The Time Travelers is a 1964 American science fiction film directed by Ib Melchior and starring Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, Steve Franken, and John Hoyt.

The plot involves a group of scientists who find that, due to an electrical overload, their time-viewing screen suddenly allows them to travel through time.

[2] Scientists Dr. Erik von Steiner, Dr. Steve Connors, and Carol White are testing their time-viewing device which is drawing enormous amounts of power.

Pursued by hostile mutants they seek refuge in a cave which they discover leads to an underground city – all that is left of civilization in a future devastated by nuclear war.

City leader Dr. Varno explains that the devastated Earth is now unable to support life, and that the residents, along with their androids, are frantically working on a spacecraft which will take them to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.

The travelers realize that, due to mistakes in their calibration of the portal, they are experiencing time at an accelerated rate, and will therefore die of old age by the end of the day.

When they enter the portal, the screen flashes on and shows the travelers walking in a sunlit clearing with trees and grass; the surface of the Earth is habitable again.

[citation needed] In some scenes conjuring tricks are used to compensate for the lack of visual effects; for instance, in one uncut shot, a mask-wearing actor playing an android appears to have his head removed and replaced by another, before walking away.

In an early 2010s retrospective review Graeme Clark of The Spinning Image wrote, "In spite of the low budget, this still looks pretty good thanks to intelligent use of the resources available.