Idaho Transfer
July 4, 2021 11:47 AM Subscribe
Idaho Transfer is a 1973 science fiction time travel movie produced and directed by Peter Fonda.
Hat Tip to Mefite cpound whose blog post here led me to the movie in the first place.
In this interview, Peter Fonda talks about getting the script, hiring the mostly non - professional actors, and the ending (which is a surprise), so I don't recommend watching this video until after you watch the movie.
In some ways, this movie reminded me of Primer in that 1) the time travel aspect is really a set-up for what the film is really about and 2) the fact that a lot of the important information in the movie is contained in dialogue between characters.
If you feel like you missed something, this IMBD review with spoilers covers a lot of the stuff you might have missed.
Hat Tip to Mefite cpound whose blog post here led me to the movie in the first place.
In this interview, Peter Fonda talks about getting the script, hiring the mostly non - professional actors, and the ending (which is a surprise), so I don't recommend watching this video until after you watch the movie.
In some ways, this movie reminded me of Primer in that 1) the time travel aspect is really a set-up for what the film is really about and 2) the fact that a lot of the important information in the movie is contained in dialogue between characters.
If you feel like you missed something, this IMBD review with spoilers covers a lot of the stuff you might have missed.
What a fun choice for a quiet and/or lazy afternoon! Obviously, I enjoyed this film, and it's an excellent example of a kind of storytelling I noticed in a lot of 70s SF (Morel's Invention, The People, The Changes, A Warning to the Curious and more) where there's a good idea being worked out and just no rush to get through it--inviting the viewer to take some time with the mystery of what's happening and contemplate a few incidents and scenic views along the way.
posted by cpound at 12:48 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by cpound at 12:48 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
I feel like I should add a warning: the movie review Eye of Newt linked to includes an only partially-obscured JPEG of a 16-year old girl's breasts, which seems like a not super great thing to have in your browser history (or brain)
posted by ThisIsAThrowaway at 1:36 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by ThisIsAThrowaway at 1:36 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm only about a third of the way in, but wanted to drop this here: Hell's Half Acre Lava Field
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:49 PM on July 4, 2021
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:49 PM on July 4, 2021
rum-soaked, I've been there! The whole time my dude and I were walking (actually picking our way through) the _easy_ trail, I was _Terrified_ that one of us would slip and cream an ankle or something. It is really intense.
Also, Idaho is just geologically alien to someone from the Southeast. Seriously. Terrifying fast rivers, instead of the muddy crawl of the Chattahoochee near my birthplace. Wide, flat, dry, or high, steep, dry, instead of the undulating overgrown humidfest of Georgia and North Carolina.
Oh, and the politics is its own thing too.
We went for the eclipse, but oh wow was it a fascinating visit.
posted by amtho at 2:01 PM on July 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
Also, Idaho is just geologically alien to someone from the Southeast. Seriously. Terrifying fast rivers, instead of the muddy crawl of the Chattahoochee near my birthplace. Wide, flat, dry, or high, steep, dry, instead of the undulating overgrown humidfest of Georgia and North Carolina.
Oh, and the politics is its own thing too.
We went for the eclipse, but oh wow was it a fascinating visit.
posted by amtho at 2:01 PM on July 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
What a great choice! cpound is right: simple good ideas being worked out at a leisurely pace make for compelling viewing. Idaho Transfer is a favorite of mine, the amateur cast, the incongruous collision of technology artifacts against barren desolate landscapes, the grim determination of the transfer travelers, like a kind of hippie version of the Dharma Initiative, and the dark, twist ending makes for a unique experience. It's like what La Jetee would have become if Chris Marker was wandering, strung out in in the desert.....
And thanks for the link to Million Monkey Theater. Down the rabbit hole I go! (Too many animal tropes for one sentence?)
I'll throw in a couple of related movie ideas: The History of Time Travel (super-clever pseudo-documentary that is itself subject to time alterations), Black Hollow Cage (time loop murder mystery within weird architecture), Los Cronocrimenes (obligatory), Haytabo - Falscher Verdacht (starring Eddie Constantine, but not as Lemmy Caution) and Hu-Man (a time travel version of Orpheus and Euridyce, starring Terence Stamp!).
Metafilter: Inviting the viewer to take some time with the mystery of what's happening and contemplate a few incidents and scenic views along the way.
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 2:06 PM on July 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
And thanks for the link to Million Monkey Theater. Down the rabbit hole I go! (Too many animal tropes for one sentence?)
