General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Time Travelers

The Time Travelers is a 1964 American science fiction film directed by Ib Melchior, in which a team of scientists testing a device meant to view through time accidentally opens a portal and is stranded 107 years in the future, in a post-nuclear-war world of mutants, androids, and an underground colony preparing to flee Earth.¹^•² It was independently produced by Dobil Productions and released by American International Pictures (AIP), with William Redlin as producer.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	October 29, 1964 (limited theatrical); Los Angeles opening late November 1964³^•¹
Director and writers	Ib Melchior, from a story by Melchior and David L. Hewitt¹
Principal cast	Preston Foster (Dr. Erik von Steiner), Philip Carey (Steve Connors), Merry Anders (Carol White), John Hoyt (Varno), Steve Franken (Danny McKee)⁴
Premise	A time-viewing window becomes a portal; the travelers are stranded in 2071, 107 years ahead⁵
Production	Dobil Productions; filmed October to November or early December 1963 at Carthay Studios, Los Angeles; Pathécolor¹
Working title	Time Trap¹
Reception	IMDb rating 5.3/10 from about 3,700 votes; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 33% from three reviews⁶^•³

Spoilers

Plot

Scientists on a university campus, headed by Dr. Erik von Steiner (Preston Foster) and including Steve Connors (Philip Carey) and Carol White (Merry Anders), build a device intended to open a window onto the past and future. The electrician Danny McKee (Steve Franken) stumbles through the screen, which has become a portal, and the scientists follow to rescue him; the portal collapses behind them, stranding the group in a desolate countryside 107 years in the future.¹^•⁷

Mutant creatures chase them into a cave leading to an underground city, the last remnant of a civilization destroyed by nuclear war. There they are rescued by androids and taken to Council Senior Varno (John Hoyt), who explains that over the past 107 years the Earth and its life forms have been dying from a nuclear war. The underground humans, aided by their android associates, are building a spaceship to escape to Alpha Centauri before mutants on the surface exterminate them.¹^•²^•⁸

The film ends with a time paradox. The travelers rebuild their portal and flee through it, but they have disrupted the time flow and gone back too far, and they are frozen in time.⁸ The Science Fiction Encyclopedia describes the ending as trapping the scientists in a deterministic time loop, unable to influence events.² In some televised airings, the characters step through the portal into a black void that briefly shows them walking through a green clearing before the end credits.⁹

Production

The film was shot under the working title Time Trap. The Los Angeles Times reported John Hoyt's casting in a lead role on September 30, 1963, and Daily Variety announced principal photography underway on November 7, 1963, with production at Carthay Studios in Los Angeles. Copyright was registered by Dobil Productions on October 7, 1964 (LP29782).¹

A non-union production. Daily Variety reported in June 1964 that The Time Travelers numbered among no fewer than thirty-five non-union films shot the year before, staffed largely by UCLA and USC Cinema Arts graduates who struggled to find work at established Hollywood studios; most of these low-budget films were said to have cost less than $100,000, and the Hollywood unions were growing ever more unhappy with such pictures.¹

The crew included several people who went on to notable careers. The cinematographer is credited by AFI as William Zsigmond; the film's photography is generally attributed to Vilmos Zsigmond, who with fellow Hungarian emigre Laszlo Kovacs worked his way up through 1960s exploitation films.¹^•¹⁰ David L. Hewitt, who shared the story credit, also designed shots, supervised props, and personally built the large miniature of a rocket base; he later directed the remake Journey to the Center of Time (1967).¹⁰^•² With too small a budget for the story's effects, Melchior fell back on conjuring tricks; in one uncut shot a masked actor playing an android appears to have his head removed and replaced by another before walking away.⁷

Genre context and influence

The film was conceived as a sequel to the 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, and its future world resembles an updated version of Wells's setting.² The Science Fiction Encyclopedia credits it as an inventive post-Holocaust film, citing its matter transmission, hydroponics, and other incidental science fiction tropes.² Irwin Allen was clearly influenced by it in making the television series The Time Tunnel (1966 to 1967).² The Starburst review notes that Russell T Davies borrowed its scenario almost beat for beat for the 2007 Doctor Who story Utopia, and that its concluding sequence resembles the one at the end of the Doctor Who episode Heaven Sent.¹¹

The film was announced for screening at the second annual International Science Fiction Film Festival in Trieste, Italy, in July 1964.¹

Reception

The November 1964 Daily Variety review called David Hewitt's effects stagey and the camera work and editing so-so, and found Melchior's screenplay ponderous and predictable.¹² Later assessments have been more mixed to favorable: Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com called it a bravely downbeat study of time loop hell, and Matt Brunson of Film Frenzy judged the visual effects and set design more than adequate for a low-budget science fiction film.³ On IMDb the film holds a rating of 5.3/10 from about 3,700 users.⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026