Time Chasers

Plot synopsis:
Nick Miller has discovered the key to time-travel. Using a small plane located at his local airport in Vermont, the local college professor manages to fly 50 years into the future, and return to the present day (1991).Hoping to capitalize on this discovery, Nick places two calls:
-the first call is to a local company called GenCorp, with Nick claiming he's developed a new fuel-efficient engine.
-the second call is to the local newspaper, where Nick claims his Grandmother is going to skydive for the first time.The next day, Nick meets Matthew Paul from GenCorp, and Lisa Henson from the newspaper. Nick is surprised to see Lisa as they both went to school together long ago. After coaxing both of them into his airplane, Nick then tells them about his discovery of Time-Travel. Though Matthew is apprehensive, Lisa suggests they go 50 years in the future.Nick manages to take them to 2041. After landing, he shows them all that has changed. Nick also claims that he wishes to obtain an R&D grant because of his discovery, as he is currently out of money. Matthew then explains that once they get back, he intends to tell the head of GenCorp about Nick's discovery as soon as possible.Some time after the three have returned, Matthew makes good on his promise, and Nick shows his discovery to the head of GenCorp, J.K. Robertson. Robertson immediately wishes to do business with Nick, and also offers a position at GenCorp to Lisa. However, Lisa refuses and cautions Nick that associating with GenCorp is a bad idea. Nick tries to get her to reconsider, but she walks away.After some time, Nick turns over the information he has regarding his time-travel experiments, but on trying to access the files that are being kept in GenCorp's computers, finds that he does not have access to this.Going to the local supermarket, Nick comes across Lisa. Lisa apologizes for the way she reacted the last time they talked, but Nick claims he has a surprise for her. Taking her to the airport, Nick gets access to his plane, and takes Lisa back to the 50's on a date.During their time jaunt, Nick then goes forward to 2041. However, the two find that the future now is in anarchy. When Nick mentions time-travel, one group takes him and Lisa in an attempt to get their 'Transport.' Nick and Lisa manage to escape back to the present. Nick then goes to GenCorp and explains to Robertson what he and Lisa saw. However, it soon becomes apparent that Robertson has had some hand in the changes to the future. He explains that he has already used Nick's technology to build his own time vehicle out of an airplane. Nick soon realizes that in signing over his discovery to GenCorp, they now have total control.Robertson attempts to have Nick and Lisa turned over as 'Spies' to prevent them from telling of GenCorp's plans. However, the two manage to escape. Heading back to the airport, they manage to trick their way into getting Nick's plane out of the hands of GenCorp security.Once airborne, Nick decides to leap back to the day when he gave the demonstration to Matthew and Lisa. Lisa does explain that while it will prevent GenCorp from knowing about Nick's discovery, it also will mean that she and Nick will not meet.Nick still leaps back in time, but finds that Robertson and Matthew Paul are right behind them. Robertson fires on Nick's plane, wounding Lisa severely, and damaging the plane. Nick then bails from the plane as it crashes in a fireball. Nick manages to make it ashore, and heads towards the airport, hoping to stop his past-self from giving the time-travel demonstration.Meanwhile, past-Lisa is diverted from meeting past-Nick about the 'skydiving Grandmother,' and told to investigate a plane crash. When she arrives on the scene, the forensics team mentions that a body in the wreck is so badly damaged, dental records will need to be investigated. Checking the number on the tail of the plane, Lisa finds it registered to Nick.Past-Nick meanwhile, has given his time-travel demonstration to Matthew Paul, who is planning to bring Robertson to view the machine. After he leaves, Lisa arrives at the airport where she meets Nick and discusses what she found out. However, she's surprised to find that Nick claims to only own one plane, and it is sitting intact on the tarmac!After they go back and check the wreckage, Nick claims they need to check on something, and he and Lisa take off in his plane (supposedly to time-jump somewhere, but this is not fully explained).Meanwhile, the Nick that was on the plane that crashed has made it to the airport, only to find the plane gone, and runs into Robertson and Matthew. They also find Nick's mechanic Marty, and take both of them prisoner. Hoping to keep them from telling of what he has done (and is going to do), Robertson decides to time-jump them back to 1776, and kill them there, leaving the two as 'unaccounted war-dead' in the past revolutionary time period.Back in the past, Nick and Lisa have returned, unsure just what to do now. Nick finds that Marty is missing, and Lisa calls the newspaper to