Plot: It's 1893 London. Futurist H.G. Wells believes that the future holds a Utopian society. He also believes in time travel. He has just built a time machine which he is displaying to a group of skeptical friends, including surgeon Dr. John Leslie Stevenson. Unbeknown to Wells or anyone else among that circle, Stevenson is better known to the public as Jack the Ripper. Just as the police are about to capture Stevenson, he uses the time machine to escape, with Wells being the only one who knows what happened to him. Not telling anyone except his trusting housekeeper, Wells follows Stevenson in order to capture and bring him back to face justice. Where Stevenson has gone is 1979 San Francisco. There, Wells is dismayed to find that the future is not Utopia as he had predicted. But Wells is also picked up by a young woman named Amy Robbins. As Wells and Amy search for Stevenson, Stevenson conversely is after Wells to obtain the master key to the time machine. As Stevenson continues his murderous ways, he will stop at nothing to achieve his desires, which places Amy in danger.
Alternative Plot: H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has built a time machine, and he plans on using it to travel to a Utopian paradise in the future. But before he can, Jack the Ripper (David Warner), on the run from the police, uses it to escape and travel to 1979. Wells follows, and enlists the help of a bank teller named Amy (Mary Steenburgen) to catch Jack before he continues his killing spree. As they work together, Wells falls for Amy, even as she has a hard time believing his wild story of time travel.
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