Timequest (film)

Plot

Timequest explores the science fiction theme of altering the present day by traveling back in time and tampering with past events. In this particular film, on the morning of November 22, 1963, a elderly man (Ralph Waite) who wears spacesuit-type clothing materializes in the hotel suite occupied by Jackie Kennedy (Caprice Benedetti). The Time Traveler shows Jackie future television footage of the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy (Victor Slezak). Shortly thereafter, the Time Traveler speaks to the president and to the cynical Attorney General Bobby Kennedy (Vince Grant), giving them details of their respective assassinations (as it takes the Time Traveler quite a bit to convince Robert Kennedy that he is who he says he is as Kennedy attempts to debunk the Time Traveler's story) and of the public revelations of JFK's sex scandals, convincing the president to remain faithful to his wife. The Time Traveler, knowing Bobby's ways, won't state his name or his birthplace, but does mention that he was born on this day. The Time Traveler asks Jackie to dance with him; she does (the Time Traveler is obsessed with Jackie Kennedy).

The Time Traveler and the three Kennedys drink a toast in the hotel suite just before 12:30 pm, which is the time that history is definitely changed (JFK is shot-JFK is not shot). At 12:30 the Time Traveler turns into nothingness, and the lead-crystal glass that he was holding drops to the floor and shatters. Bobby finds a piece of glass with the Time Traveler's fingerprint on it. Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeffery Steiger) is captured, and Jack Ruby is killed before he can shoot Oswald. Clint Hill and Bobby Kennedy head to the grassy knoll and Hill takes out two gunman (indicating the film producers' belief in the conspiracy theories about the assassination). Oswald is taken to Washington, D.C. and interrogated by the Warren Commission; as a result, the CIA is disbanded. When J. Edgar Hoover threatens to blackmail the President by revealing audio tapes of Kennedy having sex with Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy counters by threatening to release photos of Hoover's alleged homosexuality. When Hoover caves in and agrees to hand over the tapes, Robert Kennedy also demands Hoover hand in his letter of resignation.

Similar to a future situation, John and Jackie Kennedy appear on television. John reveals his infidelities and asks for forgiveness from both his wife and the nation. Jackie stands with her husband and asks the country to do the same.

Bobby Kennedy is also determined to uncover the Time Traveler's identity in order to prevent him from eventually inventing time travel, but a pregnant Jackie exacts an iron promise from Bobby that the Time Traveler would never be harmed. As it turns out, the Time Traveler is Raymond Mead (Joseph Murphy) (who is, like his alternate self, obsessed with Jackie Kennedy). At sixteen he commits a burglary, is arrested and put on a prison bus; his fingerprinting enables President Bobby Kennedy to know the Time Traveler's name. President Bobby has the teenager pulled off the bus, he talks to the kid, and he gives Mead a full pardon.

Years later in 1994, when Mead has become an artist and is now married, an elderly Jackie buys many of his paintings. In 2001, after JFK dies of old age (and Jackie is already dead), their youngest son James Robert Kennedy (Rick Gianasi) explains to Mead why the Kennedy family has been so generous to him and reveals a portrait of his older self. The film later ends with Ray's younger self dancing with Jackie in 1963 as a dream sequence and Ray as a Baby in 1964 staring at the televised footage of Jackie outside Parkland Hospital (where her Husband was originally meant to die in the old time stream) with James as a baby on his TV.