Beyond the Time Barrier

Last updated
Beyond the Time Barrier
Beyondtimebar.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
Screenplay by Arthur C. Pierce
Produced by Robert Clarke
Starring
Cinematography Meredith M. Nicholson
Edited byJack Ruggiero
Music by Darrell Calker
Distributed by American International Pictures
Release date
  • September 1960 (1960-09) [1]
Running time
75 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$125,000 [2]

Beyond the Time Barrier is a 1960 American science fiction film. It was released in September 1960 on a double bill with The Angry Red Planet . [3] It starred Robert Clarke (who also served as producer) and directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Ulmer's wife Shirley acted as a script editor while their daughter Arianne Arden appeared as a Russian pilot. It was one of two low budget sci-fi films shot back-to-back in Dallas, Texas by Ulmer (the other being The Amazing Transparent Man , released earlier that year). [4] The combined filming schedule for both films was only two weeks.

Contents

Plot

U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Bill Allison flies the X-80 experimental aircraft to sub-orbital spaceflight successfully, though he loses radio contact. When Major Allison returns to the airbase, it appears abandoned, old and deserted. Mystified, he sees a futuristic city on the horizon and heads for it. The major is rendered unconscious and captured.

When Allison wakes, he finds himself in a dystopian underground city known as the Citadel. Unnerved by his captors' refusal to speak with him, Allison initially reacts hostilely, but he eventually calms down and is brought to their leader, the Supreme. The Supreme explains that he and his second-in-command, the Captain, are the only two residents of the Citadel who are able to speak or hear. The rest of the inhabitants, including the Supreme's granddaughter Trirene, are deaf-mutes, and everyone except possibly Trirene is sterile. A telepath, Trirene reads Allison's thoughts and indicates to the Supreme that she believes him not to be a spy, as the Captain suspects.

The Captain sends Allison to be imprisoned with a group of bald and violent mutants who are determined to kill everyone in the Citadel. As the mutants attack him, Allison overpowers one and demands answers. They claim to be the survivors of a "cosmic plague", and they blame the residents of the Citadel for their problems. The Captain releases Allison and explains that Trirene has convinced the Supreme that he is not an enemy. Sensing his confusion, Trirene shows him historical photographs that help explain the Citadel's history, and at his urging, leads him to the "scapes", two scientists and a Russian woman officer.

After disabling surveillance devices, the scientists explain that Allison has traveled through time to the year 2024. Nuclear weapons testing damaged the Earth's atmosphere, letting through dangerous cosmic rays in 1971, resulting in the cosmic plague. Those who fled underground to the Citadel were still afflicted. Although they were not as badly afflicted as those who stayed above ground, there have been no births in twenty years. The 'scapes themselves are also accidental time travelers: Russian Captain Markova comes from 1973, and General Kruse and Professor Bourman arrived from colonies on other planets in 1994. Markova explains that the Supreme needs Allison to try to repopulate their society with Trirene's help. The scientists warn Allison not to trust the Citadel. As the Captain arrives to re-enable the security device, he in turn warns Allison not to trust the scientists.

As Trirene and Allison spend more time together, they fall in love. Although initially reluctant, Allison joins the 'scapes in a plan to turn Trirene against her people so that he can return to the past and try to change history. Markova sets the mutants free to attack the residents. She then demands that she accompany Allison, not Trirene, and to 1973, not 1960. Kruse and Bourman arrive, and Kruse shoots Markova for her treachery. Then Bourman knocks out Kruse, explaining that Kruse was planning to hijack the aircraft. Bourman, however, also intends to use the X-80 to return to his own time. As Allison and Bourman struggle over Kruse's pistol, a stray bullet kills Trirene before Allison can overcome Bourman.

Allison takes Trirene's body to the Supreme, who is distraught over both his granddaughter's death and the doom of his people, now that the last fertile person has died. The Supreme directs Allison toward a secret passage out, persuaded by Allison that there is always hope. Returned to his own time, Allison recounts his fantastic adventure in a recorded debriefing. As high-ranking officials visit Allison in the hospital, he is revealed to have aged drastically and is now an elderly man. Allison frantically warns them of the future events, and one of them says that they have a lot to think about.

