Dr. Clint Earnshaw (Sam Groom) is a doctor in New Orleans in 1976. During Mardi gras a young girl is brought into his hospital suffering from a deadly virus known as “XB”. She is one of many that are suffering from the illness. If a cure isn’t found soon an epidemic will spread across the United States. The virus has proven to be deadly. The government sends Jeff Adams (Tom Hallick) to help. It turns out that Adams is not a doctor and has had no medical training. Earnshaw doesn’t know why Adams was sent. Adams says that he is aware that what Earnshaw is battling is an extinct virus previous known as Wood’s Fever.
Adams has a jet waiting that takes them to a research facility and introduces him to Dr. Amos Cummings (Booth Colman). Cummings is a former NASA physicist and a Nobel laureate. He and his co-worker Dr. Helen Sanders (Francine York) are working on a secret government project. Cummings is aware that Wood’s Fever was first diagnosed by a 19th century doctor, Dr. Joshua P. Henderson. Henderson managed to cure his patients who suffered from the virus. Unfortunately, Dr. Henderson and all his notes and patient records were destroyed in 1871 during the Great Chicago Fire. Cummings and Sanders have developed a method of time travel and want to send Earnshaw and Adams back to 1871 to talk to Henderson and find out his cure for Wood’s Fever. Earnshaw agrees to help.
Adams and Earnshaw are fitted with the proper clothes for the period. They step through a door into a fog laden room. As they descend a stairway they are transported to Chicago. Somehow Cummings’ calculations are off and instead of going back to October 4, 1871, and landing at the north side of town, they end up in the middle of downtown and the date is October 7th. Instead of having four days to achieve their goal they have only one. As of October 10th, the city of Chicago will be in flames.
Adams and Earnshaw arrive at the hospital with the cover story that they are doctors sent from Washington by the Surgeon General to help Henderson. Dr. Henderson (Richard Basehart) welcomes them. When questioned, the doctor admits that he has no idea why his patients are recovering. His standard protocol is quinine and calomel washed down with some homemade elderberry wine. None of which are special. Adams and Earnshaw have only 29 hours to investigate why Henderson’s patients are recovering before the entire city goes up in flames.
“Time Travelers” was released in 1976 and was directed by Alexander Singer. It is a made-for-TV science fiction thriller produced by Irwin Allen. The film was intended to be a pilot for a reboot of Allen’s previous time travel television series “The Time Tunnel”. The series was not picked up. Problems arose when Charles Willard Byrd claimed that the story was based on his unpublished book “A Time to Live”. Eventually the issue was settled. Byrd got monetarily compensated and credit for the story. The pilot was then repackaged as a television movie. Allen re-used some of the Time Tunnel sets for the film.
The movie is very much family friendly and is the usual fancy fluff engineered by Irwin Allen. It is a fun and entertaining movie that doesn’t take up a lot of time or brain cells. If you are looking for something that is very much PG but is still interesting, this will do.
“Calomel” is a white tasteless chemical compound of mercury and chlorine. It was used mainly as a fungicide and for various maladies. It was banned due to it being derived from Mercury and toxic. “Quinine” is a bitter crystalline compound derived from cinchona bark. The drug has a myriad of uses such as stomach problems, blood problems, mouth and throat problems and was used as an anti-malarial drug. It is also used as a flavoring for tonic water and alcoholic beverages.