The most influential Sci-Fi movie you have never seen.

The tag isn’t hype…well, maybe a little, but not too much.

Beyond the Time Barrier is a Saturday Night Drive-In classic in every sense: it was made on a shoestring budget in 10 days, like Billy Jack, half the actors and crew are related to each other, and you have a story with everything from bald cave dwelling mutants to time travel to a mysterious space plague.

We’ll get into why this movie is important in a bit, but launch with a quick overview.

The story kicks off in 1960, with Airforce Major William Allison (Robert Clarke) flying an experimental aircraft capable of reaching speeds of up to 5000 miles an hour! Things go timey wimey, as they tend to in movies like this, and when Allison lands he finds himself in a strange new world.

The airbase he left is abandoned and overgrown and before long he is captured by (sort of) good human-looking mutants who inexplicably carry a mix of ray guns and Korean War era M1 carbine rifles. Over the next hour he meets other time travelers, strikes up a relationship with the young (20 years old) mute-deaf-telepathic Princess Trirene (Darlene Tompkins), wrestles with evil mutants, learns that most of humanity was killed in a space plague in 1971, and realizes that he must find a way to escape the far future of 2024 if he wants to save humanity.

Ok, we know that some of that is pretty spoilerish, but the whole film is shorter than some after credit scenes in modern movies so pretty much anything you write would be a spoiler. Don’t worry too much that you know where this one is going - just enjoy the ride.

So what is the “so what” about this movie? What makes it worth a watch?

First, the leads have some of the most interesting later careers you’ll run across. Clarke built what looks like an amazingly fun career bouncing between “serious” bit parts in shows from Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Fantasy Island, and Trapper John M.D. to B movies like Frankenstein Island and Attack of the B Movie Monsters. Meanwhile his paramour, Tompkins, went on to become a stunt double on Starsky and Hutch. How cool is that?

While all of that is fun, the movie’s real impact is in the treasure trove of tropes and film tricks it introduced (or reintroduced) to a generation of new Sci-Fi filmmakers.

Some things to watch for:

The rolling intro credits - lifted by George Lucas in the Star Wars series.

The landing scene and first ten minutes on the new Earth - check out the original Planet of the Apes for loud echoes.

Going back in time to stop a plague and save humanity - Twelve Monkeys.

The diamond video effect used in transitioning scenes - Again Star Wars.

The mutant girls’ outfits - The female uniforms on the original Star Trek.

And pretty much everything in the 1973 made for tv movie, Genesis II.

There are plenty of other pre-hatching Easter Eggs, but we’ll leave it to you to discover them all. One thing that is easy to see is that many of the things in Beyond the Time Barrier pop up in later Sci-Fi classics of the 1960s and 70s.

You can check it out for free HERE if you have Amazon Prime.

Two out of Five Experimental Space Planes.

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Have fun with Beyond the Time Barrier? You might want to take a ride with one of these!