Cast

Production

Producer Robert Clarke was exhausted from directing and acting in his production, The Hideous Sun Demon , and sought a director for this film. He had previously worked with Edgar G. Ulmer on The Man from Planet X and respected him. [5] Clarke's funds originated in Texas, and the backers stipulated that the film be shot there, where motion picture unions had no influence. Clarke filmed in the Texas Centennial Exhibition Fair Park buildings. He secured cooperation from the US Air Force and Texas Air National Guard allowing him to film at Fort Worth's Carswell Air Force Base and the abandoned Marine Corps Air Station Eagle Mountain Lake. [6] He obtained and used film footage of an F-102 Delta Dagger standing in for the test plane. The film's action sequences used Air Force weapons, M1 carbines and M1911A1 pistols, with the actors taking care not to fire the weapons directly at one another. The film's working title was The Last Barrier. [7]

Production designer Ernst Fegté employed a triangular motif for the futuristic sets that were filmed in the vacant showground buildings. Surplus parachutes were hung in the background to muffle echoes.

Clarke chose Darlene Tompkins over several contenders for the mute and psychic Trirene, including Yvette Mimieux (who appeared in The Time Machine ) and Leslie Parrish. [8] Ulmer selected his daughter Arianne for the role of Captain Alicia Markova, whose name came from the ballerina of the same name. Ulmer choreographed the daughter's movements similar to a ballet dance as she loosened her flight suit.

When giving her speech inciting the mutants to revolt in a Soviet uprising, Arianne deliberately used voice inflections similar to Laurence Olivier reciting the St. Crispin's Day Speech from Henry V . [9] American International Pictures (AIP) added footage to the mutant uprising sequence from their film Journey to the Lost City . One mutant was played by the screenwriter Arthur C. Pierce. Pierce was involved in the production and worked as an assistant editor.

Tompkins recalled that the actors portraying the mutants, whose makeup was created by Jack Pierce, taught her how to play cribbage on the set while in costume. [10] Tompkins was asked to do a nude swimming scene for overseas release. She refused and swimming scenes were done by a body double. When filming her swimming in a flesh colored bathing suit, the crew used the motel swimming pool where they were staying; their night filming was disrupted by a fire that broke out at the motel. [10]

Former football player Boyd Morgan performed stunts and played the Captain of the Guard. Darrell Calker, the music chief of Walter Lantz's cartoons, composed an effective film score.

AIP's James H. Nicholson was keen on releasing the film based on his teenage daughters' recommendation after screening the film. AIP partner Samuel Z. Arkoff, asked Clarke what he wanted to do with the film. Clarke said he wanted to produce several films for AIP, but Arkoff said AIP didn't use contract producers. Clarke found a similar, but newer and inexperienced film company called Pacific International Pictures (PIP) or Miller-Consolidated Pictures who were keen on working with Clarke and releasing his films. However, PIP went bankrupt and AIP was able to purchase two of Clarke's films held by PIP for no more than the laboratory costs. The films were released under the AIP banner. AIP exploited MGM's publicity for The Time Machine by releasing their film a month before MGMs. Clarke was paid only his acting salary. [11]

As Miller Consolidate Films went into bankruptcy, American International Pictures (AIP) released the film in September, 1960 on a double bill with The Angry Red Planet [3] It was theatrically released in some areas on a double bill with The Amazing Transparent Man , another Ulmer-directed film made by Miller but picked up by AIP for the lab costs. [12]

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 60% of five surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 4.56/10. [13] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader wrote, "Even on this despairing level of fly-by-night filmmaking, Ulmer's treatment remains resolutely personal, and the film, though visually slack, emerges as something terse, resourceful, and expressively icy." [14] J. Hoberman of The Village Voice wrote that it "suggests an impoverished remake of the 1924 Soviet constructivist space opera Aelita ". [15]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<i>Detour</i> (1945 film) 1945 film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Detour is a 1945 American independent film noir directed by Edgar G. Ulmer starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. The screenplay was adapted by Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney (uncredited) from Goldsmith's 1939 novel of the same title, and released by the Producers Releasing Corporation, one of the so-called Poverty Row film studios in mid-20th-century Hollywood. The film, which today is in the public domain and freely available for viewing at various online sources, was restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2018. In April that year, the 4K restoration premiered in Los Angeles at the TCM Festival. A Blu-Ray and DVD was released in March 2019 from the Criterion Collection. In 1992, Detour was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar G. Ulmer</span> American film director, set designer

Edgar Georg Ulmer was a Jewish-Moravian, Austrian-American film director who mainly worked on Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions, eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC', due to his extremely prolific output for the Poverty Row studio. His stylish and eccentric works came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement. Ulmer's most famous productions include the horror film The Black Cat (1934) and the film noir Detour (1945).

