Amazon.com Essentials:
After scoring popular hits with When Worlds
Collide and The War
of the Worlds, special-effects pioneer George Pal returned to
the visionary fiction of H.G. Wells to produce and direct this
science-fiction classic from 1960. Wells's imaginative tale of time
travel was published in 1895 and the movie is set in approximately
the same period with Rod Taylor as a scientist whose magnificent time
machine allows him to leap backward and forward in the annals of
history. His adventures take him far into the future, where a meek and
ineffectual race known as the Eloi have been forced to hide from the
brutally monstrous Morlocks. As Taylor tests his daring invention,
Oscar-winning special effects show us what the scientist sees: a
cavalcade of sights and sounds as he races through time at varying
speeds, from lava flows of ancient earth to the rise and fall of a
towering future metropolis.
The movie's charm lies in its Victorian
setting and the awe and wonder that carries over from Wells's classic
story. The pioneering spirit of the movie is still enthralling, but it
gets a bit silly when Taylor turns into a stock hero, rescuing a
beautiful blonde Eloi (Yvette Mimieux) and battling with the chubby
green Morlocks whose light-bulb eyes blink out when they die. Although
it's quaint when compared to the special-effects marvels of the
digital age, the movie's still highly entertaining and filled with a
timeless sense of wonder. --Jeff Shannon
