When Time After Time was released 45 years ago this day, it brought the concept of time travel back to its Victorian-era roots by channeling the work of H.G. Wells, whose 1895 novel The Time Machine had introduced the idea to a broad audience. The 1979 movie, however, made Wells himself the story's protagonist. In the film, written and directed by Nicholas Meyer based on a then-unfinished Kent Alexander novel, Wells (Malcolm McDowell) constructs a time-travel device that’s hijacked by a colleague, Dr. John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), who turns out to be Jack the Ripper. Don’t you hate it when that happens?
Stevenson travels forward more than 85 years to modern-day San Francisco. Wells is right behind him, thanks to a fail-safe that automatically sends the machine back to its own time. As both react to life in 1979 — Stevenson inspired by the pervasive bloodshed, Wells horrified that his dream of a future utopia didn’t come to pass — Stevenson restarts his murderous ways while Wells falls in love with Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), a free-spirited woman who eventually becomes the Ripper’s next target.