check on the dental records...only to find that the body that was in the crash was her!Back in 1776, Robertson tries to get Matthew to help him execute Nick and Marty, but when Matthew refuses, Robertson kills him. Just when it looks like Nick and Marty will be killed as well, past-Nick and past-Lisa appear, along with some revolutionaries. Robertson manages to scare them off, but as a nearby revolutionary battle happens, Robertson runs off on his own, leaving Nick to talk to his past self. Both of them come to an agreement to destroy the time-transport, with the present-Nick taking a horse and going after Robertson in his transport.Nick and Robertson scuffle in the plane which causes it to crash. Nick attempts to emerge from the plane, but is accousted by Robertson. Robertson ends up killing Nick, but is killed himself when a section of the plane that is stuck in a tree falls on him.Back in the altered past timeline, Matthew brings Robertson in from the city, but is surprised when Nick claims that Matthew wanted to introduce him to the star of the new GenCorp commercial, "Ms Gilda Hines, 80 years old and a world-class skydiver." Matthew tries to convince Robertson that Nick does have a time-transport, but finds that Nick's plane has none of the electronic equipment. Robertson then fires Matthew on the spot and leaves. As the CEO drives away, Nick comes up behind Matthew and says, "At least he didn't shoot you this time," leaving the pink-suited fellow perplexed.In the closing moments of the film, we see Nick erase his data regarding the time-transport, and go to a local supermarket. While there, he encounters Lisa, and begins a conversation with her.

Tags: cult

Review:
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.
A torn-up poster for 'Back To The Future' shows up in this movie, representing -- probably unintentionally -- what the makers of 'Tangents' (aka 'Time Chasers') did to the time-travel formula.
Then again, the movie was made in 1994, but it looks -- and sounds -- like it was actually shot at least ten years earlier, so maybe they achieved some sort of time-travel after all.Start with an aggressively unappealing leading man.
If YOU figure out the plot, please contact me; I'm curious.I would strongly advise watching this movie with the help of the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000; I don't think it could stand on its own...
beer would probably help, too.The film, 'Tangents': 3 stars -- they tried.MST3K's 'Time Chasers' episode: 8 stars -- they succeeded..
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.
That's what the director of this film had to be saying throughout it's making The story is set around Nick, a geeky teacher at Castleton college who invents a time machine using eight commador floppy disks and his plane.
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 (!).
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 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)..
Think of this one as Back to the Future...except not very good.The use of time travel and possible timelines gone askew does nothing to add to the film.
Due to limited budget, the future, past, and present look pretty bad which makes it more funny.
Showcased in MST3K, this sci-fi turd is about how a big-chinned physics teacher named Nick who dons a Castleton T-shirt and his dopey reporter girlfriend Lisa (who looks strangely a lot like Toni Tennille!) tries to save humanity's future from a corrupt hick CEO named Robertson, who's use for Nick's flying time machine is for his own twisted purposes!
However, I was pretty surprised when I read somewhere that David Giancola, the director of "Time Chasers" even thanked MST3K for showing his low denominator project on their show!!
Maybe they were sitting around one day in film school and said, "Hey, let's pool our money together and make a really bad movie!"  Or something like that.
This is one of the few MST3K episodes where I actually was compelled to follow the story's twists and turns, in addition to listening to Mike and the bots tearing it apart.The computers (Commodore?), hair styles (mullets!), and clothing styles were straight out of 1984 -- was that intentional on the part of the writers or just a result of a low budget?
However, I think that if we consider different alternatives to what movies can be, then this is definitely something worth watching.It's kinda like a snapshot of the "old future", if you know what I mean.
As putrid a piece of slop ever released, this Edgewood Entertainment crapper (aslo known as "Time Chasers") was filmed entirely in the state of Vermont, the least-visited and cared-about of all 50, and tells the ridiculous tale of Nick Miller (Matthew Bruch-one of the single ugliest leading men in cinematic history, in fact, he makes Rowsdower from "The Final Sacrifice," look like Brad Pitt), who invents a time-traveling device that is powered by a Wang computer and a Piper Cub.He jumps (or flies) ahead to 2041, sees some "futuristic" stuff, then comes back and sells the invention to a huge corporation.