<i>The Black Cat</i> (1934 film) 1934 American film

The Black Cat is a 1934 American pre-Code horror film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi. It was Universal Pictures' biggest box office hit of the year, and was the first of eight films to feature both Karloff and Lugosi. In 1941, Lugosi appeared in a comedy horror mystery film with the same title, which was also named after and ostensibly "suggested by" Edgar Allan Poe's short story.

<i>City Under the Sea</i> 1965 film by Jacques Tourneur

City Under the Sea is a 1965 British-American adventure horror science fiction film. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur and starred Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Susan Hart and David Tomlinson.

<i>Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine</i> 1965 film by Norman Taurog

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is a 1965 Pathécolor comedy film directed by Norman Taurog and distributed by American International Pictures. Starring Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Susan Hart and Jack Mullaney, and featuring Fred Clark, the film is a parody of the then-popular spy trend, made using actors from AIP's beach party and Edgar Allan Poe films. The film was retitled Dr G. and the Bikini Machine in England due to a threatened lawsuit from Eon, holder of the rights to the James Bond series.

<i>In the Year 2889</i> (film) 1969 television film by Larry Buchanan

In the Year 2889 is a 1969 American made-for-television horror science fiction film from American International Pictures about the aftermath of a future nuclear war. The film stars Paul Petersen, Quinn O'Hara, Charla Doherty, Neil Fletcher and Hugh Feagin. AIP commissioned low-budget cult film auteur Larry Buchanan to produce and direct this film as a color remake of Roger Corman's 1956 film Day the World Ended.

<i>Captive Women</i> 1952 American film by Stuart Gilmore

Captive Women is a 1952 American black-and-white post-apocalyptic science-fiction film. It stars Robert Clarke and Margaret Field. The film has a running time of 64 minutes. It deals with the effects of a nuclear war and how life would be afterwards.

<i>The Amazing Transparent Man</i> 1960 film

The Amazing Transparent Man is a 1960 American science fiction thriller B-movie starring Marguerite Chapman in her final feature film. The plot follows an insane ex–U.S. Army major who uses an escaped criminal to steal materials to improve the invisibility machine his scientist prisoner made. It was one of two sci-fi films shot back-to-back in Dallas, Texas by director Edgar G. Ulmer. The combined filming schedule for both films was only two weeks. The film was later featured in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

<i>The Astounding She-Monster</i> 1958 film

The Astounding She-Monster is a 1957 science fiction horror film starring Robert Clarke and directed, co-written and produced by Ronnie Ashcroft for Hollywood International Productions. The film focuses on a geologist, a gang which has kidnapped a rich heiress, and their encounter with a beautiful but deadly female alien who has crashed to Earth. In the UK, it was released as The Mysterious Invader. The film was released in American theaters on 1957 by American International Pictures on a double feature with Roger Corman's The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.

<i>The Hideous Sun Demon</i> 1958 American film

The Hideous Sun Demon is a 1958 American science fiction horror film produced, directed, and cowritten by Robert Clarke, who also starred in the title role. It also stars Patricia Manning, Nan Peterson, Patrick Whyte, and Fred La Porta. The film focuses on a scientist who is exposed to a radioactive isotope and soon finds out that it comes with horrifying consequences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Clarke</span> American actor (1920–2005)

Robert Irby Clarke was an American actor best known for his cult classic science fiction films of the 1950s. In succeeding decades he appeared in more conventional television, and in The King Family Show, a variety show based on the family of which his wife Alyce King Clarke was a member.

<i>Flesh and the Spur</i> 1956 film by Edward L. Cahn

Flesh and the Spur is a 1956 American western film directed by Edward L. Cahn. The film stars John Agar as Lucius Random, Marla English as Wild Willow and Mike Connors as Stacy Tanner. The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Naked Paradise. The plot is about a young cowboy who searches for the killer of his twin brother.

