home 1:18:33.080 --> 1:18:35.920 or find another time. But when he gets there, the 1:18:35.960 --> 1:18:41.439 time machine is gone. Oh done, dun duh. Yeah, it's 1:18:41.479 --> 1:18:45.000 been towed exactly, adds an impound lot. He can see 1:18:45.040 --> 1:18:47.160 from tracks in the ground that it has been dragged 1:18:47.200 --> 1:18:50.559 inside the doors of the stone temple underneath the sphinx. 1:18:50.800 --> 1:18:52.840 Who took it and how how is he going to 1:18:52.880 --> 1:18:56.599 get it back now? Despite her fear of the dark 1:18:56.680 --> 1:18:59.800 that was established earlier, Weena follows George out into the 1:18:59.800 --> 1:19:02.840 world woods to warn him of danger. Interesting that this 1:19:02.920 --> 1:19:06.479 is the first risky or self sacrificing thing that we 1:19:06.520 --> 1:19:10.040 have seen in eloy Do. She's perhaps inspired by the 1:19:10.080 --> 1:19:13.599 way George risked his life for her earlier. But what 1:19:13.680 --> 1:19:16.880 is the danger? We learn it is the Morlocks. They 1:19:16.880 --> 1:19:20.040 come out at night. George doesn't know what these are, 1:19:20.120 --> 1:19:23.280 but there are several points here where we can see 1:19:23.320 --> 1:19:26.400 the Morlocks spying on our hero through the bushes. We 1:19:26.439 --> 1:19:27.880 don't get a good look at them at all, but 1:19:28.160 --> 1:19:31.679 we see their eyes twinkling. They have these glowing eyes 1:19:31.760 --> 1:19:34.040 kind of like the jawas that are a wonderful feature 1:19:34.080 --> 1:19:35.599 of the costume design. 1:19:36.120 --> 1:19:40.080 That's all right, they sparkle in the dark. And in general, 1:19:40.120 --> 1:19:43.360 this film does a great job of obeying all the 1:19:43.439 --> 1:19:47.240 laws of monster revelation. You know, we only get some 1:19:47.280 --> 1:19:49.240 peaks and all does it despite I realize the fact 1:19:49.280 --> 1:19:51.559 that they're prominently featured on the posters for this movie, 1:19:51.640 --> 1:19:53.360 and that's also often the case. 1:19:54.439 --> 1:19:56.679 One of the Morlocks tries to grab Weena and take 1:19:56.720 --> 1:19:58.880 her away, but George rescues her, and it seems that 1:19:58.920 --> 1:20:01.120 they are repelled, and not only by the light of day, 1:20:01.160 --> 1:20:03.280 but even by the light of a torch. They're afraid 1:20:03.320 --> 1:20:05.599 of fire, and we'll need to remember that for later. 1:20:06.479 --> 1:20:09.519 Weena and George gather sticks to build a fire for protection, 1:20:10.200 --> 1:20:12.320 and here we also get the first hints of a 1:20:12.360 --> 1:20:15.120 love story, where they're huddled around the fire at night. 1:20:15.760 --> 1:20:18.880 As I mentioned earlier, not always opposed to adding in 1:20:18.920 --> 1:20:21.720 a love story, but it seems really ill suited to 1:20:21.840 --> 1:20:24.240 the story of the time machine, given a number of 1:20:24.280 --> 1:20:26.960 things like how different the eloy are from us and 1:20:27.280 --> 1:20:29.800 how soon it is after George's arrival and all that. 1:20:29.880 --> 1:20:32.040 Ye getting they have in common as they eat fruit. 1:20:32.400 --> 1:20:33.440 Yeah exactly. 1:20:33.560 --> 1:20:34.480 Yeah. 1:20:34.520 --> 1:20:38.559 Anyway, the next day we get some we get some 1:20:38.640 --> 1:20:42.920 exposition in this sequence through the so called talking rings. 