Later, after a lame trip to the "1950s," he goes back to the future, where a cheap matte painting shows that a war took place and the (unnamed) city is in ruins.He fights off a bunch of rejects from 2041, comes back to the present, hijacks his own plane, crashes it and kills his girlfriend, Lisa (Bonnie Pritchard), and then travels to the Revolutionary War, where he dies, but his double and his girlfriend's doppelganger are still alive, so they go back to the present just before he was to sell the invention, and stops himself from doing it.Wow. Not only confusing, but boring and ridiculous (although it's a much better time-travel film than "The Lake House").Here are some more specific "highlights" of just how amazingly bad this movie is: During a chase scene where Nick is trying to escape on a ten-speed bicycle, the bad guys actually get out of a truck they were in and pursue him - on BIKES.Scenes in the future depict "actors" walking around in loud, garish, baggy clothing and talking on cell phones, much like they do today.
The Revolutionary War scenes are included for no other reason than to show off a bunch of fat re-en-actors, and during these sequences, the single dumbest lines ever written for a "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" episode is uttered: Speaking of some fleeing American colonists, running from machine gun fire, Nick says, "I don't think they've ever seen an Uzi before." Duh!
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.
Thanks to our inventor's inability to read a contract, he is, after all only a professor, he signs over his invention to the Corporation who, obviously, have Evil intentions.Featuring the most unconvincing hero in screen history, this nonetheless remains a brilliant and realistic study of the future, and says more about man's greed and disregard for his fellow man than most films with much higher budgets.
Fun to watch and to laugh at.BTW: Apparently all 1950s-era cars are restored hotrods and the Mall of the Future looks like the malls of the early 90s for some odd reason...Oh, and don't throw away your old 5.5" floppies, they just might hold the secret of time travel!.
The villain is so weirdly delightful you can't help but love him, and the same goes for the hero.I honestly really appreciated how earnest this film was, and how it set its ambitions high, even if it couldn't always deliver on the premise of a time traveling pilot inventor who destroys the future.It's the quintessential MST3K film, there's no getting around that, but it's so because it's so very enjoyable to watch.
It is ten times more competent than "House of 1000 Corpses" or any of Coleman Francis' work.The story attempts to be thought-provoking and amusing, sort of a sideways version of "The Man Who Folded Himself" or "And He Built A Crooked House", and no one in the film is as bad or corny as, say, the actors in "Werewolf" or Bo Derek in "Tarzan".
The story, if it can be described as such, is about a geeky, enormous chinned guy named Nick, who discovers the secret of time travel and makes his Cessna into a time transport (he refuses to call it a time machine), which he tries to sell to the "Big-Evil-Corporation-That-Is-Evil-And-Driven-By-Greed-And-Evil" GenCorp., which no one ever pronounces the same.
My impressions of the film, very bad as you basically watch average people frittering away a few days running around the city and acting like they are in the past, the present and the future!
Though give Roger Corman the budget they had and he would have made a time traveling film that looked better and actually starred William Katt in the role of Nick and Donald Pleasence in the role of J.
Then they return to the future which is now an apocalyptic one, though it basically looks like the back alley found in any city across the U.S.A. Well, Nick easily knows that Robertson is behind this, but decides to confront him rather than just going back to the past and telling himself to not tell the evil corporate head about said plane.
Granted, there wouldn't be much of a movie if he did and we wouldn't have mediocre chases and a glimpse of a revolutionary war that looks like a bunch of fat dudes doing a reenactment.This made for a pretty good episode of MST3K.
People may claim it was a small budget, but 150,000 is a good sum of money, I could take care of all my bills with that amount of money and they kind of just wasted it making this film that really only gained any success thanks to MST3K.
Just watching people running around and acting like they are accomplishing something just is not a movie and watching a field full of dudes in horrible costumes just not make for a good time traveling film.
Time travel movies can be very entertaining, when made correctly.Just look at the original "The Time Machine" (based on a good book, no doubt), the "Back to the Future" series, "12 Monkeys", "Time Bandits" - the list is impressive and it doesn't stop there.But when it comes to a lack of continuity, story lapses, illogic, and an ocean of missed opportunities, the list is very short, and here it is:"Time Chasers".Seems this guy - let's call him Chin Boy - has created a time machine in his airplane and does what any smart guy would do: shows it to a guy who shows it in turn to his boss, who just happens to be the most evil CEO with the biggest hick accent.
But otherwise, the action was stale and the acting was about as exciting as watching bread dough rise.But Mike and the robots had the best scenes, poking and prodding as only they can, and making "Time Chasers" look more entertaining than it really was.Two stars for "Time Chasers": eight stars for the MST3K version.TIDBIT - the director of this film actually thanked MST3K for showing his film in their venue.
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).
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.
