- For the MST3K episode, see MST3K 821 - Time Chasers.
Synopsis
Physics teacher and amateur pilot Nick Miller (Matthew Bruch) has finally completed his quest of enabling time travel, via a Commodore 64 and his small airplane. After being inspired by a television commercial for GenCorp, he uses a ruse to bring out both a GenCorp executive and a reporter from a local paper. To Nick's surprise, the reporter is Lisa Hansen (Bonnie Pritchard), an old high school flame. One trip to 2041 later and Gencorp's executive, Matthew Paul (Peter Harrington), quickly arranges Nick a meeting with CEO J.K. Robertson (George Woodard). Impressed by the potential of time travel, Robertson offers Nick a licensing agreement on the technology.
The following week, Nick and Lisa meet at the supermarket and go on a date to the 1950s. However, another trip to 2041 reveals that GenCorp abused Nick's time travel technology, creating a dystopian future. In an attempt to tell J.K. about how GenCorp inadvertently ruined the future. J.K. dismisses the eventuality, and states that there's enough time to worry about how to fix it before it happens. J.K. sees Nick as a threat to GenCorp, and due to the association with the U.S. Government, considers Nick's actions as treason. Nick and Lisa escape GenCorp and spend the remainder of the film trying to reverse the damage to the future.
When J.K. catches wind of this, he and Matt try to shoot down Nick's plane, killing Lisa in the process while Nick jumps out before the plane crashes. This ultimately culminates in a fight in 1777 during the American Revolution, the deaths of the present Nick, Lisa, Matt, and Robertson, and the destruction of the time machine before the original demo, thus ensuring that the majority of the film's events never happen in the first place. The film ends with a past Nick (now aware of the danger of his time machine) sabotaging his demonstration, and doing a pitch of how an elderly skydiver would be a better ad campaign for J.K.'s company. Furious about being misled, J.K. fires Matt. Nick deletes the 8 5¼" floppy disks that make time travel possible. At the end of the film, Nick talks to Lisa in the supermarket as he did in the previous timeline.
Cast
- Matthew Bruch as Nick Miller
- Bonnie Pritchard as Lisa Henson
- George Woodard as J.K. Robertson
- Peter Harrington as Matthew Paul
- Martin Guigui as Marty
- Michael J. Valentine as Cabbie
Information
- Director David Giancola was only 20 years old when he shot this movie with a budget of $150,000. The licensing fees paid by Best Brains for its use in this episode helped make the movie slightly profitable.
- According to David Giancola, Castleton College provided several free t-shirts for the film with the idea that they would be hot sellers after being featured in a movie. The demand for the t-shirts didn't come until a few years later, when the film premiered on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- The set used for J.K. Robertson's office is the foyer of a local opera house.[1]
- Crow's comment that a minor character (played by Vicky A. Bourn) looks like Friends cast member Lisa Kudrow was mistakenly accepted as fact by many MSTies, and Kudrow was listed in the film's cast on the Internet Movie Database for several years.[2]
- As Nick and Lisa are walking in an alley in dystopian future Vermont, one of the nearly-destroyed posters attached to the wall is for the movie Back to the Future. Nick also has a picture of Marty, Doc and Clara from the Back to the Future Part III poster art in his house in front of a window in his computer room.
- Mr. Giancola’s Edgewood Studios has a website here.
- This movie won a Gold Award at the Houston International Film Festival in 1994.
- Time Chasers became a RiffTrax Live presentation in 2016.