Timerider: The Adventures of Lyle Swann
Entry updated 16 February 2017. Tagged: Film.
Film (1983). Zoomo Productions/Jensen Farley Pictures. Directed by William Dear. Written by Dear, Michael Nesmith. Cast includes Belinda Bauer, Peter Coyote, L Q Jones, Ed Lauter and Fred Ward. 92 minutes. Colour.
This Time-Travel Western prefigures the more successful Back to the Future Part III (1989) in its juxtaposition of twentieth-century technology and the generic conventions associated with tales of the nineteenth century. Motorcycle ace Lyle Swann (Ward) blunders into a time-travel experiment and is zapped back to the Old West, where he tangles with outlaw varmint Peter Coyote, terrifies the superstitious Mexicans and romances Belinda Bauer so that he can turn out to be his own great grandfather. Despite the amiable cast and pleasant scenery, the film, like its hero, does little but ride around in circles in the desert. Nesmith, the co-screenwriter, ex-member of the pop group The Monkees, went on to produce Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984). [KN]
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