How this got past me, I'll never know!
I had never even heard of this film until I watched it tonight. It's 1960, and the test pilot for a space plane achieves a resonance with the accumulated orbital and rotational speeds of the earth that allows him to travel 64 years into the future.
Not knowing what is going on, the test pilot discovers the air force base in ruins. On the horizon we first see a distant ruined city and a gleaming futuristic oz.
A lot has changed in 64 years!
The radiation from test bombing has eroded the planet's natural defenses against cosmic radiation and the result has been the cosmic plague. Half of the inhabitants of the future are bald, horny, cannibalistic mutants:
Spoiler
we see them eat people and grope down on the fishnet and minskirted women of the future-- the cannibalism is subtle, but it is there, if you watch for it!
Long haired supreme leader, keeps his weirdo, bearded "captain" on a short chain while his telepathic, omniescent grand daughter lead him to other "Escapes" time travelers from planetary colonies in the 90's. How they got there is not made very clear, but they are startled to learn he has a functioning aircraft and can return to his own time.
In a human moment, the otherwise distrustful and overzealous captain warns him to watch out for the "escapes" and that their motives may not be pure.
The "escapes" are tolerated because they maintain the non-mutant's technology (they are actually "early stage" mutants).
It seems that in the future everyone is sterile and the human race is dying!
The telepathic grand daughter wants to breed with the protagonist, but a female "escape" is jealous of her and wants him for herself.
She frees the imprisoned Mutants while the grand daughter contemplates the fate of mankind-- to keep the pilot to save mankind, or to send him back where he can warn the human race and prevent the space plague, thus causing her and her world to never have existed!
While the acting tends to be campy, it is nevertheless above average for films in the genre at the time.
The sets are brilliant (reminiscent of "Forbidden Planet"), and the concepts are top notch sci-fi on a grand scale.
The mutants embody both the eerie menace of those in "Beneath the Planet of the apes" and the visceral threat of Romero's zombies.
There is a weird film effect that appears to be computer lagging, but isn't (everyone comments on it). This is possibly an error made when attempting to digitize this film.
For some people this makes it unwatchable, but for others, it enhances the other worldliness of this film.
There is even a great time travel twist at the end :
Spoiler
The pilot returns to his own time-- but has aged 64 years and is dying!
Watch it streaming on netflix.
Pure gold!
edit: this would make a great remake-- particularly now that we are just beginning to test and engineer space planes in this century!
