I've always been fascinated by time travel stories and this one, with it's fascinating and carefully delineated characters remains as one of the best of the genre. In what could have been a stupid B-movie Ed Wood type flick, is instead a film of great intelligence and feeling. The premise of H.G. Wells tracking "Jack the Ripper" through time to modern day San Francisco is a novel one. In any film it is the little things that make the difference between good and great. The little things here are the reactions of a 19th century man to everyday life in the late 20th century. The things we all take for granted are strange to him (and to his dismay, it is not the utopian future he had envisioned). The thrust of the film however is H.G.'s efforts to apprehend "Jack" and the suspense created would do Hitchcock proud. In fact there are some instances where you can see the influence of "The Master of Suspense". The everyman (H.G.) thrust into an extraordinary situation is pure "Hitch". Malcolm McDowell does a wonderful job as H.G. as does David Warner as "Jack". Warner seems to have based his portrayal on Peter Lorre's character in "M" and it works. Mary Steenburgen is fine as H.G.'s modern day girlfriend in an early career performance. Someday this film will be considered a classic in the same vein as "Time Machine" made nearly twenty years earlier.
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