Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982)

Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

One of my favorite time travel movies. This is a film that's taut and well-made and probably a tad too adult for the Saturday morning kiddie type crowd. It really should appeal to the viewer who has his thinking cap on and can appreciate attention to historical detail. In late 1982 the hero, an off road motorbike racer, named Lyle Swann, unwittingly gets caught in the middle of a time-travel experiment and is transported to the Old West of 1877. In the strata of science-fiction and time travel, this is believable since he's alone in the middle of the desert and cannot ascertain that he's been transported through a time warp. As the film progresses Swann meets several people in 1877: outlaws, an attractive woman named Clare Cygne from Louisiana, a priest Quinn heading a small town and two US Marshalls. The outlaws led by Porter Reese appear to be Civil War veterans from the Confederate side when Reese makes a crack about 'General Lee would have won the war if he had Swann's motorcycle'. The filmmakers add a nice touch and nod to Mark Twain. When Clare pulls out a copy of Twain's "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", written in 1865, viewers paying attention to the scene will recall that Twain is the author of one of the most famous time travel stories "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" written in 1889 and which probably inspires this film. Clare asks Swann if he can read and if he's read any Mark Twain and Swann responds telling Clare he has and that "Tom Sawyer" is Twain's most famous book. Since the old-west part of this film takes place in 1877, it wouldn't have been unusual that Clare would not have heard of "Tom Sawyer" as it had only been published in 1876. Other nice touches of realism are the showcasing of a community of outlaws living in a outlaw camp. The viewer may ask what are those outlaws doing for food, for clothes, bathing, laundry altogether basic survival. When one outlaw is shot early in the film his cohorts pick his body of clothing & belongings before the vultures get to him. The priest and Clare work together bartering with Mexican locals, trinkets, guns, and food stuffs.The film showcases several adult themes ie: profanity, gunshots, mild sex scene. It's amazing the film was released with a PG rating but remember this was 1982, two years before the Motion Picture ratings system was upgraded to include PG-13 and NC-17. The director keeps the film accurate to its 1877 time frame and shows elements in a western that are realistic such as the profanity and the renegade woman Clare who is a gunslinger, ?prostitute and adventuress. This film gets away with telling mature elements in Western that were not up to that time seen in conventional westerns especially going back to b/w films in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Had Timerider been made in the early 70s it might have been better received. If it had come out in the 40s or 50s as a film noir western it would certainly be a classic but with a compromise. There would not have been no cursing, no scrib gunshot wounds, the sex scene would not be explicit, though for 1982 the scene given is mild. More explicit sex scenes can be viewed in daytime soaps.GRANDFATHER PARADOX An interesting aspect of this film is the application by some of the 'so-called' Grandfather Paradox. Hmmm! This supposedly applies when Clare and Lyle have sex and she questions him about the pendant around his neck. He tells her that his great great grandmother took it from his great great grandfather after an incredible night and the great great grandfather was never seen again. At the end of the film Swann is rescued by helicopter by the scientists responsible for transporting him to 1877. The head scientists tells Lyle that Clare cannot come back with them to 1982 by which time Clare snatches Lyle's pendant from his neck. When Clare takes the pendant this essentially repeats the story of Lyle's great great grandmother: END OF STORY!.....No mysterious paradox, Clare merely snatches the pendant. At this point many viewers who have seen the film think that Clare's actions reveal her to be Lyle's great great grandmother. I thought this too at one time but this is IMPOSSIBLE. Even if time-travel was real, Lyle Swann could not be his own great great grandfather or father his own great grandmother who would be the child Clare would conceive after the night of sex with Lyle. IMPOSSIBLE, even if time-travel were real a person could not literally go back in time and father his own ancestor. A person has to come from somewhere, he has to have a history. Swann could sleep with his great great grandmother, impregnate her and it would be a completely different individual. (Remember when the two of them were going over the Mark Twain books she tells Swann her real name, Clare Cygne, which if she was his great great grandmother, he should have known her name. Or it should have sounded familiar. A flag should have gone up in Swann's head as to her identity.)This puts an end to the Grandfather Paradox. ...The pendant, a seemingly valuable trinket as Lyle had been handed down to by his mother, is probably something from the 19th century and now it's returning to it's original time when Clare snatches it. If Clare is pregnant by Lyle she'll merely hand it down to her offspring and he/she will hand it down and so forth but there is no reason Lyle will ever see it again as it will be a totally different set of people and circumstances who will receive the pendant.The film gets 3 1/2 stars out of 4.

