Time Chasers

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?

Nick, a scientist and hero of the movie, develops a time traveling Cessna and sells his idea to an evil company (is there any other kind ??) that exploits it and destroys the future. Can our moon-faced, giant-chin, mullet hero save the day ??

This movie is terrible and pointless. It seems to be a cheap rip-off of Back to the Future. Logic and science play absolute no part of the storyline. This movie seems to have been made with the scientific knowledge of pre-relativity physics (circa 1900). The dialog is painfully dull and incoherent. The special effects (time traveling effect) looks like a crappy screen saver from 1987. Even the costumes suck. Did I mention it is a coma-inducing bore ?? The future is consistent with the fashion and hairstyles of the 80's, complete with spandex, neon colors and bad haircuts. My favorite scene of the movie would have to be the fight scene that occurs on the wing and the inside of a time traveling, airborne Cessna, with the slowest timed countdown in history. Do not see this movie un-MST3k and never, ever alone.

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).

This is another cinematic failure that would be stealing our time if it weren't for those wonderful, talented people at MST3K. This movie is about a physics professor(yeah right!) who invents a time machine(a plane which flies through really bad computer graphics). He is supposed to go visit other time periods with it, but it seems the past and future look a lot like today except with very slight, cheap modifications. The villain is a CEO who wants to use the machine for evil purposes. The movie makes little hint that he is a evil character from the beginning. He also talks funny. MST made great fun of this movie, and their episode featuring it is one of my favorites.

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.