Yes, some of the special effects are a bit dated, but it was more than made up for with a liberal sprinkling of magic tricks throughout the move to compensate. Very original, in my opinion. I found myself, more than once, hitting the rewind button to watch it over. Of course, that alone is not sufficient to make a movie good. The story line, although rather typical at first, had enough interesting twists and turns to keep you from getting bored. I am not sure if the comic relief was necessary or not. Perhaps the writers were unsure if they were writing a serious or humorous story. The ending, for it's time period, was quite bizarre although I would have liked to have seen a bit more of their final destination than just a view through the portal.

Danish filmmaker Ib Melchior is a good example of a man's determination to entertain audiences with stories that played with his vision of things to come (in the early 1960s), but the quality of his work only moderately justifies the effort. He was a counter-intelligence volunteer for the Americans during II World War, relocated to the United States, and at the peak of his career wrote for television series and science-fiction films (including a couple of contributions to the "red menace" trend, and "Death Race 2000", "Reptilicus" and "Robinson Crusoe on Mars") and directed two features. Considering the poor results of "The Angry Red Planet" that he made in 1959, "The Time Travelers" is his greatest achievement: the film has a lot of admirers, but it is quite telling of his capacity as director. Compare it with Edgar G. Ulmer's "Beyond the Time Barrier", a drama with a similar plot, made four years before with half the budget of "Travelers", and one can perceive the difference between an inspired filmmaker as Ulmer and a less gifted director as Melchior. More akin to "Queen of the Outer Space" (1958) without the campiness, "The Time Travelers" is also visually strident (cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond was still years away from the mastery he demonstrated in a long list of classics, including "McCabe & Mrs. Miller", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Deliverance"), the rhythm is pompous and slow, and leading man Philip Carey is as good an actor as Zsa Zsa Gabor. His character of a scientist (or the way he plays it, I really cannot tell) is too much of a ruffian, and he does not have much support from Steve Franken's comic relief interventions, Delores Wells' "Playmate of the Month" attitude, or Dennis Patrick's expressions to convey a dogmatic soldier. Merry Anders and Preston Foster are wasted, and only John Hoyt and Joan Woodbury maintain the impassivity and good judgment that their parts as regents demand. The script is one of those that give too many explanations while telling something far from original and, although it has occasional "intelligent" sparkles here and there (as the ending) to please the science-fiction audience, it does not prevent the film from being an average product.

The likelihood that our future is some kind of apocalyptic hellscape, while being somewhat depressing, was a huge boon for makers of low budget scifi films. In the post apocalyptic future of Ib Melchior's 'Time Travelers,' most of the action takes place indoors, where the human survivors of the apocalypse must stay so as to avoid the requisite race of post-atomic savage mutants. Shooting outdoors on location is expensive...shooting on small, spartan sets on sound stages is much cheaper.The other great thing about the human race having to live indoors is that women have to take off their clothes and go into a room together to bathe in the rays of a sun lamp, with a few carefully positioned props covering up their naughty bits so that the scene is cheesecake, rather than being soft-core porn. In my lifelong study of low budget scifi films, this is the only film I have seen where this aspect of our future post-apocalyptic life was explored.Scifi fans or film buffs looking for any kind of serious artistic or dramatic content should look elsewhere. This movie was obviously aimed at kids and adolescents, and the value of it now is just pure goofy fun.Comic actor Steve Franken, while not the leading man, is a highlight in this quirky opus, playing an electrician wearing coveralls named Danny McKee. Danny McKee has the habit of saying 'Holy McKee!' to express surprise or amazement. I have never in my life ever met a real person who used his own last name in this fashion...imagine if, say, Matthew McConaughey said 'Holy McConaughey!' whenever he was surprised or amazed. But for some reason, Danny McKee likes to say 'Holy McKee!' There is an improbable sub-plot of one of the beautiful future women, one of the gals in the semi-nude 'sunbathing' scene, falling in love with goofy Danny McKee. If they had married, would she also say 'Holy McKee'? If they were married by a clergy person, would they be united in Holy McKeetrimony? Another highlight of this film is that many of the special effects are simply bits of stage magic, perhaps adapted slightly to fit the setting. There is a scene, for example, where a head is removed from an operational android...this is done in the exact manner as a popular magic trick where a head is 'removed' from a living stage assistant. There are other stage magic tricks scattered throughout this film, such as the depiction of a high tech future assembly line and other business with the androids. I don't know if director Melchior was also a stage magician, or whether his FX person was, but the magic tricks provide unintentional humor and add to the goofy charm.

American International Pictures produced this science fiction film about four time travelers to the future who wind up in a conundrum. Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, and Steve Franken are the four intrepid travelers without a TARDIS.What they have instead is a time portal, created quite accidentally because all they wanted was a window of the future in their university laboratory. Instead they get a portal and all step into a world over a 100 years in earth's future.As for earth it has been ravaged by atomic war and the survivors are either these advanced scientists, savage mutants, or something in between. The scientists led by John Hoyt, Joan Woodbury and Dennis Patrick are constructing a rocket to take the survivors on a pre-set course to a new earth in the Alpha Centauri system. Will they make it before the mutants invade their citadel and how will that effect The Time Travelers?This film will never be a classic in the genre, but it's not too bad and does raise some interesting questions especially with the conundrum ending that it has.At least Rod Taylor when he was time traveling had a much better machine.