Review of Beyond the Time Barrier

If only I had waited about six more months, I could have watched this film in real time in 2024! Had I seen it back in 1960 when it was first released, I might have suffered irreparable brain damage from the goofy story and minimalist special effects. However, I do enjoy the quasi-scientific gobbledygook screen writers used to come up with in these old-time sci-fi flicks. This one had the future Earth's atmosphere poisoned by cosmic radiation emanating from outer space causing a plague that wiped out most of humanity in 1971. That would have been two years after the first moon landing, the Mets winning the World Series, and Woodstock, so all was not lost. Some sort of relativity paradox forced Major William Allison's (Robert Clarke) experimental X-80 rocket ship sixty-five years into the future, landing him right back where he started from at the Sands Control Air Force Base. From there though, it's hard to determine who the good guys and bad guys were, although the presence of pretty, mind reading Princess Trirene (Darlene Tompkins) tipped the scales to the Master Supreme's (Vladimir Sokoloff) side. After that, it boiled down to a ridiculous barrage of events that freed a bunch of bald-headed mutants from captivity and Trirene accidentally getting shot by a loopy scientist. As expected though, Major Allison was able to return to 1960 using the same space trajectory in reverse with the old X-80. So, let's see, if he originally went into space at the tender age of twenty-five (actor Clarke was forty), he would have returned at the ripe old age of ninety. And he didn't look a day over eighty-nine!