Beyond the Time Barrier

Beyond the Time Barrier is an old-fashioned science fiction film made in 1960 that has the look and feel of a science fiction serial. It has some obvious flaws, most of which spring from its low budget. The special effects are woefully un-special. The sets are cheap-looking as are the costumes and any make-up used. Acting is mediocre at best with a few actors doing reasonable work. Darlene Tompkins is a lovely actress and does a pretty good job in her role as a deaf princess. Robert Clarke should be nicknamed Robert "Stonewall" Clarke for his stone-like performance. His performance isn't wooden, it's petrified. Nonetheless he is fun to watch. Boyd "Red" Morgan is, on the other hand, painfully bad a a captain(earlier referred to as a major?). The film tells a very complex story about Clarke leaving the year 1960 and crossing a time barrier and reaching the year 2024 where plague and pestilence are common. The human race has divided into factions of mutants and non-mutants(really people in the very first stages of being mutants). I found the story quite interesting despite not really believing the scientific aspects behind it. Sure the film is talky, but that was okay with me as I liked the story. The film was directed by Edgar Ulmer and it has some wonderful Ulmer moments. I particularly liked the way the mutants were locked up...a well-shot scene. Also, the climatic fight scenes were very good too. Ulmer uses a triangle of another scene interspersing into the already existing shot quite often as well for a neat little effect. An interesting science fiction film with a message.

Better-than-average low-budget science-fiction from that era. Edgar Ulmer makes the most of inventive sets, some interesting low camera angles, some moments in which mid-ground objects such as pillars intercede between foreground and background during tracking shots...not the kind of effort one usually sees in movies of this kind. The whole film comes off as sincere - maybe more like 6.5 stars, but I'm rounding it up for the effort.

The acting is mixed, with some of the cast turning in competent performances, and two or three others about on par with some of Bela lugosi's most stilted performances. The story, if not original, is well-paced. What really sets this film apart from similar low-budget affairs are the aforementioned sets and camera work, and especially the unexpectedly ambiguous, perhaps even somewhat dark, conclusion of the film, which seems surprisingly in keeping with some of Ulmer's other work.

Fans of 1950s and 60s science-fiction, or of time travel flicks, should take a look.

"Beyond the Time Barrier" is the type of late 50s/early 60s Sci-Fi film of which you know, after approximately five minutes already, that it could have been a fantastic contemporary genre highlight if only the cast and crew didn't have to work with such a minimalist budget! Most of the conceptual ideas are really great and well- elaborated, but the cheap looking set pieces and the pitiable special effects have an immensely restraining impact on the overall plausibility and entertainment value. In case you serve an ambitious plot that is dealing with time-traveling and largely takes place in a futuristic dystopia, you can't afford to use paper made spaceships or drawings of the metropolis and you most certainly cannot speak of horribly deformed mutants the entire time without properly showing their faces! So, in an attempt to cover up for the budgetary weakness, Edgar G. Ulmer does what every experienced veteran director would do: replace the action sequences with endless intellectual speeches and complicated time warp theories as much as you can! In 1960, Major William Ellison has the honor and privilege to test-fly a brand new and hi-tech type of army fighter plane. The speed of the aircraft is even a little too successful, as Ellison breaks through the time barrier and ends up in the year 2024. It takes quite a while before our Major properly realizes that he fast- forwarded 64 years into the future, and the technical details are explained to him by three other scientists that went through the same experience. By the way, I didn't understand one iota about those time-traveling theories, but I also figure that incomprehensible speeches are a mandatory aspect of 50s Sci-Fi… Ellison immediately gets confronted with the terrible state of our planet and civilization in the year 2024. Apparently an all- devastating kind of cosmic plague made the entire world population sterile (the last child was born more 20 years ago) and gradually transforms the remaining survivors into mutants. There's also good news, however, as the last fertile woman on earth is a beautiful princess and she has chosen him to re-populate the planet! She – Trirene – is a deaf-mute with telekinetic powers and she can read Ellison's thoughts, which results in at least one (unintentionally?) hilarious sequence: "I know you can read my mind…. Although right now I probably wished you couldn't" and then he gets slapped in the face! Admittedly "Beyond the Time Barrier" principally got made to cash in on the tremendous success of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" and also borrows many elements from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", but it's an engaging and occasionally suspenseful tale. I even like to think that some nifty ideas from this film were copied years later in massive Hollywood productions (for example the sterility in "Children of Men"), although I'm probably mistaken.

I have always been fascinated by the philosophical aspects of space and time, for example, such as the possibility of time dilation. That is why movies such as "The Time Machine", "World Without End" (especially, "World Without End" being one of my all-time favorite SF films), and this one, "Beyond the Time Barrier" have a great deal of appeal.

The highlights of the film and worth far more than the price of admission are the scenes in which Robert Clarke first breaks the time barrier up in space (in physics, this sounds like what is currently referred to as a "wormhole" in contrast to the older concept of time dilation) and the scenes after he touches back down to earth. The scene in which Robert Clarke observes the exterior of the futuristic city along with the pulsating solar energy tower is fascinating. (I first saw this when I was ten years old and never forgot it.) Also the scenes of Darlene Tomkins are also a delight for the eyes (especially the swimming pool scene - I never forgot this either). I also liked the triangular designs. They looked almost out of Die Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) Gruppe - the Munich Art School that specialized in abstract expressionism (producing such greats such as Klee, Marc, Kandinsky, others) or, perhaps out of the Bauhaus School of Architecture which produced such greats such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and others who pioneered modern futuristic design. For this, the art designer for the movie, Ernst Fegte should take a bow.

However, the overall plot is somewhat disappointing after Robert Clarke is captured. The idea that the human race can bring the earth to such a state in which it is perilous to walk the actual surface of the earth due to excessive radiation because the protective atmospheric screens had been decimated (the ozone layer in the stratosphere, for example) seems very dreary indeed (The scientist played by Istvan Bekassy mentions the ionosphere being contaminated by nuclear particles). Furthermore, what happened to the various animal and plant species ? Were they decimated, too ? Perhaps the writers could have planned a less dismal story. As the story progresses, the plot becomes even more pessimistic with the sterility of the population, the evil scientists, the barbarity of the mutants, the almost complete resignation to the eventual extinction of the human race as voiced by the Supreme, Vladimir Sokoloff, and the murder in the final reel of Trirene, his daughter, played by Darlene Tomkins. In general, the writers could have done a lot better, in terms of plot, theme, and characters.

Not the best, not the worst.

Worth watching for the art design and certain aspects of the story which make a person think.

6/10

Dan Basinger

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.