1:20:43.640 --> 1:20:48.400 So Weena takes George to this automated history museum where 1:20:48.439 --> 1:20:51.599 there are machines that tell about the events of the past, 1:20:52.000 --> 1:20:54.240 and you can play these sort of data discs that 1:20:54.320 --> 1:20:57.600 are stored in metal rings by setting them spinning on 1:20:57.680 --> 1:21:02.080 a glowing tabletop. From these rings, George learns that long ago, 1:21:02.560 --> 1:21:05.840 there was a horrible world war that left the atmosphere 1:21:05.880 --> 1:21:09.439 so contaminated with germs that the air was not fit 1:21:09.520 --> 1:21:13.439 to breathe, and two groups of humankind parted ways here. 1:21:13.520 --> 1:21:16.200 Some remained above ground to take their chances trying to 1:21:16.200 --> 1:21:19.479 survive in the poisoned atmosphere, and the other group went 1:21:19.680 --> 1:21:23.800 underground into caves and tunnels. The earth eventually recovered over 1:21:23.840 --> 1:21:26.479 the centuries, but this became a division point for the 1:21:26.560 --> 1:21:30.120 human species. The Eloi are descended from those who stayed 1:21:30.120 --> 1:21:34.920 on the surface, and the Morlocks from those who went below. 1:21:35.080 --> 1:21:37.519 This history is if I'm recalling correctly, Rob, I think 1:21:37.520 --> 1:21:40.639 you've read the novel more recently than me, somewhat different 1:21:40.880 --> 1:21:43.320 from the novel. My memory of the novel is that 1:21:43.920 --> 1:21:48.040 Wells included a class critique here, where like the Morlocks 1:21:48.080 --> 1:21:52.960 were descended from exploited workers who were forced to toil 1:21:53.040 --> 1:21:56.759 underground on the machines that kept life free and easy 1:21:56.800 --> 1:22:00.320 for the rich on the surface above. Though eventually, over 1:22:00.720 --> 1:22:05.599 the centuries the relationship changed and the exploited underground people 1:22:05.600 --> 1:22:08.320 became the Morlocks and became the exploiters in the most 1:22:08.320 --> 1:22:10.600 direct sense, by eating the surface dwellers. 1:22:11.120 --> 1:22:13.320 Yeah, this is my recollection as well, and yeah, it 1:22:13.360 --> 1:22:16.280 was more of a class critique here, though I think 1:22:16.320 --> 1:22:20.200 the change is understandable because it's been adapted to fit 1:22:20.439 --> 1:22:27.000 the overarching critique of humanity's propensity for warfare. Yeah. 1:22:27.680 --> 1:22:30.320 So, at some point, while George is trying to climb 1:22:30.360 --> 1:22:34.599 down a ventilation shaft to explore the caverns below, there's 1:22:34.640 --> 1:22:37.559 a sound from above. And here's a scene I made 1:22:37.560 --> 1:22:40.120 reference to earlier. It is the sound we hear of 1:22:40.360 --> 1:22:44.160 air raid sirens. When the A raid sirens go off, 1:22:44.640 --> 1:22:49.479 the noise puts the eloy into a hypnotized state where 1:22:49.479 --> 1:22:53.280 their eyes go glassy and they just start to automatically 1:22:53.400 --> 1:22:57.559 march en mass straight into the temple of the Sphinx 1:22:57.640 --> 1:23:00.559 until the door slam shut, And so this is what 1:23:00.640 --> 1:23:03.240 happens here. George runs after the eloy trying to get 1:23:03.280 --> 1:23:06.000 them to stop, but it's like they don't even see him, 1:23:06.360 --> 1:23:09.600 and Weena and many others are taken underground. George is 1:23:09.680 --> 1:23:12.880 unable to get there in time. So here we have 1:23:12.960 --> 1:23:15.519 the final descent into the underworld. George has to go 1:23:15.600 --> 1:23:17.960 in to the rescue, so he climbs down one of 1:23:18.000 --> 1:23:22.920 these ventilation shafts to find below the surface a great 1:23:23.080 --> 1:23:26.160 cavern with all these pipes and gears. This is the 1:23:26.200 --> 1:23:29.639 machinery that makes life on the surface possible. And also 1:23:29.760 --> 1:23:34.520 he finds bone pits full of human bones. He discovers 1:23:34.560 --> 1:23:38.920 that the Morlocks treat the Eloi as livestock for meat, 1:23:39.320 --> 1:23:42.040 and they lure them underground with the sound of the 1:23:42.080 --> 1:23:46.400 air raid sirens that now almost by like a biological mechanism. 