Beyond The Time Barrier (1960) When it came to time travel movies, low budget sci-fi filmmakers followed their own Golden Rule...
All's Wells that ends Wells......
Rather than labor over their own attempts at inventive plots, our quickie movie guys stuck with the Master and one of his finest creations....H.G. Wells and "The Time Machine"......
Which would explain why we watched these two particular films back-to-back, since they essentially plundered Wells' central idea......a time traveler hurled into a post apocalyptic future where humanity's been divided up into effete elites (the Eloi) and the ravaging beasts (Morlocks) who prey upon them.
We didn't watch these in chronological order, so we'll first cover "Beyond The Time Barrier", a 1960 dirt-cheap, black-and-white grinder that arrived 4 years after 1956;s "World Without End", a much more ambitious 'Time Machine' wanna-be.....(we dive into that one tomorrow....)
Spit out in a matter of days by the tireless, prolific Grade C workhorse Edgar G. Ulmer, "Time Barrier"s hero is U.S. Air Force test pilot Bill Allison (Robert Clarke). Major Bill, taking an experimental supersonic jet so high he cruises outer space itself, unwittingly propels himself into 2024.
And this movie's version of 2024 is only a little less worse than the upcoming prospect of a Trump Vs. Biden presidential race.....
It seems that nuclear testing way back in Bill's day let cosmic rays filter down to Earth, causing a worldwide plague. The cosmic virus or whatever rendered the remainder of humanity sterile and left still human people living in a vast underground bunker called 'The Citadel'
The not-so-lucky ones in the disease's final stages are reduced to gibbering, violent mutants very similar to current GOP representatives, imprisoned by the imperious Citadel folk
Major Bill (and we as well) notice the Citadel women parade around in standard dystopian, futuristic fashion - micro mini skirts, nylons and heels. And that includes the cutie-pie telepath Tririne (Darlene Tompkins), who like most of the populace, can't speak. She makes up for her lack of conversational skills by constantly smiling as if angling for the "Miss Future Congeniality" prize.
The Citadel's supreme leader (called "The Supreme", so everyone knows he is, we guess) wants Major Bill to impregnate the still fertile Trirene in order to jump-start the human race from scratch.
Bill has no problem with that plan (nor would we.) but gets entangled in the nefarious plotting of some other accidental time travelers who hope to trick him into firing up his plane and dropping them off into their own time periods.
Gunplay and violence breaks out and some liberated mutants go on a take-no-prisoners riot against the Citadel crowd. To n nobody's surprise, the mutants main goal involves performing flying tackles on every mini-skirted Citadel babe in their vicinity.
Our stalwart Major Bill escapes to his plane, heads back for the stars to zap himself back to 1960.......but at great, terrible cost, which actually provides the film with a powerful, provocative ending.
We certainly had a great time watching this, but anyone who's not a die-hard fan of 50's and 60's sci-fi movies, really needs to forgive the ultra low budget in play here. (Yes, the Citadel's vast elevator shaft is a cartoon)......and director Ulmer, if nothing else, knew how to move things along......therefore, 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
See you all tomorrow for another back to the future romp.....in CinemaScope and color!
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