Beyond the Time Barrier

This Monday morning I spoke into my Xfinity remote "Free this week" and one that came up is this movie from 1960 depicting a test pilot accidentally traveling to our current year, 2024. I am always curious how older movies (I was a teenager in 1960) depict the future and compare it to how 2024 actually is.

Unfortunately it is not exactly that type of movie, we only see what represents people living in an underground society. They use lots of triangle and pyramids with sliding triangular doors as their futuristic set design.

Robert Clarke is top test pilot Maj. William Allison and on this day in 1960 is taking a test plane with secondary rocket assist up to 500,000 feet. Something happens, when he lands back at the base everything is old, dilapidated, and deserted. He manages to walk to a place where he is observed and captured, treated as an enemy.

It takes until about the half-way point for him (and us) to figure out he has time-traveled to the future. And things are bad because of a plague during the 1970s caused by radiation from various atomic bomb tests destroying the Earth's atmospheric protective layer. About half the world's population has died and most survivors are deaf-mutes. The bigger problem might be the widespread sterility which makes keeping the world's population up.

The main female character and one that becomes a love interest is Darlene Tompkins, about 19 during filming, as Princess Trirene. She is fertile but also a deaf-mute, however has developed ESP and can read the Major's thoughts.

So the story takes on two options, the Major can stay in 2024 and help propagate future generations or he can try to return to 1960 by doing a similar test flight in the opposite direction, warn people so that the future catastrophe can be avoided. Sadly, the climax in 2024 is a big fight with fists and guns and many key characters get killed.

Did I enjoy this short movie? Yes, I did, as it is a good representation of this type of movie made in the 1950s and 1960s. It DID take the time for 2024 scientist characters to give a good, thorough explanation for how time-travel happened, using the speed of the Earth's rotation, the Earth's orbit, and the whole solar system traveling through space, even though it is bad science it makes sense within the context of this story.

Streaming on Prime.

Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)

** (out of 4)

Sci-fi has a military test pilot (Robert Clarke) goes into flight during 1960 and moments later he lands his spaceship in a strange land. After walking around for a bit he's finally taken captive by a group of people who don't make much sense to him but before long he realizes that his little trip actually sent him through a time barrier and he landed sixty-four years after taking off. The world has been destroyed due to a plague so he tries to get back in time to prevent it. This is an ultra low-budget movie that has a few ideas going for it but unfortunately there's not too much that can be done in regards to the science fiction because the budget didn't allow for it. The "future" city looks just like any abandoned city of 1960 and there special effects just aren't all that convincing. Fans of Edgar G. Ulmer will probably say that his keen eye manages to take the low budget and do more with it than most would. I'll buy that to a certain level but there's still no question that the majority of the film is dialogue scenes that really just talk about stuff instead of us ever actually getting to see it. I thought Clarke was good in his leading role as the pilot turned hero. Clarke is always fun to see in these low-budget movies and he does a nice job with the part. Darlene Tompkins plays the love interest, a princess in the future and she too is good. Vladimir Sokoloff plays "The Supreme" and isn't too bad. Universal horror fans will be happy to see Jack Pearce's name pop up in the credits for the special effects. There's talk of mutants in the film but sadly those hoping to see the make-up legends work on them will be disappointed because they're just normal people in bald caps. Pearce does get to do a little make-up at the end but I won't reveal with what as it will give away a major plot twist. This twist is actually pretty good and I think the final five-minutes are actually quite effective.

During a test flight in 1960, Maj. William Allison (Robert Clarke) inexplicably goes BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER! Upon landing , Allison finds himself in the desolate, future world of 2024! Taken to an underground facility, Allison encounters what has become of the human race, after a plague of some sort.

Populated mostly by "deaf mutes", only two men possess the power of speech. Of course, all of the women are young and beautiful. The rest are mutants (bald guys). Will Allison uncover the truth about what happened to him, and about his new hosts? Will this leave him enough time to work on his romance with the lovely Princess Trirene (Darlene Tompkins)?

As with most sci-fi cheeeze of this vintage, BTTB is a rather slow affair. It's not altogether terrible, it's just... not overly engaging. In all fairness, the finale is pretty decent. In a shorter form, it could have made a great episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE or OUTER LIMITS. Clarke plays what could very well be his best role, and Vladimir Sokoloff wears an awesome wig as The Supreme!...

The legendary cult director Edgar G. Ulmer certainly had made better movies than this but that doesn't mean that this isn't fun to some degree. The main problem is that the (lack of a) budget shows: there's a lot more exposition here than action. But the actors are sincere, the visuals and atmosphere are decent, and there's a nifty twist ending that one might not see coming. The result is a minor but amusing effort that kills time easily enough.

Robert Clarke (also the producer of the movie), who'd previously starred for Ulmer in "The Man from Planet X", plays William Allison, an Air Force pilot who goes on an experimental flight. Somehow, he breaks the time barrier and ends up 64 years in the future, where a plague has decimated most of mankind and where various people hole up in an underground building dubbed The Citadel. The plague has caused various stages of mutation in people; some folk have become deaf-mutes, such as Princess Trirene (Darlene Tompkins); others are more sickly. The people of this future don't trust Allison, which just makes things more difficult for him as he seeks to find out how to get back to his own time.

The supporting cast consists of performers such as Vladimir Sokoloff, Boyd 'Red' Morgan, Stephen Bekassy, John Van Dreelen, and director Ulmers' pretty daughter Arianne in a major supporting role as the dubious Captain Markova. Co-star Tompkins is positively gorgeous and may serve as a distraction for any viewers who are otherwise bored with the movie. (One can't completely knock any movie where female outfits of the future include miniskirts.)

This may be no classic of the genre but it does entertain, and only runs an hour and 15 minutes anyway.

The makeup effects are by the great Jack Pierce.

Six out of 10.

This film had a small budget; but it produced a fine atmosphere of futuristic gloom; especially with the black and white photography. The B actors all did a fine job, but the real star is the script and storyline; which I would classify as an A effort. A test pilot goes into the future by accident and arrives in the year 2024 (not too far from now lol), but in 1960, people were far more optimistic about space travel. They thought we would have colonies on the moon and Mars. Nope. We have chosen to wisely spend our money on national defense, instead. I really liked the twist ending which I will not reveal. Well worth watching.