How about that for a movie title then huh sounds like a children's weekday TV series on BBC1 or some cheesy children's adventure book. Looking at the movie poster really concrete's that theory, it looks like some hammy children's adventure book cover, like those old 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, remember those? I half expected this to be an adaptation of a children's book but surprisingly it isn't...but the whole premise predates the 'Back the the Future' franchise which makes you think.So basically a young Fred Ward plays the protagonist 'Lyle Swann', also known as the Timerider...kinda. During the Baja 1000 cross-country bike race he goes off course and ends up riding into a scientific experiment that has been set up to...errm send things back in time. Without knowing what's happened to himself Swann is now biking around the wild west of 1877 and naturally stumbles into all manner of problems with hilarious results. Well not really but you can guess the type of childish stuff that's gonna happen here right.Without trying to sound too predictable myself, this movie could easily be a spin-off of sorts to the third 'Back to the Future' movie, watching this really made me wonder if Zemeckis took a bigass leaf out of its book. The start of the movie virtually shows us nothing more than the title character riding through the barren Mexican desert on his bike, literately that for around 20 minutes! oh and a touch of plot revolving around white coats and and their unprotected unguarded science experiment. Seriously they are conducting this major experiment in the desert yet there's no one there to safeguard it or keep people or roaming animals out the way.Once in the wild west of Mexico Swann comes across all the things you'd predict he would such as bandits, outlaws, a lovely lady, priests and terrified locals. It is reasonably amusing how Ward's character doesn't know he's gone back in time, there are some nice moments based on that idea but most of what happens you can see coming a mile off like the locals thinking he's a demon from hell, Swann falling for the pretty female, the bad guys wanting his bike etc...I can't really complain about the clichéd plot line because the film was made in 82 and back then this wasn't clichéd or predictable, ditto the situations Swann gets into, nothing original or particularly exciting but back in the day it would have been different.I did like the twist ending surrounding his great great grandmother and father, bit of a time paradox thinker which shows that had Swann never gone back in time he would have never existed. There are some loop holes though like the fact his dirt bike get left behind, it gets destroyed but its still back in time...so wouldn't that alter history somewhat? Then there's the usual old silliness of all the outlaws shooting at Swann on his bike yet failing to hit him every time. I also liked the bit of dialog from Peter Coyote (the grizzled baddie) saying had the south (Dixie) had the bike they would have won the civil war...not too sure how a dirt bike would have won them the war to be honest. Funny how the bad outlaws in this movie are from the south, because anyone from the south at that time was obviously bad.Another thing I noticed towards the end of the movie which made me sit upright was the death of Coyote's villain (spoiler alert). In one sequence this baddie is suppose to get killed by a chopper tail rotor which is rescuing Swann. Now you see his final moment with a close up of his face, then it cuts away to screaming, but seconds later you see the character alive and well whilst you still hear his screaming in what appears to be a huge editing blunder. Either that or I'm simply mistaken which I really don't think I am because hey...its me.Yep I'm sure there are some folk out there remember this and will be outraged at the fact I'm saying its a dull bland boring ride. Unfortunately its just that...its just really unexciting without much genuine action to keep your attention. Ward is stoic as ever and Coyote hams it up nicely with plenty of snarling alongside a western drawl, but watching some dude bounce around on his dirt bike like Evel Knievel whilst slack jawed yokels attempt to shoot him gets mighty lame mighty fast. The story only becomes really interesting right at the very end with the nice time paradox twist, up to that point its no way as cool as the movies poster makes it out to be.4.5/10

Most excellent madcap drama containing quite a few good one liners, my fave being "did you see that machine spit at me?". Chock full of cool characters ranging from the totally homicidal gang leader and two witless helpers played by dumb and dumber to the coolly clueless motocross racer caught in a warp he never quite got his head around. The action never let up from the opening frame until the last minute when the lustful gang leader finally cut a deal with the owner of the machine and the audience was treated to a truly rousing, hair raising grand finale. I love this genre of film but usually feel short changed after watching one: not so with Timerider. Beautiful scenery, good acting, and an outlandishly ludicrous story made for one and a half hours of dee-light.

This was the first Cable movie I ever saw way back in 1983.The best things were its gadgets and predictions, more or less about our time believe it or not. He had a tricked up motorcycle with a heads up display on the inside of his helmet. Today I wish I had one of those with an lcd panel for my cubicle at work, complete with 5.1 dolby and bluetooth, oh well. The movie was great and I believe an ex-Monkey fellow named Mike Nesmit was somehow involved. It kinda fits in that genera that included 'The Comet' and Fred Wards later movie 'Remo Williams'. The helicopter scene is legendary even today. And Peter Coyote and Richard Masur have gone on to bigger and better things. I think it would play very well even today it has a timeless quality to it. The dead on predictions about gadgets though were erie, like Captain Kirk and his cell phone and Quantum Leaps Albert and Zyggy's Palm Pilot or iPaq.. just goes to show that Art doesn't often imitate life, its usually the other way 'round. I'd highly recommend this movie even for a contemporary audience. Though, the shocker scene I think is often edited out.. even on the VHS or DVD releases I've heard... it doesn't take too much away from the story.