Dead of Night [segment 1]

Second Chance

by Richard Matheson, directed by Dan Curtis

Release: 29 March 1977
Format: Short Film
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

For the first of three short segments of the TV movie Dead of Night, Richard Matheson wrote this adaptation of Jack Finney’s 1956 story “Second Chance” where a college student lovingly restores a 1920s-era Jordan Playboy roadster and takes it back in time.

— Michael Main

I remember what someone once said; I think it was Einstein or somebody like that. He compared time to a winding river, with all of us in a boat drifting along between two high banks. And we can’t see the future beyond the next curve or the past beyond the curves in back of us, but it’s all still there, as real as the moment around us. To which I now add my own theory . . . that you can’t drive into the past in a modern car because there were no modern cars back then, and you can’t drive into 1926 along a four-lane superhighway, but my car and I—the way I felt about it anyway—were literally rejected that night by our own time.

DEBUT

Second Chance (NBC-TV, USA, 29 March 1977).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

PRIOR WORKS: based on “Second Chance” by Jack Finney (1956)

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Timeline Models

Time Loop

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From the old county road from Cairo to Crestwell, Illinois, the 1970s ⋙ to the same road, 1926. Note: Frank’s first spin in the restored Jordan Playboy.
From Crestwell, IL, 1926 ⋙ to Cairo, IL, the day after he left. Note: Frank, in his sleep.