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1960: Test pilot Major Allison (Robert Clarke) tests a new supersonic
plane, the fastest ever, for the US Air Force. But then something happens
... he just disappears, just like that.
2024: Test pilot Major Allison, still convinced he's in 1960) lands his
plane on the same airbase he started from, to find it not only deserted
but pretty much in ruins. But nearby he finds what could be described as a
futuristic city, but when he approaches it, he is hit by a paralyzing ray.
Later, Allison finds himself inside the city, which is actually a
citadel to guard its inhabitants from the outside world, both because of
its radiation and its mutants. But the inhabitants of the citadel are not
much better off than the cannibalistic mutants on the outside, they are
mostly deafmute and all of them sterile (all but one in fact, but more of
that later). It was all caused by a Cosmic Plague, as Allison shall
later find out, but right now, he stands accused of being a spy ba the
citadl's ruler, the Supreme (Vladimir Sokoloff), and the leader of the
armed forces, the Captain (Boyd 'Red' Morgan), while Allison doesn't have
the first clue what's going on and is still convinced he's in 1960, and
the people who are questioning him should justify themselves. Soon enough
though, Allison realizes the seriousness of his situation, when the
Captain has him thrown into the hole with a bunch of mutants who
would do nothing rather than have bite of him ... only the Supreme's
deafmute but mindreading granddaughter Trirene (Darlene Tompkins) saves
him from that ordeal, because she knows he speaks the truth ... and she
has fallen in love with him - much to the Supreme's delight by the way,
because trirene is the only one in the citadel who is not sterile, and
Allison, a man from before the Cosmic Plague, is of course not
sterile either (well, he might be, but that's beside the point). Soon,
tender romance between Allison and Trirene blossoms ...
But then there's this group of scientists, Karl Kruse (Stephen
Bekassy), Professor Bourman (John Van Dreelen) and Captain Markova
(Arianne Arden), who have somehow also survived the Plague unharmed (in
fact, they also come from the past, if from different periodes in time),
who have some quite sober ideas of how to prevent the plague in the first
place when travelling back in time (if timetravel works one-way, then why
not the other), but who are despised, even feared by everyone in the
citadel and are only left alive, because their combined genius makes them
useful to the inhabitants of the citadel. Anyways, the scientists figure
that the speed of Allison's plane combined with the rotation of the earth
around itself, around the sun and of the sun around the center of the
universe must have exceeded light speed and therefore made time travel
possible. so if somehow that process could be reversed ...
Allison sees the logic in this plan, and even mindreading Trirene is
convinced and helps him with the preperations for his travel back in time
... it is only of the day of the travel itself that our trio of scientists
show their true skin. Firstly, Markova leads the mutants into the citadel
so they create a massacre as a diversion, then it turns out neither
of them really has the intention to stop the plague as such, each of them
just wants to get back to his/her respective own time, and Trirene, whom
Allison actually planned to bring to his own time only seems to be getting
in the way ... it all ends in all three scientists and Trirene, as well as
most of the inhabitants of the citadel, being killed, and the Supreme,
standing on the ruins of his sad empire, leading Allison to his plane ...
1960: Major Allison's plane suddenly reappears on the radars, but he
calls out for an ambulance. It turns out in the few minutes he has been
off the screen, he has aged some 60 years. and he is now muttering about
something in the year 2024 and a Cosmic Plague - totally
unbelievable stuff of course, but then, where did the ring he's suddenly
wearing come from, and why did he age all that much ?
Of course, on the surface, this sounds like nothing more than a pulpy
and a tad silly sci-fi-story - and let's be honest, aren't all time travel
stories a tad silly ? However, with Edgar G.Ulmer handling the directorial
chores, this can hardly be disposed as just another piece of drive-in
trash (not that there would necessarily be anything wrong with drive-in
trash, I love it). Ulmer grants the film its necessary seriousness without
ever tipping over into unintentional camp (not an easy task wtih this kind
of story), makes great use of the undeniably cheap but impressive
futuristic sets (mainly relying on triangular forms, and supplies the film
with cinematic language not usually found with independent B-pictures of
its time.
With all those sci fi-films from the late 1950's, early 1960's
unjustifiedly celebrated as classics nowadays because they just
happened to be produced by big studios, this is a film truly ripe for
rediscovery.
Recommended !
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find Beyond the Time Barrier at adultvideouniverse.com