1:23:46.880 --> 1:23:50.439 The surface dwellers have been conditioned to retreat underground to 1:23:50.520 --> 1:23:52.920 safety when they hear the air raid sirens. Like so 1:23:53.760 --> 1:23:56.200 the technology of war has become a part of our 1:23:56.200 --> 1:24:00.519 physical organism, and they retreat underground for the air raid 1:24:00.560 --> 1:24:04.840 sirens and then they're eaten by the Morlocks. Now, one 1:24:04.840 --> 1:24:06.640 thing I do wonder what kind of dishes do you 1:24:06.640 --> 1:24:08.640 think the Morlocks make out of the Eloy or is 1:24:08.640 --> 1:24:10.080 it just like raw bone chopping? 1:24:10.560 --> 1:24:12.720 I mean, there's there are machines down there, so I 1:24:13.000 --> 1:24:15.720 assume they're processed into some sort of sausage and then 1:24:15.760 --> 1:24:20.040 they just dump the skeletons, which I guess rather complete skeletons. 1:24:20.760 --> 1:24:23.120 They're in the bone pit Eloy Mortadella. 1:24:23.280 --> 1:24:37.639 Yeah, so here we come down to meet the Morlocks. 1:24:37.720 --> 1:24:39.200 Rob do you, I know, you had some stuff about 1:24:39.200 --> 1:24:41.800 the Morlocks. This is probably the place to talk about them. 1:24:41.880 --> 1:24:44.920 Yeah. Yeah. So we don't actually see these guys in 1:24:44.960 --> 1:24:48.000 full until this point, really pretty late in the film. 1:24:48.080 --> 1:24:50.000 You know, we get a few teases here and there, 1:24:50.120 --> 1:24:53.599 and then we begin to see them more fully as 1:24:53.960 --> 1:24:58.320 our hero, the time traveler, is stalking into the caverns. 1:24:58.320 --> 1:25:01.280 He's you know, trying to find what happen into the Eloy, 1:25:01.880 --> 1:25:05.920 and we begin to see them stalking him here. I 1:25:06.000 --> 1:25:09.000 think one of the first glimpses we get one where he's, uh, 1:25:09.320 --> 1:25:14.439 he's blending into the cavern walls and then he moves uh, 1:25:14.479 --> 1:25:16.960 and then there's even one that comes right up behind 1:25:17.080 --> 1:25:18.880 him like he's gonna grab him. It's almost a little 1:25:18.840 --> 1:25:21.760 abbot in costello. But it's still rather creepy because the 1:25:21.800 --> 1:25:26.320 monsters look so good. Uh. They're essentially stocky, blue gray 1:25:26.439 --> 1:25:30.960 ape like creatures with long manes of white hair kind 1:25:30.960 --> 1:25:33.960 of bangs to a little bit. They have sharp claws 1:25:34.320 --> 1:25:40.559 and teeth and gave it. Yeah, they're quite stealthy, and 1:25:40.640 --> 1:25:42.880 as we'll see in a bit, they're they're prone to 1:25:43.000 --> 1:25:46.799 leap at their adversaries from ledges do like a flying 1:25:46.840 --> 1:25:52.200 body uh body presses the kind of Luca door style. However, 1:25:52.280 --> 1:25:55.439 they're just as if not more, prone to injury than 1:25:55.479 --> 1:25:58.840 a typical human, So they're not like super strong. They 1:25:58.840 --> 1:26:01.200 can still get you know, knocked on the head and 1:26:01.240 --> 1:26:02.080 they're out for the count. 1:26:02.320 --> 1:26:05.000 The sense I get if the Morlocks is a glass 1:26:05.040 --> 1:26:08.640 cannon design. Yeah, they are very vicious and dangerous, but 1:26:08.720 --> 1:26:12.280 if you just hit back there, they're easily beaten. Like 1:26:12.280 --> 1:26:15.800 they're very delicate. There's one point where someone hits a 1:26:15.800 --> 1:26:18.280 Morlock in the face and it's almost like its face 1:26:18.400 --> 1:26:22.400 just shatters, like all the blood comes out, and and 1:26:22.479 --> 1:26:26.320 that if that is intentional, that would fit with the themes, 1:26:26.360 --> 1:26:28.639 because the whole thing is that the Eloi don't fight 1:26:28.760 --> 1:26:32.040 back at all. It doesn't even occur that occur to them. 1:26:31.840 --> 1:26:35.920 To Yeah, and if memory serves, this does essentially match 1:26:36.000 --> 1:26:37.680 up with the book where I think the Morlocks are 1:26:37.680 --> 1:26:40.200 not depicted as like super strong eight men. They are 1:26:40.640 --> 1:26:45.120 like weaker than a contemporary human, but they have the 1:26:45.200 --> 1:26:46.639 numbers on their side of course. 