The Time Guardian – starring Carrie Fisher and Dean Stockwell and directed by the co-writer of Mad Max 2 – has emerged on Prime Video UK.
Star Wars royalty Carrie Fisher. Blue Velvet and future Quantum Leap co-star Dean Stockwell. Filmmaker and Mad Max 2 co-writer Brian Hannant making one of the most expensive Australian films up to that point.
With a pedigree like that, you might think that The Time Guardian would be better known than it is. Instead, it largely sank without trace on its brief cinema release in 1987, and became one of those films that was doomed to lurk on the lower shelves of VHS rental libraries.
Unexpectedly, though, The Time Guardian has emerged on Prime Video in the UK, which means subscribers have the rare opportunity to watch one of the weirdest – and less often-discussed – sci-fi movies of the 1980s.
On paper, it’s a typical B-movie of its era. In the distant future, humanity is on the cusp of being wiped out by the Jen-Diki, a weird race of cyborgs that look like a cross between the Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica series and the creepy Maximilian from Disney’s The Black Hole. As the Jen-Diki shatter the defensive shield on one of humankind’s last remaining cities, seasoned warrior Ballard (Tom Burlinson) and his combat-ready sidekick Petra (Carrie Fisher) hatch a plan to transport the entire metropolis back in time to the safety of 1988.
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It’s when Ballard and Petra head back to the Reagan era that The Time Guardian becomes a more typical entry in the Ozploitation genre, with dusty small towns and their petty local law enforcers, car crashes and plenty of explosions. Angry Anderson, better known for his 1987 hit ‘Suddenly’ – the soundtrack to Scott and Charlene’s wedding in Neighbours – even provides one of the songs on the soundtrack.
It’s quite an odd cocktail, and that’s before you realise that Carrie Fisher – arguably the biggest star of the whole piece – is essentially third on the bill to the young, lesser-known Burlinson, and soap star Nikki Coghill, who plays geologist and 1980s resident, Annie.
Dean Stockwell has an even smaller role; as a bureaucrat who runs the humans’ future city, he’s largely asked to stand around, shouting at his subordinates.
Why is The Time Guardian so weird? The cliche of ‘too many cooks’ applies. It was originally conceived as a much smaller, more sober-minded sci-fi romance, with Hannant joining forces with respected author John Baxter to co-write the script. Then a succession of production companies got involved, most notably Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and Hemdale, and the budget suddenly blew up – a total of $8m was raised, which for an Australian indie film was a lot of money at the time.
With the bigger budget came demands for big action set pieces, and it’s possible to see the fingerprints of both New World and Hemdale on the finished movie. Its benighted future war between humans and cyborgs is quintessential James Cameron, who began his career working for Corman before making The Terminator for Hemdale. The big, slightly ridiculous action set-pieces that top and tail The Time Guardian were probably added at Hemdale’s behest. (In fairness, the effects look pretty good in places, particularly given that Australia wasn’t known for its VFX companies at the time.)
Any hopes of The Time Guardian being another breakout hit like The Terminator were soon dashed, however. The production became such an ungainly mess that Hannant eventually walked away from it, and the resulting film only made a fraction of its budget back in cinemas.
To this day, it’s unclear why Fisher – who was also in such acclaimed films as Hannah And Her Sisters and When Harry Met Sally at the time – agreed to star in it. Or how she was talked into wearing a singularly unflattering bit of futuristic armour that makes her Leia get-up from Return Of The Jedi look tasteful.
Thanks to Prime Video, viewers across the UK will be able to ponder those questions.
