At a recent video showing at the Upper Hutt Science Fiction group, someone turned up with a copy of a TV movie called "The Man from Earth".  Just one look at the cover was enough to make me think "well this looks ... cheap". 

 I remember all too well in the video boom of the 80s finding all sorts of science fiction movies at my local store, and getting excited "could this be a film so great it could eclipse Star Wars and no-body's told me about it".  Together usually with an "oooh and it's got Rutger Hauer in it".  Alas experience showed usually there'd been a very good reason why I'd not heard of that film ... namely it stunk.

So imagine my surprise as the story unfolded - cheap yes, but a well written film chock full of cleverness, take really played well to it's limitations.  The film is about youthful Professor John Oldman - he's packing up to leave for a new placement, and his colleagues turn up to throw him a surprise party.  Their experience covers between them biology, history, psychology, biblical studies.  Watching him collect up his things, there's something that each catches their eye.  They begin to realise there are all kind of oddities about John, like the fact he hasn't seemed to really age in the 10 years they've known him.

Overhearing their conversation, John breaks out his best whiskey.  He has an idea for a game, based on a book he's thinking of writing.  What if it was possible for someone to be born immortal, and had lived through all the ages of man.  How would that even be possible?  Who in history would he have met, and who would he have been?  How would he even view his fellow mortal man ...

What follows are a series of conversations between the various characters, exploring the game of "what if", with some people being amused by the ideas, and some feeling offended.  An odd film, it feels in many ways like something that should be staged as a play.  What raises the bar on it is some well written dialogue - it was written by TV writer Jerome Bixby, who explored something similar in his Star Trek episode "Requiem for Methuselah".  And supported by some very strong acting - especially from Star Trek veterans John Billingsley (who jokes in the extras "I was in the Star Trek that killed the franchise") and Tony Todd (who was Worf's brother).  And in a bit of a twist to the central theme, there is William Katt (remember him from the Greatest American Hero) who is a man suffering from an obvious midlife crisis and trying to hold onto a feeling of youth.

Whilst not a film you're going to want to watch again and again, it's going to be a film you're going to think a bit about afterwards.  And remember for a while.

So maybe you should never judge a DVD too harshly by the cover.