Millennium

Sci-fi writer John Varley adapted his own short story Air Raid for this screenwriting debut, but an intriguing concept ends up with all the credibility of speculation that the moon is made of green cheese. Plane crash expert Bill Smith (Kristofferson) is called in to investigate the mid-air collision of a 747 and a DC-10. But this is no ordinary catastrophe: watches found in the wreckage run backwards, and a futuristic stun-gun is unearthed. Bill soon meets Louise (Ladd), who heads a commando team from a thousand years in the future. These time travellers have urgent business in the 20th century, which helps sustain life among a dying race of humanoids subsisting on infusions of fluorocarbons. The film never really overcomes obvious budgetary constraints, with important moments drained of impact because the effects lack imagination. Kristofferson and Travanti (as a physicist) are effectively true to form, but Ladd is woefully inadequate.