ROD TAYLOR AND YVETTE MIMIEUX IN 'THE TIME MACHINE'

Yvette Mimieux & Rod Taylor in George Pal's 1960 classic science-fiction cult phenom THE TIME MACHINE

It's too bad so much of the energy is built on obscuring the twist ending, and the middle-ground to the classic George Pal version of the H.G. Wells novel is a dated, tacked-on anti-nukes message, because the sophisticated first thirty minutes, setting up our story with a turn-of-the-century British inventor H. George Wells (given the same name as the author, making his story seem true), returning from an unknown future and late for dinner with his stuffy contemporaries, is where Rod Taylor, an unknown actor cast because of an anemic budget, really shines, portraying the right touch of neurosis and intensity of a man who could, would, and does create an actual time machine...

Part of the post of THE TIME MACHINE

A vessel that, throughout audible dinner table narration, travels past World War II, into the throes of a post nuclear 1966, and then winds up where most of the picture takes place: a seemingly perfect green Eden paradise where beautiful humans, known as Eloi, including the extremely gorgeous Yvette Mimieux as Weena, exist and... it turns out, they are ruled by voracious creatures called Morlocks, and aren't just slaves while the best, most re-watchable scenes involve Wells' first discovering the wonder of time travel, using a store shop window mannequin as his fashion guide throughout the years. A career-making role for the late Rod Taylor, who would follow-up with Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, this science-fiction classic has creative relation to THE TWILIGHT ZONE, later on STAR TREK and a blockbuster that Taylor was originally considered to star for, THE PLANET OF THE APES, which would lack the "damn dirty" classic performance but might have been pretty swell.