The words are Karen's (Kelly Bohanon), but the sentiment is completely mine. Seriously, I'm at a loss as to what this picture was all about. I mean, I know it was a time travel story using that rather ordinary looking launch pad with a compartment for your boots and heavy outer garments, but come on. What really intrigues me are the reviewers for this film that have injected some meaning into the story that I couldn't possibly have come up with in a hundred years. Having Peter Fonda's name attached to this probably explains a lot, as does the British title this flick was released under - "Deranged". My thought exactly.

This is a cheapo sci-fi movie that just seems to go on and on and on and on. Now if that isn't bad enough, the eventual payoff isn't very good. Which, when it occurs, makes me wonder why the heck I bothered watching it in the first place.The film begins with a bit of missing context--and much of the film is that way. You are unsure what has happened and you only get bits and pieces. Could it be some deliberately odd way of telling the story or could it just be a disjoint film that really wasn't quite finished--I suspect the latter.The movie is about a group of college-age adults. They all use this weird machine to time travel and they MUST take off most of their clothes to use it. Interestingly, they only show ladies doing this!! What the rest of the film is all about isn't all that important...or interesting.Dull acting, a ponderous plot and glacial pacing. Uggh.

To put the story into context, Peter Fonda's IDAHO TRANSFER is essentially a tale about intellectual free spirits(.."cerebral" hippies, I guess you could say)who use a time traveling device to enter the future, studying an area where no life seems to exist due perhaps to a nuclear holocaust. The only ones able to travel in time are young, around age twenty..it seems that if ones older than, say, thirty-ish suffer kidney problems which kill. It is established that the time traveling machine is a secret operation using government funds, and those who move forward in time(..most of them)consider remaining, hoping to perhaps make their own home elsewhere. The film focuses on Karen(Kelly Bohanon, in quite a fascinating performance), an oddball who desires to have a child, who loses her sister due to a series of accidents. Karen(..already affected by a rape)never quite recovers from the death of sister Isa(Caroline Hildebrand)and decides to remain in the future, falling in love with Arthur(Keith Carradine). Nerdy, but sweet Ronald(Kevin Hearst)becomes Karen's confident and friend, and they set out ahead of their commune to find Portland, awaiting the others who follow behind. Arthur and crippled Jennifer(Meredith Hull)remain with disturbed Leslie(Dale Hopkins)who seems to be slipping into madness due to the fact that the time traveling device's control mechanism seems inoperable with the idea of not returning to her own time too difficult a burden to bare. Along the way, though, Karen realizes she must return to Arthur, leaving the group out on her own which will yield devastating consequences.Obviously, director Peter Fonda was speaking out regarding man's destroying mother earth to fuel the resources we need to survive. We rape and pillage the land and what's underneath it, leaving a barren wasteland. The climax, quite audacious, shows that mankind has become "energy cannibals", the supply for such resources coming from another source. Striking / gorgeous cinematography creating a spellbinding use of the location of Idaho. I think Fonda chooses certain beautiful natural locations to further his message that these places can remain this way if we quit ruining them with our desires for energy consumption. It's an ecological parable, through and through, with off-beat characters and an unpredictable story-line with quite a heady conclusion right out of left field. Karen is quite a multi-faceted character, full of differing emotions, and it's an interesting choice by Fonda to focus on her character instead of someone like Carradine's or Hearst's. She makes some questionable decisions which come back to haunt her, but Karen is a spontaneous kind of character who often follows her heart, even when it costs her dearly. The film is very much a fixture of it's time, but Fonda gives us quite a unusual contribution to the post-apocalypse genre.

This is not a movie for folks who don't like to think. Though the reason for the future crisis is not given, nor the fate of party headed for the coast, the few clues dropped on what is going on is interesting.There are also hints of WWII treatment of the Jews with people in cattle cars and the retarded turned out into the wilderness to die or be used. Not to mention the blonde future girl - images of the perfect 'master race'.Also mentioned was that the lab was torn down and they didn't know why. Add the images of the military taking over and them witnessing Karen using the transfer machine, makes the watcher wonder if the device was dismantled and put somewhere else and the idea born to use people as energy instead of fossil fuels.Though the film has many plot holes, the over all concept is interesting with its many literary touches mixed with Science Fiction elements. It is also a haunting film that sticks in the mind.