I love mst3k, but at least I know the difference between truth and a riff meant for laughs.Yes the movie isn't great, but its no worse than any of mst3k's other 198 films.
This is a really dumb movie, with a very low budget, and because of that, this is a very entertaining film.Nick is a nerdy, bike riding teacher, who has built a little plane into a time machine.
Time Chasers is probably one of the better movies on MST3K, though the competition isn't too tough.
The MST3K was great, and it was fun to watch the movie because it was filmed in Rutland, Vermont.
Now, the film being as bad as it is, it makes the MST3K version that much better.
Time travel can be a fascinating movie subject, and films like "Back to the Future" knew how to wallow in it; to really make us feel that we had travelled back in time.
This time they must defeat the evil corporation and J.K. Robertson again with our "heros" Nick and Lisa Miller.
Yes, I know, the budget was limited, but when so much better was made with so much less...p.s. I've actually seen the MST3l-less version of Cinemax...p.p.s. anyone else notice that the bottom 100 list on this site is made up of mostly MST3k movies?.
I guess it just took nine years to get through to the final draft of the script and to get all the main casting out of the way.Briefly, in case this movie hasn't been seen by whoever is reading this, the plot involves a man who builds a time machine and the complications that result based on his stupidity.
But seriously, I'm sure that the Giancola family had a good time making it (check out the full credits, it seems to be a family affair), and for anyone who likes to hear some guy who thinks he's a scientist talk about tangents and other wacky ideas ("Pretend that you're this spoon.") I recommend this movie.One last thing: Is that really Lisa Kudrow?.
I think its a great concept when you can put a time travel device in a car or a plane, but unless the script is easy to follow, or you already have a basic grasp of quantum realities, the movie is likely not going to make sense.
Yes, I saw this movie on MST3K like most people, and yes it's not the best piece of celluloid ever captured on film, but it isn't terrible.
I'll admit I was disappointed with the geeky big chinned hero(who couldn't drive I might add), the year 2041 looked like 1991, and the hickish villian CEO was pretty laughable with his monotone dribble, but let's not forget this movie was made on a minute budget, and had the misfortune of being filmed in Vermont(the other smaller Wisconsin in the words of Crow).
It should go without saying that it's almost, just almost, not fair to judge a movie when you're seeing it in the context of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 - or, more recently, when the group did a redux with Rifftrax live (with the complete cut of the film, featuring the deleted scenes with the cab driver which, oh, I'll get to in a moment) - since you may think you're missing something vital to the story or not getting the full picture.
And yet the filmmakers don't even get this right; there's a whole thing that the main character, who makes time travel possible out of his little "Transport" plane and a Commodore 64 (and who is like discount 80's/90's Bill Maher with the charisma of discount Ted Cruz, and think about what that means for a moment!) seem very important as far as how things we do, whether we know it or not, will affect the future.
Acting was so/so, the music was not good, and the storyline was ok.This movie has to do with this weird dude named Nick Miller, who builds a time machine.
Big-chinned hero and reporter girlfriend try to change the future and in a series of events too painful (and not horribly important, though including one version of girlfriend Lisa getting killed and a duplicate Nick coming into the picture) to recount, they along with JK, flunky Pink Boy and garage mechanic end up in 1777 Vermont.
When the evil corporation takes over the time machine and does some vaguely bad thing with it (it is suggested that some futuristic was brought into the present), Our hero finds out that the "future" has turned into a local slum populated by a few hobos with guns (not lasers or anything just normal guns).
Nick and his love interest, Lisa, try to change things back to the way they were.This movie is ambitious work for a small budget but it has a charm to it and quite a cult following as well.
This line, given by Crow in this film's well-deserved roasting by the MST3K guys, pretty much sums up my feelings for Nick Miller, the so-called hero of "Time Chasers."  Not only does he have hideous 80's hair (the fact that the film was done in the 90's makes it even worse), an annoying nasaly voice and a chin which rivals that of Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast," he's also a complete idiot.
But, as evidenced in this film, enthusiasm can only take you so far and on most fronts (casting, acting, dialog, FX, soundtrack, wardrobe, art direction, etc.) Time Chasers is an embarrassingly bad movie.
Nick decides he must go into the past if he is to restore the future.Like most people on this sight, I came by Time Chasers courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The whole notion of time travel, changing the future, and going into the past to make things right is a good, interesting concept.
Time Chasers is one of my favorite MST3Ks, but one of the worst movies I've ever seen.