Arthur C. Pierce was an American screenwriter and director specialising in low budget science fiction films.

<i>Frankenstein Island</i> 1981 American film

Frankenstein Island is a 1981 science fiction horror film produced, written, composed, edited and directed by Jerry Warren and starring John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell. The plot concerns a group of balloonists stranded on an island where they are captured by Dr. Frankenstein's female descendant, Sheila Frankenstein, who has been kidnapping shipwrecked sailors for years and turning them into zombies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darlene Tompkins</span> American actress (1940-2019)

Darlene Tompkins was an American actress.

<i>The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll</i> 1957 film by Edgar George Ulmer

Daughter of Dr. Jekyll is a low-budget black-and-white 1957 American horror film produced by Jack Pollexfen, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and released by Allied Artists. The film is a variation on the 1886 gothic novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It stars Gloria Talbott, John Agar and Arthur Shields. In the film, Janet Smith learns that she is not only the daughter of the infamous Dr. Henry Jekyll, but is convinced by her guardian, Dr. Lomas, that she has inherited her father's transformative condition. Janet begins to believe that she turns into a monster after two local women are found horribly killed and nearly takes her own life because of it. However, all is not what it seems.

Leo Erdody was an American film composer of Hungarian descent. He studied music in Germany, and later went to Hollywood, scoring his first film in 1921. He later joined Producers Releasing Corporation and scored several films for them. For his work on Minstrel Man, he was a nominee for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.

<i>Club Havana</i> 1945 film by Edgar George Ulmer

Club Havana is a 1945 American film drama directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. It was produced and released by independent film company Producers Releasing Corporation. It has been compared to the 1933 film Grand Hotel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Blaisdell</span>

Paul Blaisdell was an American painter, sculptor and visual effects creator, best remembered for his work in science fiction and horror B movies of the 1950s.

<i>Thunder Over Texas</i> 1934 film by Edgar George Ulmer

Thunder Over Texas is a 1934 American populist contemporary Western film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer under the alias Joen Warner and produced by two nephews of Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle, Arthur and Max Alexander's Poverty Row Beacon Productions. The film's story was written by Shirley Ulmer under the name of Sherle Castle. Shirley was then married to Max Alexander but would soon leave Max to marry Edgar with the result that Lammele blacklisted Ulmer from Hollywood. The film was shot in Kernville, California.

References

  1. ↑ Warren, Bill (1986). "Keep Watching The Skies Volume 2". McFarland & Co., Inc. ISBN   0-89950-170-2. Page 730, 734
  2. ↑ Isenberg, Noah (2013-11-22). "Other Worlds: Edgar G. Ulmer's Underground Films of the 1950s by Noah Isenberg". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved 2015-05-09.
  3. 1 2 Warren, Bill (1986). "Keep Watching The Skies Volume 2". McFarland & Co., Inc. ISBN   0-89950-170-2. Page 730
  4. ↑ Weaver, Tom (2002). Science fiction confidential: interviews with 23 monster stars and film makers. McFarland. p. 300. ISBN   0-7864-1175-9.
  5. ↑ Weaver, Tom, Brunas, John & Michael Interviews with B Science Fiction Movie Makers McFarland, 2006, p. 89
  6. ↑ Freeman, Paul. Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Northwestern Fort Worth area. 2011.
  7. ↑ TCM notes.
  8. ↑ p.174 Lisanti, Tom Drive-In Dream Girls McFarland
  9. ↑ p.333 Weaver, Tom Science Fiction and Fantasy Flashbacks 2004 McFarland
  10. 1 2 Lisanti, Tom Science Fiction Confidential McFarland, p.300
  11. ↑ p.89 Weaver, Tom, Brunas, John & Michael Interviews with B Science Fiction Movie Makers 2006 McFarland
  12. ↑ p. 58 Craig, Rob American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography McFarland, 19 Feb 2019
  13. ↑ "Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)". Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved 2020-12-18.
  14. ↑ Kehr, Dave. "Beyond the Time Barrier". Chicago Reader . Retrieved 2015-05-09.
  15. ↑ Hoberman, J. (1998-11-17). "Low and Behold". The Village Voice . Retrieved 2024-01-17.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.