Help me find out what this movie is
December 20, 2004 6:42 AM   Subscribe

Moviefilter: My officemate just described a movie he saw part of once, and I would like to find the complete version. Here goes: "It's about disaster tourism and time travelling. People from the future travel through time back to various tragedies: collapsing bridges, earthquakes, meteor strikes, etc." Hope me, please!
posted by Irontom to Media & Arts (13 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I just saw this movie a few weeks ago in India. It's called The Time Shifters but is also known as 'Thrill Seekers'. A decidedly average movie that sounds more exciting than it really is. I think whoever came up with the idea for famous photoshopped images that had the same guy in lots of historical disasters, e.g. WTC, Titanic, Hindenburg, etc, probably got it from this movie.
posted by adrianhon at 6:58 AM on December 20, 2004


Best answer: It's either Time Shifters or Grand Tour: Disaster In Time.
posted by riffola at 7:06 AM on December 20, 2004


Ergh. Very familiar. I think I saw an Outer Limits episode about this... or maybe it was earlier? The Twilight Zone from the 90s? I remember something about a group of people staying in a bed & breakfast that was going to burn down. The people where from the fuuuuture and wanted to watch.
posted by picea at 7:25 AM on December 20, 2004


I think these plots owe a debt to a 1946 short story by C. L. Moore called "Vintage Season." And I believe "Grand Tour: Disaster in Time" (also known as "Timescape") is specifically adapted from "Vintage Season."
posted by pardonyou? at 7:55 AM on December 20, 2004


I know! I know! Time Chasers!

(OK, well, probably not).
posted by Otis at 8:05 AM on December 20, 2004


There was a movie I saw once that was based upon a book I believe that was about a group of people from the future needed more people (maybe they couldn't reproduce or something...) so they'd go back in time to the time of a disaster (plane crash, etc.) and right before they're all suposed to die in the crash, they'd take them to the future.

I cannot recall the name of the movie/book, but this might be it.
posted by pwb503 at 8:54 AM on December 20, 2004


That was John Varley's Millennium, itself based on his short story "Air Raid." They'd go back in time, grab people from plane crashes and whatnot, and leave genetically-engineered "empty" bodies in their place so the body count would be correct and history wouldn't be changed. Movie here.
posted by kindall at 9:02 AM on December 20, 2004


Best answer: Um.... I don't know about the rest of you, but this sounds to me an awaful lot like Catherine Moore's "Vintage Season", made into a TV movie with Jeff Daniels. Wait... oh, yeah, they did call it Grand Tour: Disaster in Time. Unfortunately, they continue the tradition of co-crediting Henry Kuttner, who revealed after his wife's death that he most often had little to do with anything she wrote.

Was the movie actually any good? The plot synopsis makes it look as though they completely missed the real payoff: That the central "contemporary" character dies, leaving nothing but the image of his face in a future "disaster symphony". He manages to pen a warning to his contemporaries about these mysterious strangers from the future, but the house is burned to stem the tide of a plague epidemic that follows the disaster, and the message burns with it.

That used to be my favorite CL Moore story (superceded by "No Woman Born") and one of my favorite SF stories; it always struck me as a great basis for an old 'Zone episode, but not likely to ever be treated right in a film. Definitely worth checking out the story; it's anthologized in lots of places (e.g., the "Science Fiction Hall of Fame", which is a selection of pre-Nebula short fiction in three volumes).
posted by lodurr at 9:25 AM on December 20, 2004


"Vintage Season" is an incredible story, as pardonyou? and lodurr point out. I think that Connie Willis is doing really good work in the same vein as C.L. Moore, and I look forward to a movie of one of Willis's books or short stories.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:16 AM on December 20, 2004


Yeah, I'd pay good money to see a movie of "To Say Nothing of the Dog" or "Doomsday Book."
posted by kindall at 10:24 AM on December 20, 2004


It definately sounds like Millenium to me. God that movie was so terrible I love to watch it for the laugh fest (especially how they laser the cigarettes into oblivion so that they don't smoke [ of course, burning them faster isn't going make the smoke not rease or something, LOL ])
posted by shepd at 2:22 PM on December 20, 2004


Off-topic, but wasn't "Air Raid" in, like, the first or second issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine? I remember reading a copy I found in my grandmother's basement, and that story was messed up, what with the prosthetics and fake blood and all. Memories!
posted by jenovus at 6:06 PM on December 20, 2004


Response by poster: The officemate has spoken: Grand Tour: Disaster in Time is it.

Thanks!
posted by Irontom at 4:42 AM on December 21, 2004


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