1:26:46.920 --> 1:26:50.959 Yeah. So down here, in the down here in the caverns, 1:26:50.960 --> 1:26:53.519 George locates the Eloi who have been brought in to 1:26:53.560 --> 1:26:56.559 be to be eaten, and he uses the fact that 1:26:56.600 --> 1:26:59.400 the Morlocks are afraid of fire to get advantage over them. 1:27:00.080 --> 1:27:02.240 There's also just a lot of standard like punching and 1:27:02.479 --> 1:27:03.959 roadhouse roadhouse, still. 1:27:03.720 --> 1:27:06.479 Fighting, swinging the torch around. We'll see the torch in 1:27:06.479 --> 1:27:06.840 a bed. 1:27:07.040 --> 1:27:10.120 Yes, But the very important thing here is not just 1:27:10.200 --> 1:27:14.160 the George fights, but that he finally inspires he rouses 1:27:14.200 --> 1:27:18.400 the imprisoned Eloy to fight for themselves. There's a scene 1:27:18.400 --> 1:27:21.679 where one of them dramatically makes a fist as if 1:27:21.720 --> 1:27:23.680 for the first time in his life, and then he 1:27:23.760 --> 1:27:26.160 punches a Morlock and breaks his face and we see 1:27:26.160 --> 1:27:29.040 the blood running out of its mouth and George and 1:27:29.080 --> 1:27:31.200 the Eloy. Then they fight back and they escape the 1:27:31.280 --> 1:27:34.479 underground caverns, and then on the surface, they drop flaming 1:27:34.520 --> 1:27:38.120 branches into the air vents all around the landscape, burning 1:27:38.160 --> 1:27:39.240 the passages below. 1:27:39.760 --> 1:27:43.240 Yes, things kind of collapse and more smoke and fire 1:27:43.360 --> 1:27:45.800 comes out, and I remember thinking, I mean, both times 1:27:45.840 --> 1:27:48.400 I've seen the film, I've had the thought, Oh, I 1:27:48.400 --> 1:27:51.280 hope none of the machinery they just destroyed wasn't essential 1:27:51.320 --> 1:27:53.360 for life to continue on the surface here. 1:27:53.520 --> 1:27:55.920 Well, I think the implication actually is that it was 1:27:56.400 --> 1:27:59.960 like they did destroy the machinery. They destroyed the morlocks 1:28:00.080 --> 1:28:03.400 who were harm or repressing them, but they also destroyed 1:28:03.400 --> 1:28:06.439 the machinery that it keeps them alive. Yeah, so they're 1:28:06.439 --> 1:28:09.800 going to have to learn how to live again. They're 1:28:09.800 --> 1:28:11.759 going to have to learn how to work. 1:28:12.040 --> 1:28:15.839 Yeah, presumably it doesn't like destroy oxygen, Like the machinery 1:28:15.840 --> 1:28:18.639 down there wasn't creating a breathable atmosphere or anything like that. 1:28:18.800 --> 1:28:23.080 Hopefully not. Yeah, but you know, this whole sequence I 1:28:23.080 --> 1:28:26.479 think is also interesting because it highlights some paradoxical stuff 1:28:26.520 --> 1:28:28.680 in the film that I don't know exactly what the 1:28:29.280 --> 1:28:32.559 intended way to take it is, but again to come 1:28:32.600 --> 1:28:35.479 back to the movie's anti war themes. I mean, it's 1:28:35.479 --> 1:28:38.160 pretty clear that the movie that the story is opposed 1:28:38.200 --> 1:28:40.320 to militarism. One of these themes we get over and 1:28:40.360 --> 1:28:43.280 over again is that every time humankind is able to 1:28:43.360 --> 1:28:48.760 build something good, something benevolent and brilliant and useful, we 1:28:48.920 --> 1:28:52.360 unleash our war making impulses and destroy it all over again. 