Build a movie plot around this: Who bargains for Amy's life? Herbert
In 1893 London, popular writer Herbert George Wells (Malcolm McDowell) displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests. After he explains how it works (including a "non-return key" that keeps the machine at the traveler's destination and a "vaporizing equalizer" that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms), police constables arrive at the house searching for Jack the Ripper. A bag with blood-stained gloves belonging to one of Herbert's friends, a surgeon named John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), leads them to conclude that Stevenson might be the infamous killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.Stevenson has escaped to the future, but because he does not have the "non-return" key, the machine automatically returns to 1893. Herbert uses it to pursue Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine has ended up on display at a museum in San Francisco. He is deeply shocked by the future, having expected it to be an enlightened socialist utopia, only to find chaos in the form of airplanes, automobiles and a worldwide history of war, crime and bloodshed.Reasoning that Stevenson would need to exchange his British money, Herbert asks about him at various banks. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets liberated employee Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who says she had directed Stevenson to the Hyatt Regency hotel.Confronted by his one-time friend Herbert, Stevenson confesses that he finds modern society to be pleasingly violent, stating: "Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Now... I'm an amateur." Herbert demands he return to 1893 to face justice, but Stevenson instead attempts to wrest the time machine's return key from him. Their struggle is interrupted and Stevenson flees, getting hit by a car during the frantic chase on foot. Herbert follows him to the San Francisco General Hospital emergency room and mistakenly gets the impression that Stevenson has died from his injuries.Herbert meets up with Amy Robbins again and she initiates a romance. Stevenson returns to the...