Time After Time (1979, dvd)

Synopsis: In Nicholas Meyer's splendid literary conceit, the novelist HG Wells (Malcolm McDowell) follows Jack the Ripper (David Warner) from Victorian London to contemporary San Francisco in his time machine. It's a sometimes gruesome experience that's wittily aware of anachronisms, as the blood-steeped Ripper, warped in nature as well as time, becomes gratefully aware that the present-day has many more killing devices.

It's an advancement Wells was always pessimistically aware of when he contemplated the future, and it's a point he would have relished being made in a film that never down-markets his genius even though it up-markets the action.

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, David Warner
Runtime: 107 min