1:28:53.280 --> 1:28:56.720 So it's a human kind's relationship to war before this 1:28:56.800 --> 1:29:00.200 point is presented as this kind of horrible addiction, one 1:29:00.200 --> 1:29:02.760 where every time we think we've kicked it and can 1:29:02.800 --> 1:29:05.400 begin to build a good life, we relapse and we 1:29:05.479 --> 1:29:09.479 ruin everything. And yet when George reaches the far future, 1:29:10.680 --> 1:29:13.839 he finds the eloy As, these people who are purely 1:29:13.880 --> 1:29:18.080 peaceful and have no destructive impulses. But as we talked about, 1:29:18.120 --> 1:29:21.720 he's disgusted by their lack of virtue and the absence 1:29:21.760 --> 1:29:26.200 of humanity and kindness and generosity within them. And the 1:29:26.240 --> 1:29:29.799 only way they're able to save themselves is when George 1:29:29.800 --> 1:29:35.400 inspires them to make war against their oppressors, the Morlocks. 1:29:36.360 --> 1:29:38.559 I don't know exactly how to take that again. I 1:29:38.680 --> 1:29:41.559 don't think that means the film is going back on 1:29:41.600 --> 1:29:45.280 its earlier values and making a war is good argument. 1:29:46.040 --> 1:29:48.880 But I don't know. I guess that I would have 1:29:48.920 --> 1:29:51.840 to take it as that it has a more complicated attitude. 1:29:51.880 --> 1:29:55.479 We're accepting it has an ethos of some accepting that 1:29:55.600 --> 1:29:59.200 sometimes we have to fight in self defense and admitting 1:29:59.240 --> 1:30:02.559 there could be virtue in that, but also sticking by 1:30:02.600 --> 1:30:06.360 this belief that maybe the case for fighting needs to 1:30:06.400 --> 1:30:07.840 be very strongly made. 1:30:08.479 --> 1:30:10.960 Yeah, yeah, like it needs to be a righteous battle. 1:30:11.360 --> 1:30:14.920 And it's interesting because in this moment, or at least 1:30:14.920 --> 1:30:16.559 the we were talking about it here, it reminds me 1:30:16.600 --> 1:30:20.479 of that that pivotal moment in the the Baca Ragita. Uh. 1:30:20.760 --> 1:30:23.760 This is the scene where I believe it's Arjina who 1:30:23.840 --> 1:30:26.240 is you know, he's he's he's out there on the battlefield. 1:30:26.280 --> 1:30:28.880 I think he's perhaps on his chariot and you know, 1:30:28.880 --> 1:30:30.920 there's about to be this huge battle and he's just 1:30:31.320 --> 1:30:33.479 ruminating on like like how can I act? How can 1:30:33.520 --> 1:30:35.600 I do anything? Like? This is just you know, this 1:30:35.680 --> 1:30:39.240 awful situation of war, and Krishna, you know, comes to 1:30:39.320 --> 1:30:42.040 him and persuades him that no, you know, you have 1:30:42.120 --> 1:30:45.360 to just follow your duty. You know, that's that's what 1:30:45.439 --> 1:30:48.920 you have to do like you in action is not 1:30:49.000 --> 1:30:52.240 a choice, and so we have something maybe akin to that. 1:30:53.360 --> 1:30:56.120 Though of course that that has to be done with 1:30:56.240 --> 1:30:59.719 the kind of with the kind of a piece biased 1:30:59.760 --> 1:31:02.160 re I think is the case you would make here, 1:31:02.200 --> 1:31:05.160 because you can justify any number of atrocities by claiming 1:31:05.240 --> 1:31:09.480 that it's somebody's duty and bullies and you know, oppressors 1:31:09.520 --> 1:31:12.519 are always able to convince themselves that they are in 1:31:12.600 --> 1:31:15.479 the right. If you know, if you if you are 1:31:15.520 --> 1:31:19.439 not skeptical of the arguments that make your side feel good, 1:31:19.560 --> 1:31:21.760 then yeah, you can you can always kind of come 1:31:21.840 --> 1:31:24.559 up with a way of justifying being the bad guy. 1:31:24.960 --> 1:31:28.120 Yeah, I mean, because if you're going to really like 1:31:28.200 --> 1:31:31.120 analyze things like maybe the Morlocks need some help too, 1:31:31.160 --> 1:31:33.040 and they don't just need to be wiped out. Maybe 1:31:33.080 --> 1:31:35.120 there's room for growth for them as well. 1:31:35.400 --> 1:31:38.080 Maybe well we don't really get to hear their point 1:31:38.080 --> 1:31:40.879 of view. If if only there were an uber Morlock 1:31:41.040 --> 1:31:44.360 to speak for them, to explain their side of things. 