Time Chasers

This movie could only have been shot in Vermont. The scenery is Vermont, the town where our hero (!) lives is a Vermont town (Rutland, as it turns out), and the evil CEO speaks with a pronounced Vermont-hick accent. Not to mention the Castleton State t-shirt our hero (!) wears. Yep, if you like Vermont, you may like this movie.

The premise is interesting, and the writers make an honest attempt to keep the audience guessing with the many plot twists. And given an obviously low budget, the film is very well made.

And the use of "average" looking people as opposed to Hollywood glamour boys (and girls) is commendable, I suppose (but see above note on the ultra-low budget). But, really! The hero (!) looks like the product of a gene-splicing experiment involving Richard Dreyfuss and Nomar Garciaparra! Is that the best they could do? Was he the handsomest most charismatic most everyman actor in the whole of Vermont?

Overall, the movie is OK, but the low budget means cheesy special effects, amateurish acting, a so-so script, and a geeky lantern-jawed hero (!). Still, it beats "Manos" by light years...

Tangents (better known to MST3K watchers as Time Chasers) is a prime example of pure MST3K fodder. Made on a shoestring budget by a small production company, it's a by-the-numbers example of a small-budget film with big-budget aspirations.

The plot itself is a fairly interesting take on well-treaded territory: the hero, Nick, invents a way to make his ultra-light plane travel through time and sells the idea to a CEO, only to later discover that the CEO is going to use it for, you guessed it, evil.

The excecution of the plot, however, suffers from a number of handicaps. The portrayal of the future (both the utopian and apocalyptic ones) is laughable at best with the former looking like an 80s shopping mall and the latter a bad Warriors knockoff. The main characters are all boringly average (causing Crow to dub the film "The Adventures of the Average People" in the MST3K episode), the only one having anything identifiably unique about them being the main character, Nick, whose only unique traits are "building a time machine" and "not being able to drive a car" (setting the stage for an absolutely ridiculous bicycle chase scene). If anything, the film reminds us that probably the only Vermont export of note is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream (who, coincidentally, provided ice cream for the filming of this movie).

All in all, Tangents falls in the same general category of MST3Ked films as Overdrawn at the Memory Bank; a small budget film that is ridiculous enough on its own merits to make it a decent watch for lovers of pure cheese (though, as always, I recommend watching the MST3K version instead).

Time Chasers joins various films that have been given the razzing they deserve on MST. A little more competent than most films that are shown, it's still pretty bad. A bike riding scientist invents a time travel device and puts it in his Cessna. Why not a car? Well, he can't drive and I doubt he can get going fast enough on his ten speed. Like the lunkhead he is, he tells an evil corporation (is there any other kind?) about his invention and they take over the project. There's also some kind of lovestory too and our butt chinned hero takes his plaid clashing girlfriend to shopping malls of the future and to the fifties! Pretty soon there's two lunk heads running around and they go back to 1777. Why? I just don't know and I really don't care. The question that still bugs me is, where did that gun come from?

When describing some as not that awful, that doesn't make things immediately good. Time Chasers is still a very bad movie, what is meant by not that awful is that it is far from one of the worst movies ever and there have been far worse movies featured on MST3K(though they did a good job riffing Time Chasers). Matthew Brunch is at least okay in the lead, there is some amusing humour, a reasonably cool car stunt and some good ideas. It is also at least not dull, which is more than can be said for the likes of Manos, Monster A-Go Go, Beast of Yucca Flats and The Creeping Terror. The rest of Time Chasers is sloppily executed, it shows more ambition than most other movies riffed on MST3K but it does come across as too ambitious especially for the budget. The special effects are poor, having a rather outdated look, and there is nothing remarkable about the way it is shot either, while the settings are simplistic and don't look anything like they should(the office of the CEO for example looks like a library). Most of the dialogue is clunky at best, while the story gets increasingly ridiculous and predictable with the future scenes particularly embarrassing. The characters have very transparent personalities and are rather annoying in a way, especially one of the most laughable excuses for a villain, don't get me started on his accent and voice. For featured MST3K movies, the villain is quite possibly the lamest and most embarrassing villain since that for Space Mutiny. The acting is very wooden, George Woodard's acting is notable in this regard, only Brunch shows any glimpses of talent. Overall, not as awful as some have said but a movie with a lot of problems. 3.5/10 Bethany Cox

Unlike a lot of movies made today, this one was a labor of love, not a high pressure money making endeavor. Shortcomings aside, any movie could be great-- but shortcomings cannot be set aside. The movie was made, and it does have problems, but it was made-- something a lot of detractors have never done. HWS