The Movie: The Time Machine is classic 1960's sci-fi, complete with super cheesy musical score, a future full of beautiful, brainless blonde women, and of course, academy award winning special effects that are charmingly cheesy by today's standards.

Based on H.G. Wells' novel by the same name, The Time Machine explores the idea of time travel through the adventures of a man from the turn of the 20th century, and offers grim view of where humankind will be in the future if we do not educate ourselves and change our ways. This vision of our world includes the total destruction of our planet after centuries of war, and is perhaps a message that we should stop getting so good at killing each other and educate ourselves into a better future instead.

All in all, it's (as I mentioned before) a charmingly cheesy 60's sci-fi flick that might be worth watching if you're into that kind of thing, or you want to compare it to the 2002 remake.

The DVD: Newly restored, the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer looks absolutely fantastic, with almost no film grain visible, only minor instances of dust and dirt, and wonderfully detailed. The color was somewhat desaturated, and had an almost hand-tinted look to it, but that may just be an effect of the "futuristic Metrocolor" used in the production of this film. The audio was also restored and was remarkably full and rich for a movie of this era featured a new 5.1 surround mix, that although mostly focused in the front channels, there were a few surround effects thrown in.

Special features include a fully produced theatrical trailer with the same great, restored video as the rest of the movie, cast bios, and a documentary about the film that was clearly made long after the movie itself, but I've thus far been unable to determine when it was made.

The documentary was pretty boring, but was interesting in that it featured some scenes with the stars (much older) acting out what might had happened if George returned to 1900. Most interesting to me though was the inclusion of some Back to the Future promotional footage including little segment of a rather young Michael J. Fox sitting in the time machine talking about time travel, then introducing the new time machine -- the Delorean that would be used in Back to the Future.

Anyway, if you are a fan of this movie, I'd definitely recommend this DVD, as this film has never looked or sounded this good before. If you're not, well, it's probably worth a rental, at least.