1:31:44.600 --> 1:31:48.639 There have been so many like time machine inspired works 1:31:48.640 --> 1:31:51.200 of fiction and derivative works, this has to have been 1:31:51.200 --> 1:31:53.439 explored at some point. I know there's been at least 1:31:53.600 --> 1:31:56.200 like literary and comic work for the Morlocks, like get 1:31:56.240 --> 1:31:58.439 a hold of the time machine and travel to late 1:31:58.520 --> 1:32:01.439 Victoria in England and have their own adventures there. So 1:32:01.520 --> 1:32:12.920 maybe someone has explored this. 1:32:13.680 --> 1:32:15.840 So anyway, we're coming to the ending. 1:32:15.920 --> 1:32:16.160 Now. 1:32:17.080 --> 1:32:19.559 George is going to go back to his time machine, 1:32:19.560 --> 1:32:21.920 but because the doors of the temple are open again, 1:32:21.960 --> 1:32:24.759 so he goes back to his machine. There's a question 1:32:24.840 --> 1:32:27.639 of whether he's gonna take Weena with him or something, 1:32:27.800 --> 1:32:30.200 or whether he's maybe not going to go back or 1:32:30.280 --> 1:32:32.880 I don't remember exactly what he lands on there. But anyway, 1:32:32.880 --> 1:32:36.280 there's a surprise attack by the remnant of the Morlocks. 1:32:36.360 --> 1:32:39.320 They jump him by his machine, and so he has 1:32:39.360 --> 1:32:41.600 to get in and escape through time back to the 1:32:41.640 --> 1:32:44.519 year nineteen hundred, and this cycles back to the beginning 1:32:44.560 --> 1:32:45.000 of the story. 1:32:45.040 --> 1:32:48.040 We get that great scene though of the Morlock that's 1:32:48.080 --> 1:32:51.960 been killed, slow motion rotting right as he travels forward, 1:32:52.000 --> 1:32:53.679 and then he's like, whoa, I don't need to go forward, 1:32:53.680 --> 1:32:54.840 I need to go back. Yeah. 1:32:54.920 --> 1:32:56.320 Well, for a second I was like, are we going 1:32:56.360 --> 1:32:58.559 to get the vision of the further future with the crabs? 1:32:58.600 --> 1:33:02.200 But we didn't. So he goes back and he you know, 1:33:02.240 --> 1:33:05.320 stumbles into dinner to tell the story to his friends 1:33:05.320 --> 1:33:08.920 at the burnt Roast dinner. They don't really believe him, 1:33:09.040 --> 1:33:11.519 though he does bring a piece of proof. He has 1:33:11.600 --> 1:33:14.639 a flower given to him by Weena, and we learn 1:33:14.720 --> 1:33:18.240 here that Philby is a botany fanatic and he takes 1:33:18.280 --> 1:33:19.720 a look at it, He's like, I've never seen a 1:33:19.720 --> 1:33:22.200 flower like this before. There isn't a flower like this 1:33:22.240 --> 1:33:26.679 on Earth. And then shortly after this, Philby comes back 1:33:26.720 --> 1:33:29.679 looking for George but finds both him and his time 1:33:29.760 --> 1:33:30.679 machine missing. 1:33:31.240 --> 1:33:31.960 Where did he go? 1:33:32.880 --> 1:33:35.479 And so I think we're just left with Philby and 1:33:35.520 --> 1:33:38.120 missus Watchett standing around being like, where did he go? 1:33:38.439 --> 1:33:41.439 Did he take anything with him? And he did take something? 1:33:41.479 --> 1:33:44.040 Mis Watchett is like, oh, look, three books are missing 1:33:44.080 --> 1:33:44.839 from the shelves. 1:33:45.160 --> 1:33:47.400 What could they be? That's right? And so this is 1:33:47.720 --> 1:33:50.439 I love this. This is a nice little, hey, audience, 1:33:50.479 --> 1:33:54.759 here's a ready to go conversation to have after the movie. Indeed, 1:33:54.920 --> 1:33:58.880 which three books might he have taken with him into 1:33:58.920 --> 1:34:05.160 the far future to essentially rebuild civilization and like renurture 1:34:05.800 --> 1:34:10.000 the best of humanity? And then indeed, like, what three 1:34:10.200 --> 1:34:12.320 would any individual choose to take with them? 1:34:13.000 --> 1:34:15.360 And you got to have dianetics got. 1:34:17.360 --> 1:34:20.760 Yeah, I was thinking about this. I was thinking, well, 1:34:20.800 --> 1:34:23.240 I guess you'd want, what a book on physics, a 1:34:23.240 --> 1:34:25.960 