Awhile back a friend was driving down Kansas Avenue when he happened to
see a Morlock driving the car next to him. Or at least he thinks it was a
Morlock. It had stringy, white hair. It had a shriveled face. It looked
like it had never seen the light of day.
Trouble was, it was smoking a cigarette.
This prompted a discussion about whether or not Morlocks smoked.
Certainly we never see them doing so at any time during the George Pal
production of The Time Machine.
But that doesn’t definitively answer the question, because all the
Morlocks we see in the movie are at work. They’re on the Eloi-boiling
production line, and of course in the food service business you can’t
smoke on the job.
Further, I’ll bet Morlock smoke breaks are short. Eloi boiling seems
like the kind of job where if you and your co-workers wander off for
even a couple of minutes that you’d have the boiling foreman all up in
your business.
“You Morlocks need to keep busy. I can’t have you Morlocks loafing off.
If the boss comes up here and sees you loafing off, he ain’t gonna yell
at you. He’s going to yell at me. So get back to work. Those Eloi ain’t gonna boil themselves.”
Thus they only get to really bust out the Winstons and relax in the car on the way home.
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