Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Film Review

Towards the tail end of his career Edgar G. Ulmer directed a number of low budget science fiction movies that are distinguished more by his idiosyncratic mise-en-scène than by their hackneyed B-movie plots and modest production values.  Unlike Ulmer's previous The Man from Planet X (1951) and The Amazing Transparent Man (1960), Beyond the Time Barrier is a serious attempt to engage with contemporary themes, namely concerns over atom bomb testing, and manages to conceal its derisory budget by some truly inspired design.  And, in contrast to most films about time travel, it looks as if the film's authors have some understanding (albeit slightly muddled) of the underlying science.  In its account of a pilot returning to a ruined Earth in his future the film eerily prefigures Planet of the Apes (1968).

As in Val Guest's The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), the film shows humanity driven to extinction not by nuclear war but by the testing of nuclear weapons.  The grim fate for mankind depicted in Ulmer's film may be somewhat less dramatic than that of Guest's but it is somewhat more plausible, with a more solid grounding in scientific truth.  It is fact that the Earth's atmosphere is crucial in shielding life on the surface from the harmful effects of cosmic radiation, so if this were to be damaged in the way the film suggests then it is conceivable that man could be subjected to genetic mutation that might render him sterile.  (It has been established that one of the possible causes of cancer is cosmic radiation.)

The film's over-laboured explanation for how the main protagonist (Robert Clarke) manages to travel through time is, however, less scientifically credible.  The script claims that it was some accidental conjunction of astral velocities which allowed the aircraft pilot to attain a near light-speed and thereby experience time distortion.  Einstein wouldn't have been impressed by this glib misunderstanding of his famous theories, and you wonder why the overzealous screenwriters didn't just cut all the mixed up pseudo-science and simply say that Clarke fell through a wormhole, time warp or some such thing.  In one aspect at least the film does get it right: if Clarke is able to achieve a near-light speed then, when he does return to Earth, it will be in his own future.  Everything else is baloney.

Dodgy science aside, Beyond the Time Barrier is a surprisingly good film of its kind, even if it was clearly made in a hurry on the tiniest of budgets.  (In fact it cost 125 thousand dollars to make and was shot in just ten days within the buildings of the Texas Centennial Exhibition Fair Park.) The plot owes a great deal to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, which coincidentally was adapted the same year by George Pal as a lavish full-colour feature.  As in Wells's novel, a man is projected into his own future by a technological marvel to encounter a civilisation in which there are two distinct species - one badly mutated, the other still recognisably human.  Ulmer's film clearly doesn't have the budget that Pal had to play with but it offers a more convincing depiction of a future civilisation, one that seems pathologically obsessed with triangles.  In Ernst Fegté's starkly  geometric set designs, triangles are everywhere, suggesting a world that is different from our own and yet not ostensibly futuristic.  The triangle motif extends to the editing, which uses a triangular iris effect to bridge scenes.  The make-up for the mutant humans was the work of Jack Pierce, who had previously created some iconic monster designs for Universal Pictures, notably the original Frankenstein Monster.  It's worth mentioning, en passant, that the director's daughter Arianne Arden appears in the film, playing one of the scheming Russian pilots.

Ulmer shows, as he did through pretty well most of his career, how it is possible to make a stylish and idiosyncratic piece of cinema with next to no money but plenty of flair and imagination.  For the scientifically ignorant, Beyond the Time Barrier is hard to fault and makes a compelling sci-fi adventure as well as a cautionary tale on man's lack of concern for his environment.  The scientifically literate may mock the liberties the script takes with the Theories of Relativity but even they should be impressed by the film's smart design and the intelligent way in which it broaches one of the most pressing concerns of the day.

Film Synopsis

U.S. Air Force pilot Major Allison undertakes a probing flight on an experimental aircraft that will be the crucial first step in America's early space programme.  On his return to Earth, Allison is surprised to find the airbase abandoned and in the distance he sees a vast futuristic city.  Somehow, he has been projected sixty years into his own future and now humanity is a dying species, sterile, mute and confined to underground cities.  Taken prisoner, Allison finds himself in one such city, where he is welcomed by the leader, who explains that humanity has been made sterile by cosmic radiation after the Earth's atmosphere was ruined by the testing of nuclear weapons in the 20th century.  The only person who is not sterile is the leader's granddaughter Triene, who appears willing to take Allison as her mate and begin repopulating the world.  Despite being attracted to Triene, who can only communicate with him telepathically, Allison is more interested in returning to his own time.  He meets some Russian pilots who share this ambition, having also arrived in this Dystopian future after encountering a similar passage through time.  If one of them can get back to his own time he might be able to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons testing and thereby prevent the future he has witnessed from happening....