book on medicine, and maybe a book on biology. And 1:34:26.000 --> 1:34:28.760 I think, I mean, certainly physics would still hold up, 1:34:28.800 --> 1:34:32.559 and most medicine in biology, I mean obviously not for 1:34:32.640 --> 1:34:38.600 the extinct species, but presumably humanoid biology is still relatively 1:34:38.600 --> 1:34:38.960 the same. 1:34:39.640 --> 1:34:43.080 I would wonder if the most useful books, Yeah, maybe 1:34:43.160 --> 1:34:49.240 something on like a field medicine manual and a book 1:34:49.280 --> 1:34:54.559 about like metal working or something something, just given where 1:34:54.560 --> 1:34:58.120 you're starting there, because like otherwise, you know, if you 1:34:58.160 --> 1:35:00.719 don't know how to work metals, then that might really 1:35:00.760 --> 1:35:02.439 prove difficult for a long time. 1:35:02.760 --> 1:35:04.640 Well, I was thinking one of my first thoughts was 1:35:04.680 --> 1:35:07.559 a book on foraging. But we have no idea what 1:35:07.600 --> 1:35:11.479 the flora situation is like out there, So who knows 1:35:11.880 --> 1:35:16.600 A book a book on scavenging and harvesting flora and 1:35:16.680 --> 1:35:20.719 mushrooms wild mushrooms today would be of virtually no use. 1:35:20.880 --> 1:35:22.519 Presumably in the far. 1:35:22.400 --> 1:35:26.080 Future, presumably metals still work the same way. Yeah, so 1:35:26.080 --> 1:35:28.280 I'm going to stand by metalworking as one of the three. 1:35:28.360 --> 1:35:30.639 But yeah, I think that's a strong that's a strong 1:35:30.680 --> 1:35:33.479 selection metallurgy. I don't know that you could make a 1:35:33.479 --> 1:35:36.439 case for books of general knowledge. I don't know how. 1:35:36.880 --> 1:35:40.720 I don't know how ultimately useful like a farmer's almanac 1:35:40.760 --> 1:35:43.840 would be, But things of that nature I guess would 1:35:43.880 --> 1:35:47.599 be an easy selection. It gets a little easier when 1:35:47.640 --> 1:35:49.679 you get into the days of e readers and kindles, 1:35:49.680 --> 1:35:51.360 because you can just have a kindle loaded with, like 1:35:51.560 --> 1:35:54.799 you know, essentially all the important works of human literature, 1:35:54.800 --> 1:35:58.120 and then another one with a whole bunch of scientific works, 1:35:58.120 --> 1:36:00.439 and then you're pretty much good to go. But you 1:36:00.439 --> 1:36:02.839 can also nitpick this and say, why just three books? 1:36:02.880 --> 1:36:04.920 Like you would think he had room for if he 1:36:04.960 --> 1:36:06.880 had room for three, he had room for five. Just 1:36:06.920 --> 1:36:10.160 grab two at random, even if even if they prove 1:36:10.240 --> 1:36:13.800 virtually useless, you've still got two more books in a 1:36:13.840 --> 1:36:15.840 world where you maybe have five books total. 1:36:16.400 --> 1:36:18.880 I bet it really did get people chatting going out 1:36:18.880 --> 1:36:21.040 of the theater. I mean, I wonder if there's stories 1:36:21.080 --> 1:36:21.559 about that. 1:36:21.960 --> 1:36:23.479 I mean, I did a quick look around, and I 1:36:23.479 --> 1:36:26.280 see people asking this question all the time on the internet. 1:36:26.360 --> 1:36:28.840 People rewatch the time machine and they're like, hey, what 1:36:28.960 --> 1:36:31.559 three books would you choose? And you know, people are 1:36:32.520 --> 1:36:35.720 you know, making very personal choices here at times. You know, 1:36:35.800 --> 1:36:39.120 I see the Bible mentioned numerous times as being like 1:36:39.160 --> 1:36:41.720 a key book, and I don't know, it's also fun 1:36:41.720 --> 1:36:43.320 to think of it just like, okay, if I don't 1:36:43.320 --> 1:36:46.400 have to rebuild a human civilization, like if it was 1:36:46.479 --> 1:36:48.720 just for my personal reading, like essentially, treat it like 1:36:48.760 --> 1:36:51.880 a desert island question, which