Time Chasers

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

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 The special effects are poor, having a rather outdated look, and there is nothing remarkable about the way it is shot either, while the settings are simplistic and don't look anything like they should(the office of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

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).

One of the funnier MST3K experiments. This was an ambitious film, light years ahead of Manos and Hobgoblins. they simply couldn't afford the talent or special effects for it. In terms of effort they get a 7/10. Almost as funny as Space Mutiny. I give this one a 3/10 because there was a passable plot, and some half-decent acting. The funniest part for me is when the wormy fat guy is in the plane with his evil boss and Crow cracks: "Sir, I'm getting a little worried about lunch, it's almost 12:30" or something like that. This one was fun to watch, even though it is strictly fodder for the folks at Best Brains.

I feel badly for the actors and directors of this film who may come across this site's comments about it, which was fairly well done - for a low-budget film.

All the criticisms about the film are true: The evil CEO's office in an apparent library, the antique computer with outdated floppy disks, and the fairly wooden acting are all valid criticisms. But what do we expect, Spielberg? Lucas? I'm sure they could have taken this film to greater heights, but let's give it its due.

Think about it. The plot line was clever. How many ways can you go into the past? Car, stationary machine, plane? But the "future" portrayed here was embarrassing. Frankly, I thought they had gone BACK in time to 1984! Surely, they could have done better than that. Even in 1994, people knew what types of technologies to expect in the near future. Why not portray even one laptop?

I enjoyed the revolutionary war reenactors, but I think a "twist" of an ending would have been cute, and could have salvaged some of the film. What if, when they returned, everyone had British accents, including the evil CEO of a now-British conglomerate. Think about it.

So, here's my "director's cut" of this film: 1. Allow the lead actor to drive a car (better chase scenes) 2. Use a real computer - at least use the right sized disks 3. Cut the "ditching bicycles" scene (it's only 3 seconds long) 4. Show a better, more plausible future 5. Shorten the "bad future" scene, and shoot it at night, or in the fog, to make it look REALLY ominous, and 6. Make the final scene important (as I said above).

Until then, my rating is 4.