Please, sleep with my daughter who can read your filthy test pilot mind!
Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) is an example of the horror-SF genre, but unfortunately a fairly aimless example. Major Bill Allison, USAF, is a test pilot, using a rocket-equipped jet fighter to attempt to make it into orbit. On his last mission, he loses contact with his control team, and when he lands back at base, he finds it abandoned, dilapidated, and weedy. He explores and soon leaves the airbase, looking for anyone, when he loses consciousness.
On coming to, he finds himself a captive. The head of his captors, an elderly man called the Supreme, is wary, while his middle-aged Captain is aggressive and accuses Allison of being a spy. After some verbal fencing, Allison is taken away to a cage where other prisoners are kept – all bald and crawling on the ground. He fights with and questions one, and then is taken out of the cage and returned to the Supreme. He’s questioned some more and accused of being a ‘Scape’. The Supreme’s deaf and mute daughter, who has some telepathic capbility, is proctoring the conversation, and continually indicates Allison is telling the truth.
Eventually, we learn it is 60 years in the future, and now there are only Mutants, who have been damaged by a plague caused by A-Bomb testing, Scapes, who are so named for having escaped the plague, and everyone else, who is considered normal – but, with the exceptions of the Supreme, the Captain, and the Supreme’s daughter, Trirene, they are all sterile as well as mute and deaf[1].
This, presumably, so the actors could be paid less for no speaking lines, my Arts Editor pointed out.
The Scapes, three in number, consisting of two scientists and a female Russian military officer[1], have all arrived at this place in much the same way as did Allison, but their craft were destroyed, while Allison’s is intact, so they hatch a plan for Allison to return to his native time to try to stop the plague; meantime, he’s also informed that the daughter has picked him for her mate, since everyone else is sterile. Allison resolves to take her with him, since his plane is a two seater, although he flew alone.
Eventually, the time comes to break out of captivity and make a run for the plane, but the Russian military officer frees the captive Mutants, and in the resultant chaos tries to force Allison to take her instead of Trirene back in time. However, she’s killed by one of the two captive scientists, who has his own designs on the plane, but he, in turn, loses the turf battle to the other scientist, and in the final fight, Allison kills the last scientist, who accidentally shoots Trirene to death during the struggle. Ooops.
Allison then returns and is placed in the hospital, having magically become an elderly man, and is debriefed.
It’s all rather silly. Is there any sort of real theme here? Not that I can discern. And good horror movies do have some sort of interesting theme. Alien (1979), one of the greatest of the genre, gradually reveals that the machinations of a giant corporation in search of profit has infinitely worsened the predicament in which the crew of the Nostromo finds itself, and because this constitutes a betrayal of the crew, it greatly strengthens a horror element in that the iron-clad law that we all stick together in the face of unknown dangers has been broken in the simple search for profit. The horror element embodied in the act of rendering aid resulting in skin-crawling disaster for the rescuers is multiplied.
But there doesn’t seem to be anything like that here. A very straightforward action story, I suppose, but it seems, of all things, timid. The writers didn’t want to pursue hard choices, just tell the story in an expeditious manner.
And it was really boring.
1I voted that the normals should have a name, too, but my Arts Editor discarded my vote.
2They indulge in some extremely bad and painfully told science to explain Allison’s predicament.
