Bullet Points: Timestalkers

Time travel movies are a popular genre of action movies with major players Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in The Terminator franchise and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Timecop just to name a couple. Time travel can be really confusing, and boring, when a movie tries to explain too much as evidenced by everything after T2: Judgment Day in that franchise. I recently watched a time travel movie that ignored bringing up any of the potential problems of the space time continuum or any other timey wimey problems and just provided an entertaining movie. I missed the premier of Timestalkers in 1987 but thanks to a little time travel magic of my own I have some Timestalkers Bullet Points.

• Old West – William Devane (Payback) stars as Scott McKenzie, a college professor obsessed with the Old West. And by obsessed I mean he dresses the part, has his house furnished with antiques and likes to practice drawing his revolver to practice target shooting. Scott is saying goodbye to his wife and son one morning only for them to die in a car crash from a police chase. They would have survived if it wasn’t for the perfectly ramped shaped dirt pile that is always near road construction in movies and I wouldn’t have it any other way because Timestalkers opens with a nice explosion.

• Wild West – There is a small time jump , and spoiler alert this is an old fashioned time progression and not the new fangled 26th century time travel we will see later. Scott is going to an old west auction with is good buddy and fellow old west nut Army Gen. Joe Brodsky (John Ratzenberger, Camp Cucamonga). Not having Joe Brodsky be the Postmaster General was a big mistake. The pair win some antique trunks with old west photos and bric-a-brac (Brodsky’s words, not mined) and we get subjected to a flashing light and a transition to the old west, of course they probably just called it the west.  The good part is that we get to see a crazy eyed and crazy haired gunslinger that is the spitting image of Klaus Kinski. Wait, it is Klaus Kinski!
• Galley-West – Would you believe that Scott finds a picture (actually a tintype to be accurate) in the trunk that shows the gunslinger, who we later learn is Dr. Joseph Cole? Sure enough. What is odd is that Cole is using a .357 Magnum revolver, which if you know anything about the .357 Magnum cartridge you know that it wasn’t invented until the 1930s. We got ourselves and anachronism! We do need to thank Brodsky’s Army zoom and enhance technology that is only available in movies to see the revolver.

• Mae West – Timestalkers is laying on the mystery real thick, with only minimal action to this point. How about adding a female character? Enter Georgia Crawford (Lauren Hutton). And by enter, I mean come in like the Terminator with a ball of energy, but she gets to keep her clothes. Georgia is from the future, natch, needing to meet up with Scott because she already knows how important he is, while we as the audience only know he is important because he is played by William Devane (namesake of William Devane’s Divine De-Veiner). It is here where we finally learn who Cole is and his convoluted plan to kill the first ancestor of his rival in the 26th century who also happens to be Georgia’s father. His plan is basically like if you decided you wanted to stop Hitler you would go back 10 generations and kill that person instead of just taking out a baby Adolph.
• Go West – The action starts to pick up as we see the time travelers stalk each other through time. Cole is bouncing back through time and Georgia takes Scott back to 1886 to stop Cole.  We get all kinds of cowboy action with gunfights, fancy horse riding and even a stagecoach. Would you believe that Grover Cleveland was involved? How many action movies have the 22nd and 24th President of the United States?!?! (That is right, Grover Cleveland is so far the only American president to serve two non-consecutive terms.) I wonder if all that gunplay and target shooting we see Scott doing throughout Timestalkers will be important?

Timestalkers is an entertaining movie if you are a fan of either time travel movies or westerns. Just don’t expect a whole lot of action. I should mention that Timestalkers was a made for television movie which generally means less action due to budget, but there is still some good action, and above average special effects. I don’t understand how the time travel gem works, but I like the looks of it. I also like how Timestalkers ignored a lot of the complexities of dealing with changing things in the past, as spoiler alert Scott gets his wife and son back. I also can’t get enough of future people being complete fish out of water when they come back to our contemporary time. Is fish out of water even a saying in 2586? Will there be Bonus Bullet Points in 2586? I wait with bated breath… although there are some Timestalkers Bonus Bullet Points right now.

• Familiar Faces – I wouldn’t want a TV time travel western with Tracey Walter, and Timestalkers doesn’t disappoint. Sitcom fans will enjoy seeing James Avery as a blacksmith and Danny Pintauro as Scott’s son. Wrestling fans will no doubt recognize Terry Funk
• Disturbing Quote – It is a tie between “If you are not going to play, I am going to gobble your face up” and “I am just going to eat some of this kid’s head.”
• Out of Place – For a man obsessed with the old west, a 1986 Panther Kallista seems like an odd choice of car, but that is what Scott tools around in during Timestalkers.
• Flipping Crazy – The car flip and explosion at the beginning of the movie is also the ending, but different because of the changes in the timeline, which means we get two excellent explosions. Is there a better way to end a movie than with a car ablaze?