{"id":35439,"date":"2021-07-07T17:27:43","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T21:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=35439"},"modified":"2021-07-07T17:27:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-07T21:27:43","slug":"the-time-guardian-1987-blu-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/07\/the-time-guardian-1987-blu-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time Guardian (1987) [Blu-Ray]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Brian Hannant\u2019s \u201cThe Time Guardian\u201d is about as vintage straight to video science fiction as it can get. It\u2019s a low budget, serviceable genre entry with a hodgepodge of (what feel like) recycled concepts that never quite gel together, and sadly never comes together even by the time the climax rolls around. It\u2019s \u201cBack to the Future,\u201d \u201cBattlestar Galactica,\u201d \u201cStar Wars,\u201d and \u201cTerminator\u201d all rolled in to one big Ozploitation m\u00e9lange. At its best it\u2019s only kind of charming in fleeting moments; at its worst, it\u2019s absolutely dull late night cable fodder.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the year 4039, the last survivors of humanity fight a desperate rearguard war, travelling back and forward across time in a city that is protected by a force field. All the while, they are pursued by the Jen-Diki, an alien cyborg race that is determined to eliminate humanity. The soldier Ballard and his partner Petra go ahead to prepare the way for the city\u2019s landing in the Australian Outback in 1988. Local geologist Annie Lassiter comes to the pair\u2019s aid as they tries to deal with both sadistic small town police and Jen-Diki advance troops.<\/p>\n

Carrie Fisher (one of the only two American actors cast) has a handful of scenes thrown in as a supporting character, but she\u2019s mostly there for genre cred and doesn\u2019t have much of a huge effect on the narrative. There\u2019s also Dean Stockwell who is given some scenes to help further the movie along with some clunky exposition, but he\u2019s absolutely wasted. \u201cThe Time Guardian\u201d is based a lot around the fish out of water trope with characters displaced from their own time, fighting a sentient menace, and of course there\u2019s the omnipotent army of powerful robots that threaten humanity. Director Hannant obviously doesn\u2019t have enough budget to drop us in to this dystopia for long, so he sets about ninety percent of the film in contemporary Australia.<\/p>\n

The killer robots, the Jen-Diki, are well designed, if occasionally awkward, and resembling something out of the original \u201cBattlestar Galactica.\u201d The film is centers mainly on Tom Burlison\u2019s hero Ballard, and his twentieth century squeeze Anna, as played by the lovely Nikki Coghill. There\u2019s central focus on their relationship and obvious romantic tension, all the while Fisher is relegated to more of a feature player who helps push the movie to the finish line. Director Hannant does a decent enough job delivering on what is a pretty basic eighties sci-fi entry in the realm of \u201cSolarbabies,\u201d \u201cIce Pirates,\u201d \u201cAlienator.\u201d You might find yourself wishing you were watching something much better, but you won\u2019t regret experiencing it.<\/p>\n

The Blu-Ray from Kino includes two original trailers for \u201cThe Time Guardian,\u201d and bonus trailers for The Time Travelers<\/em>, Rollerball<\/em>, Eye Of The Tiger<\/em> and Trackdown<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Hannant\u2019s \u201cThe Time Guardian\u201d is about as vintage straight to video science fiction as it can get. It\u2019s a low budget, serviceable genre entry with a hodgepodge of (what feel like) recycled concepts that never quite gel together, and sadly never comes together even by the time the climax rolls around. It\u2019s \u201cBack to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[58,71,2762,874,906,1087,1098],"class_list":["post-35439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectors-den","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-killer-robots","tag-romance","tag-science-fiction","tag-thriller","tag-time-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35441,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35439\/revisions\/35441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}