The "Time Travelers" appears to be a failed attempt by producer Irwin Allen to revive his old "Time Tunnel" TV show in the 1970s. The plots are very similar—though in this latter version there was no fancy tunnel nor the facility that housed it—it was more of a 'poor man's version'. Now this is not to say that it's a bad film at all—it's a very good made for TV movie and I wish it had resulted in a new series.

In this film, two doctors from the present go back in time. The reason is not because of idle curiosity but because there is an outbreak of a deadly fever and doctors of 1975 are so far powerless to cure it. However, back just before the Great Chicago Fire, an obscure doctor did seem to have some success in treating this same illness—and these two men are determined to discover his secret (which had, incidentally, burned up with him in the fire.

Richard Basehart stars as this 19th century doctor and the rest of the cast was made up mostly of unknowns. The production values are decent—about what you'd expect for a made for TV film or pilot. Most importantly, the writing was quite good—with an intriguing story, decent dialog and a few nice twists. While it's not brilliant or super-original, it is a nice look into what might have been had the film gotten the attention of the network big-wigs.

Time Travelers was scripted by Jackson Gillis (whose career stretched back to radio) from a story by Rod Serling (which led to a lawsuit, as Charles Willard Byrd claimed that this movie was taken from an unpublished 1959 book A Time To Live. Byrd and the producers reached a monetary settlement that allowed Byrd to claim the original story as his work). It was developed by Irwin Allen in the hopes that he could relaunch his series The Time Tunnel, but the litigation kept the show from being bought and it ended up running as an ABC Movie of the Week on March 19, 1976.

Dr. Clint Earnshaw (Sam Groom, Deadly Eyes) and Jeff Adams are trying to cure the XD virus that has been slowly wiping out humanity. When they discover that a similar disease had been seemingly cured around the time of the Chicago fire, they head back in time to see if they can learn anything from Dr. Joshua Henderson (Richard Basehart!) Jeff ends up falling for Henderson's niece Jane (Trish Stewart, who played Basehart's daughter in Mansion of the Doomed) and nearly stays behind. However, the timeline must be protected and our heroes end up saving the day, if not every person.

Director Alex Singer went to the Bronx's William Howard Taft High School with Stanley Kubrick and one of his first jobs was as the cinematographer on Kubrick's short Day of the Fight. He also made the films A Cold Wind in August, Glass Houses and Captain Apache*, but the majority of his credits were in television.

*Written by Night Train to Terror impressario Philip Yordan!

This review comes to you from the future. Having watched this movie in 2019, I hasten to let you know it's a charming movie and enjoyable to watch.

This message is mainly produced for those fans who watched this movie some 8 years ago and earlier. You might come across some other messages from my era as we are able to time travel without moving at all.

Signing off and going back to my time. Goodbye and good luck!