I'll throw in a couple of related movie ideas: The History of Time Travel (super-clever pseudo-documentary that is itself subject to time alterations), Black Hollow Cage (time loop murder mystery within weird architecture), Los Cronocrimenes (obligatory), Haytabo - Falscher Verdacht (starring Eddie Constantine, but not as Lemmy Caution) and Hu-Man (a time travel version of Orpheus and Euridyce, starring Terence Stamp!).
Metafilter: Inviting the viewer to take some time with the mystery of what's happening and contemplate a few incidents and scenic views along the way.
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 2:06 PM on July 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
A pointless point of data, but this film passes the Bechdel test in several scenes, not just as a single outlier scene.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:20 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:20 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
Sorry, came back to add Tout Spliques Etaient Les Borogoves/Mimsy Were The Borogoves (1970). This French film (made for TV originally) scared the hell out of me as a kid, and yet, rewatched as a grown up, turns out to be a charming story of interdimensional adventure. Recommended if you can find it....
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 2:34 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 2:34 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
OK, I just saw the ending, and um... Yeah, 1971.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:39 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:39 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Idaho Transfer is a 1973 science fiction time travel movie
Not some sort of potato exchange, then...? Oh well.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:44 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not some sort of potato exchange, then...? Oh well.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:44 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Just started watching, and the Director of Photography is BRUCE "The Father of CGI" LOGAN. Which goes a long way to explain the pretty pictures.
posted by mikelieman at 3:32 PM on July 4, 2021
posted by mikelieman at 3:32 PM on July 4, 2021
In related: obscure-ish film, time travel, sand, on YT: Drifting Classroom
posted by ovvl at 4:26 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 4:26 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also note that that movie review features a LOT of drooling over teenage girls, the use of the R-word, and other stuff likely to upset Mefi types.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:42 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:42 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
The upper midwest's answer to Manhattan Transfer.
posted by amtho at 5:11 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by amtho at 5:11 PM on July 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
With soundtrack by Bruce Langhorne! (The eponymous Mr. Tambourine Man). His soundtrack for Fonda’s film The Hired Hand transcends being a mere movie score and contains some of the best, most affecting, haunting and beautiful music ever composed (your use may vary). The Idaho Transfer score has bits of that same achy melancholy, but with synthesizer bits and a country rock vibe to boot. I think I saw this on a Saturday afternoon on the same channel that played horror movies and westerns and occasional weirder fare.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 6:50 PM on July 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 6:50 PM on July 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
As an aficionado of time travel books, they’re indeed never really about time travel.
posted by GuyZero at 11:59 PM on July 4, 2021
posted by GuyZero at 11:59 PM on July 4, 2021
The review also seems to parse some dialogue from a later scene as being about the wider situation, rather than about the local one. There's a scene late on in the film where one character is giving a distraught explanation to another, and it's clear it's about the people she was with in the future, not the global catastrophe between past and future. I think that review is problematic for a number of reasons.
amtho, that was kind of my experience of the lava fields on the big island of Hawaii. We even had a ranger there with us, but hopping over crevices from cairn to cairn with a gradeschooler in tow was exciting to say the least!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:44 AM on July 5, 2021
amtho, that was kind of my experience of the lava fields on the big island of Hawaii. We even had a ranger there with us, but hopping over crevices from cairn to cairn with a gradeschooler in tow was exciting to say the least!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:44 AM on July 5, 2021
There are some scenes in the future where two kids encounter some abandoned cars. I had to remind myself that at least one of those was a brand new model for the era, and not something viewers at the time would have been accustomed to seeing in that state. It probably has less of a visual effect on us now, when those cars are naturally 50 years old.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:47 AM on July 5, 2021
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:47 AM on July 5, 2021
Also, I spent the whole film wondering where they got all the ruggedised waxed flares.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:54 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 12:54 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also note that that movie review features a LOT of drooling over teenage girls, the use of the R-word, and other stuff likely to upset Mefi types.
Is that a reflection of the movie content, or something the writer brought in on their own?
posted by trig at 4:12 AM on July 5, 2021
Is that a reflection of the movie content, or something the writer brought in on their own?
posted by trig at 4:12 AM on July 5, 2021
I wish someone would track down the two women today and hear their stories. Doubt they got SAG cards from this.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:25 AM on July 5, 2021
posted by Ideefixe at 6:25 AM on July 5, 2021
Still watching but thanks for this. The cast of untheatrical, 1970 counter-cultural young people out in the middle of nowhere reminds me of Zabriskie Point.
posted by Rash at 11:32 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Rash at 11:32 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
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The site has a lot of long reviews of 'bad' movies. As a fan of the Comet TV Channel (streaming or using the ancient technology of antenna driven over-the-air television) I do enjoy watching a good bad science fiction movie.
posted by eye of newt at 12:27 PM on July 4, 2021 [1 favorite]