Someone out there, somewhere, owns the rights to Timesweep, the 1987 magnum opus from writer/director Dan Diefenderfer (screenplay credits were shared with Larry Nordsieck and John Thonen). As of this writing, Timesweep is nowhere to be found on streaming services, outside of the nooks and crannies where someone has uploaded an old VHS transfer. For shame. This movie is right up Tubi’s alley, and I’m sure whoever owns the rights could use the extra fifty bucks. Anyway…
Timesweep tells the tale of a bunch of mild-mannered 30-something Midwesterners who find themselves trapped in an abandoned building that is hopping through time. Monsters, aliens, zombies, a crazed hermit, killer bugs, and more abound, providing the audience with a surprising amount of gore for so moribund a budget.
The building in question is an old film studio that is slated for demolition. An architecture professor, Vincent Hill (Kevin Brief), a film professor, H.G. Lewis (Frank Vrooman), and students have gathered to explore the old edifice before it’s gone forever. Joining them is a local news anchor covering the story, Angela Markell (Denise Gray), and cameraman Mike Romero (Michael Cornelison). Mike is the rebel of the movie. One can tell because he shows up two minutes late, and he’s rocking a beige jacket. Yeah, there were some wild folks in Kansas City, Missouri in the 1980s.
Once all the cast is gathered, Diefenderfer wastes little time. Viewers get bodies and blood with only cursory setup. We like that here at Missile Test. So many bad movies fail at pace, it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker who knows how to move things along, even if just about everything else is shit.
At its heart, Timesweep is a fun house flick. Characters go from room to room and fright to fright, with fewer characters remaining after each encounter. Not much in the way of danger repeats itself, and the time travel nature of the threats allowed Diefenderfer and company to use whatever baddie the budget allowed. That could be a monster-gloved hand, or zombies in white jump suits. There is even an innocuous appearance from a flapper.
The time travel stuff isn’t all that interesting, though, as it feels like little more than a conceit to get a gaggle of different threats into the movie. So little attention is paid to the sci-fi aspects of the plot that it looks as if the monsters came before the screenplay, or the screenplay was adapted to whatever Diefenderfer and company could throw together.
The story never grows beyond the barest of threads, with expository scenes seeming like they were a necessary chore in between gory set pieces. The acting is low-rent, with a large number of the cast having this film as their sole credit on IMDb. Many scenes also have that first take feel, with pauses in delivery while cast members try to remember their lines. Film stock and time being such precious commodities, that’s no great sin for a shitty movie.
But, as mentioned above, the pace is good, and the location, what little of it can be seen in a degraded VHS transfer, is interesting. It looks as if the movie was filmed in an actual abandoned building, and it is nicely creepy, despite the liberal use of a fog machine.
Timesweep was Diefenderfer’s only directing effort, and that’s disappointing for fans of cheap horror and other deficient cinema. He couldn’t wrangle his cast worth a damn, but he had definite skill at making enjoyable bad movies. It might not be what he wanted, but he will always be celebrated on this website. Timesweep enters the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index at #334, displacing Gargoyles.