This Academy Award nominated 27 minute short, 12:01 PM hails from 1991, three years prior to the release of its most famous offshoot GROUNDHOG DAY. The concept of a person reliving a period of time over and over may have been popularized by that 1993 film, but was not original to it.
12:01 PM hails from 1991, three years prior to the release of its most famous offshoot GROUNDHOG DAY.
The idea had already been utilized in the 1986 Ken Grimwood novel REPLAY and the Richard A. Lupoff story that inspired this film, published in the December 1973 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. Lupoff reportedly considered suing GROUNDHOG DAY’S distributor Columbia Pictures, but thought better of it (which may have had something to do with the fact that the first treatment of the concept wasn’t in Lupoff’s tale, but rather the 1956 story “The Tunnel Under the World” by Frederik Pohl).
Incidentally, a second film was adapted from Lupoff’s tale: the feature-length straight-to-video production 12:01 from 1993, which shoehorned a murder plot into the narrative. The initial short film, which hews more closely to the events of the story (which is well complimented by the abbreviated format), is the stronger of the two by far.
The film’s portrayal of the passage of time is one of its most intriguing aspects, with Myron’s single hour passing in impossibly quick intervals.
It begins with Myron (Kurtwood Smith), a businessman on his lunch break. Upon striking up a conversation with an attractive woman (MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE’s Laura Harrington) in a park, he reveals that he’s stuck in a time loop in which he’s continually thrust back to 12:01 PM after an hour. His claim is proven when, at 1:00, time stops and Myron finds himself back where everything began.
A ray of optimism occurs when Myron discovers a newspaper story about a scientist who claims time is about to reverse itself. Might this guy be able to help with Myron’s dilemma? He becomes determined to find out, although getting in touch with this person in a pre-cell phone world, and in the space of an hour, proves quite an ordeal.
“I never knew how short an hour could be.”
The film’s portrayal of the passage of time is one of its most intriguing aspects, with Myron’s single hour passing in impossibly quick intervals. He periodically glances at an outdoor clock, close-ups of which invariably show that several minutes have passed even though in reality only seconds have elapsed. Such surreality justifies the line “I never knew how short an hour could be,” delivered with great authority by Kurtwood Smith. Smith was already something of an acting veteran (with over 40 film credits) when he filmed 12:01, and is impeccable in the lead role (a good thing, because the less experienced supporting cast members don’t always pull their weight).
Director Jonathan Heap followed this little-seen triumph with a string of mediocre straight-to-video thrillers, the 2016 horror-fest THE UNWILLING and several more shorts, none of which had a fraction of the impact of 12:01 PM. It’s streaming on YouTube and is richly deserving of 27 minutes of your attention.
Vital Statistics
12:01 PM
Chanticleer Films
Director: Jonathan Heap
Producer: Teresa E. Kounin
Screenplay: Stephen Tolkin, Jonathan Heap
(Based on a story by Richard A. Lupoff)
Cinematography: Charlie Lieberman
Editing: Hubert de La Bouillerie
Cast: Kurtwood Smith, Laura Harrington, Jane Alden, Don Amendolia, Rick Stoneback, Mark Neely, Philip Morton, Tom Reed, Kirk Thatcher, Carol Zarlengo, Robert M. Taub, F. Richards Ford, John Bachelder, Bill Squier