Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swan (1982) Jensen Farley Pictures/Sci-Fi-Action-Western RT: 94 minutes Rated PG (violence, language) Director: William Dear Screenplay: Michael Nesmith and William Dear Music: Michael Nesmith Cinematography: Larry Pizer Release date: September 1982 (US) Cast: Fred Ward, Belinda Bauer, Peter Coyote, Ed Lauter, Richard Masur, Tracey Walter, LQ Jones, Chris Mulkey, Macon McCalman. Box Office: $6M (US)
Rating: * ½
Although he preceded his fellow time traveler in the Old West by three (or eight) years*, Lyle Swan has nothing on Marty McFly. Similarly, Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swan barely compares to the third chapter of the Back to the Future trilogy. It commits the cardinal sin of taking an interesting premise and using it to minimum effect. It’s all promise, no follow-through.
While riding in a cross-country motorcycle race in the desert, Lyle Swan (Ward, Tremors) goes slightly off course…. by about a century. He rides right into the middle of a time travel experiment being conducted by a team of scientists led by Dr. Sam (McCalman, The Concorde… Airport ’79). Suddenly, he’s in a place he doesn’t recognize. And no, he hasn’t been doing peyote although it might have helped. It certainly couldn’t have hurt.
In his travels, Lyle encounters a band of outlaws led by Porter Reese (Coyote, E.T.) before finding his way to a small Mexican village overseen by Padre Quinn (Lauter, Death Wish 3). The peasant villagers, who refer to Lyle as “El Diablo”, are afraid of him because of his bike and red racing outfit. In the village, he officially meets the attractive woman he saw earlier swimming in a nearby pond, Claire Cygne (Bauer, Flashdance). They end up in bed together within minutes. Reese shows up with his gang, brothers Claude (Masur, The Thing) and Carl (Walter, Repo Man), to steal Lyle’s bike. After being repelled, they return later and kidnap Claire necessitating the involvement of a pair of US Marshals, Potter (Jones, The Wild Bunch) and Daniels (Mulkey, First Blood).
I couldn’t remember a single detail about Timerider when I sat down to rewatch it for the first time in 37 years. I do recall watching it on HBO in early September ’83 but only that. I lost interest and stopped paying attention. I paid attention this time and it didn’t make much a difference. I’m not likely to remember any details in a month’s time.
Directed flatly by William Dear (The Rocketeer), it’s about as interesting as driving through Kansas in a car with no radio. The script by Dear and ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith is neither clever nor witty, its biggest mistake. The idea of sending a biker from the 80s to the Wild West is rife with possibilities. For example, why not have Lyle be a huge fan of old westerns? He could introduce himself as John Wayne and rely on western clichés to get by. This might work if Lyle had any idea he traveled through time. He thinks he stumbled into some weird cult. It never occurs to him, not even once, that he’s not in his own time. How does he miss this? The signs are all there. Isn’t he the slightest bit curious why nobody has any sort of motorized vehicle or electronic device? Does he think everybody’s outdated mode of dress is a fashion statement? Are the makers really trying to tell us that Lyle’s smart enough to install all kind of gadgets on his bike, but not smart enough to ask somebody what day or year it is? Had he been aware at any point of the time displacement, Timerider might have been fun.
Timerider compounds its failure by wasting a cast of talented actors on substandard material, the most egregious being Jones, a cowboy actor who’s done plenty of movie and TV westerns. It feels like more could have been done with his character especially since there’s mention of a personal vendetta against Reese. Unfortunately, the screenplay short-changes Jones by introducing this thread late in the game and taking it nowhere. Lauter, one of my favorite character actors, is done a similar disservice with the lack of clarity given to his character. I didn’t know what to make of him. He’s a priest who takes goods as payment for protection. We never see him in a church, we never see him praying and he never quotes the Good Book. Is he a good guy or an opportunist in a collar? Ward is weak in the title role but only because too little is done with his character.
Then there’s the matter of the plot twist. It’s not really a surprise if you understand how time travel movies work or how movies in general work. I’m referring to the post-coital conversation between Lyle and Claire about his pendant that originally belonged to his great-great grandmother. She stole it from the father of her child as a reminder of their incredible one-night stand. The fact that it’s brought up at all means it’s important somewhere down the road. If you do the math, you can probably see where this is going. Can I get an “Ewww, yuck!”?
Timerider moves at too leisurely a pace to support the material. Lyle spends too long riding through the desert before he arrives at the village. It takes even longer to get to a good shoot-out, an essential part of any western. For the most part, the movie just spins its wheels before it reaches its non-ending. The movie just stops without anybody explaining to poor dim Lyle what just happened. It’s never even clear if he makes it back to his own time. It just stops and the credits roll.
I think the most apt descriptive term for Timerider is lame. It’s made with the same indifference as middle school students stuffing envelopes for the office in detention. It has no style or sense of fun. The plot and characters are paper-thin. It’s too light on the sci-fi aspect of the story only occasionally going back to the facility where technicians at computers try to figure out how to help Lyle. Big deal. There’s not even a single memorable line of dialogue. Of all the 80s movies that never come up in conversation, Timerider is one of the most justifiable titles on the list. It’s a trip to nowhere in time.
*= Depending on whether you go by the trilogy’s timeline or year of release.