everybody loves that one as well, 1:36:52.000 --> 1:36:54.559 you know, like I think, well, I guess they'd bring Dune. 1:36:54.800 --> 1:36:57.040 I guess i'd bring Name of the Rose, and I 1:36:57.040 --> 1:37:00.439 don't know, maybe Dune Messiah. Maybe that's too much Dune. 1:37:02.479 --> 1:37:04.040 I just I wouldn't want to go as far as 1:37:04.120 --> 1:37:06.800 to have Dune Dune Messiah and then Children of Dune 1:37:06.800 --> 1:37:09.439 as well, because then I don't know, it's like I'm 1:37:09.520 --> 1:37:13.720 happy with just the two. But then again, it's like 1:37:13.880 --> 1:37:15.760 people are that I share these with the They're gonna 1:37:15.760 --> 1:37:17.559 be like what happens next? And I'm like, well, there 1:37:17.560 --> 1:37:19.400 are these other books, but I just didn't bring them. 1:37:19.439 --> 1:37:20.479 I only brought the first two. 1:37:20.760 --> 1:37:25.479 The novelization of Halloween, three, Season of the Witch. Okay, 1:37:25.600 --> 1:37:27.320 I think that does it for the time machine. 1:37:27.720 --> 1:37:29.320 All Right, we're going to go ahead and close this 1:37:29.360 --> 1:37:31.240 one up then, but we hope you enjoyed it, and 1:37:31.240 --> 1:37:32.920 we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What are 1:37:32.960 --> 1:37:36.200 your thoughts on the time Machine, the original work, the 1:37:36.280 --> 1:37:40.519 nineteen sixty adaptation, other adaptations, derivative works, you know, the 1:37:40.600 --> 1:37:43.679 use of the time machine and morlocks and related works 1:37:43.680 --> 1:37:46.599 of fiction right in We would love to hear from you. 1:37:47.040 --> 1:37:48.680 Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is 1:37:48.680 --> 1:37:52.080 primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on 1:37:52.280 --> 1:37:55.719 Tuesdays and Thursdays, including some past episodes on time travel, 1:37:56.040 --> 1:37:59.639 and we did one on time travel fiction, like when 1:37:59.680 --> 1:38:04.800 did we start writing about time travel? You know, speculatively 1:38:04.880 --> 1:38:07.280 and so forth. That's a fun one to revisit, so 1:38:07.320 --> 1:38:09.799 you'll find all those, you know in the archives wherever 1:38:09.800 --> 1:38:11.880 you get your podcasts. But yeah, on Fridays we set 1:38:11.880 --> 1:38:13.840 aside most serious concerns, so just talk about a weird 1:38:13.840 --> 1:38:16.240 film here on Weird House Cinema. If you go to 1:38:16.360 --> 1:38:18.439 letterbox dot com, you'll find a list of all the 1:38:18.479 --> 1:38:21.280 movies we've covered over the years, and sometimes a glimpse 1:38:21.320 --> 1:38:23.840 at what is coming up next, such as next week, 1:38:23.880 --> 1:38:26.360 which is Star Trek Week. Yes, on Friday, we will 1:38:26.400 --> 1:38:28.880 talk about one of the Star Trek movies, which one 1:38:28.880 --> 1:38:31.120 will it be? Well, you can go to letterbox right 1:38:31.160 --> 1:38:32.920 now and get a peek ahead at what we're we 1:38:32.960 --> 1:38:33.400 going to cover. 1:38:34.280 --> 1:38:38.080 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway, 1:38:38.200 --> 1:38:41.320 and special thanks to our guest producers this week, Dylan 1:38:41.400 --> 1:38:44.160 Fagan and Evan Tyre. If you would like to get 1:38:44.160 --> 1:38:46.080 in touch with us with feedback on this episode or 1:38:46.080 --> 1:38:48.240 any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or 1:38:48.360 --> 1:38:50.879 just to say hello, you can email us at contact 1:38:50.960 --> 1:39:01.320 pat Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. 1:39:01.479 --> 1:39:04.400 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 1:39:04.479 --> 1:39:08.320 more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 1:39:08.400 --> 1:39:23.960 or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. 1:39:28.800 --> 1:39:28.840 H