I recently had the opportunity to attend the venerable (29th year) H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. The HPLFF prides itself on showing features and shorts produced by individual filmmakers and small production companies. What they present over a two and one-half day program is definitely of mixed quality, but, then again, even the finest wine has its dregs.
One of the full-length features presented – definitely not the dregs – was “Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox.” This feature is a rolicking expansion of a short of the same name that played at the festival two years ago.
The paradox: If a time traveler went back in time and altered something significant, it would affect the future in such a way that the time traveler would never have traveled. Specifically, in this case, Tim Travers (Samuel Dunning – “Dead Whisper”) invents a machine that takes him back in time one minute. He then kills the older version of Tim Travers he finds there within that one minute. According to the paradox, since the original Travers was killed BEFORE he traveled back in time, he couldn’t have done it and therefore couldn’t have killed kimself – and around and around. Get it?
During the early part of the film we see one Travers after another killed in hilarious ways by the younger copy. Yet, the paradox does not appear. Each Travers continues to kill, with full knowledge of the previous rounds, the older Travers.
This madness soon gives way to the Travers coming through the machine NOT killing their copies, and those copies eventually reach a couple dozen (labeled Alpha to Omega) who amusingly interact with one another. In that sense, the machine is now operating more like the Tesla-created one in that great film, “The Prestige.” Copy after copy is produced.
Now add some hired killers (Danny Trejo and Stimson Snead) sent to bump off Travers for failing to pay for the black market plutonium that powers his machine; a narcissistic radio talk show host (Joel McHale – “The Happytime Murders”); and a “supreme being” (Keith David – “Nope”). The mix is a fast paced, fast talking extravaganza.
Director/writer/actor Stimson Snead is responsible for this extravaganza of alternating joy and misery, reminiscent in some ways of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe” for its creativity and scope. But the real kudos go to Dunning, who sometimes plays a dozen copies of himself on the screen at the same time, editor J.D. McKee (“Babes”) for cutting this incredible stuff together, cinematographer Bryan Gosline (“#Cybersleuths”), and the visual and special effects teams.
If you are fond of madcap movies with silly cosmic implication, you will love “Tim Travers.”
Runtime: One hour, 50 minutes
Availability: Showing at various film fests
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