👽 Time Walker (1982) Review

🕯 In Memory of Maddie 🕯
This review is dedicated to my friend Maddie—an unapologetic lover of the absurd, the unwatchable, and the unintentionally hilarious. While most people fled from bad movies, she ran toward them with popcorn and sarcasm. She believed that even the worst films deserved a watch… if only to yell at the screen. Maddie didn’t just laugh at the chaos—she celebrated it. And now, so will I. This one’s for her.

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailer, shall we?

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Non-Spoiler Plot Overview:

“Time Walker” is a 1982 sci-fi horror film that tries to blend ancient Egyptian mythology with alien lore. The story begins at a California university where archaeologists receive a mummy unearthed from King Tut’s tomb. But this isn’t any ordinary mummy… it might be something far older, far stranger, and far more extraterrestrial. Once the body arrives at the school, strange things begin happening. People go missing. Glowing mold spreads. And the ancient sarcophagus is empty. Because the mummy? It walked off.


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Character Rundown:

Professor Douglas McCadden (Ben Murphy): The lead archaeologist and kind of the film’s hero. He’s your classic 80s academic type who starts suspecting there may be something more than just a mummy at play.

Peter Sharpe (Kevin Brophy): One of the students who gets caught up in the mystery.

Susie Fuller (Nina Axelrod): McCadden’s assistant, the classic supportive female lead with some agency but mostly reacts to chaos.

Dr. Ken Melrose (James Karen): The medical examiner who runs into the corpse mold issue and gets dragged into the horror.

The Alien/Mummy (Time Walker): Technically the star of the show. He’s not actually undead, but a stranded alien being in stasis. And by the end, the whole movie shifts gears when his tech gets activated.



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Pacing / Episode Flow:

The film stumbles in the pacing department. The setup is cool and full of promise (mummy that’s actually an alien? Yes please), but it drags in the middle with college drama, pointless subplots, and weird 80s montages that don’t help the mystery or tension. It picks up again once the mummy starts picking people off and the alien tech becomes clearer.


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Pros:

The concept is great. I mean, a mummy that turns out to be an alien? That’s my kind of crazy.

Egyptian archaeology mixed with sci-fi is a genre blend I love.

Some fun old-school practical effects with the glowing green alien goo/mold.

The final ten minutes make up for a lot with an unexpected alien tech twist.



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Cons:

It’s slow. Like, weirdly slow. There’s way too much downtime between creepy moments.

Most of the characters feel half-written.

The middle act gets muddled with campus subplots that don’t matter.

Despite the cool concept, the alien mummy barely gets screentime.

The ending feels abrupt, like they ran out of budget and just… stopped.



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Final Thoughts:

“Time Walker” is a cult classic in the sense that the idea is way better than the execution. It’s an 80s B-movie through and through. If you’re into the idea of ancient aliens, King Tut curses, and sci-fi horror mashups, it’s worth a watch for the novelty alone. But you’ll be screaming at your screen half the time wondering why they didn’t do more with such a fun setup.


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Rating: 5/10


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Spoiler Warning:

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Spoilers + Full Plot Details:

So yeah. The “mummy” is actually a stranded alien who crash-landed in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago and was entombed because locals didn’t know what else to do with him. That sarcophagus? It’s a suspended animation chamber. And those hieroglyphs? They’re space instructions.

The green mold that spreads around his coffin is some kind of alien contaminant that mutates tissue and kills people who get infected. Multiple victims get turned into corpses with gnarly skin conditions.

🧪 Spoiler Alert — Full Plot Walkthrough
(“Flashy thing ready, you will now forget everything from here on out if you choose to.”)

So after all the mold nonsense, slow reveals, and ancient-Egypt-meets-alien-disease storytelling, how does this movie wrap things up?

With a wet fart of a cliffhanger.

Our lead character? Shot. Boom. Just gunned down by one of the greedy men. But then the alien (yes, the glowing space mummy who’s been mostly MIA for the runtime) extends a hand, touches him, and in a blinding light they both teleport away like it’s the season finale of Stargate.

Then the other guy — the jackass who did the shooting — decides to grab the crystal ball because hey, why not? Cue the mold creeping up his hand like a cursed fungus glove… and then, with no shame, the words pop up:

“To Be Continued.”

EXCUSE ME? TO. BE. CONTINUED!?

This isn’t a series. It’s barely a movie. You can’t pull a cliffhanger if you never follow up. It’s not even an open-ended finale, it’s just unfinished. They didn’t make another one. This wasn’t Part 1 of anything. It’s just… not over. You don’t get to yell “To Be Continued” like you’re the Back to the Future trilogy when you never shoot Part 2, you liars!

Absolutely criminal way to end a movie.