Edgar G. Ulmer had a remarkable career in Hollywood, in Yiddish-language movies and on “Poverty Row,” the independent studios that existed in Hollywood’s shadow, filling the bottom half of matinees (and later, drive-ins) with low-budget features. Cinema historians remember Ulmer for two films, the noir Detour (1945) and the strangest horror picture of the early sound era, The Black Cat (1934).
But Ulmer’s career continued through the 1950s and ‘60s; he might not have been acknowledged during his life as the King of the Bs, but his B-list titles are among the era’s most interesting. Two are collected on a four-movie DVD, “Movies 4 You Sci-Fi Classics.” Squeezed onto a single disc are Ulmer’s The Man from Planet X (1951) and Beyond the Time Barrier (1959) along with two Bs by other directors, The Time Travelers (1964) and The Angry Red Planet (1960). There are no extras, no booklet, and the packaging is cheap—in keeping, perhaps, with the way these movies were originally marketed.
Planet X is a bridge between the Universal Studios’ horror classics of the 1930s (Dracula, Frankenstein) and the alien invasion wave of the ‘50s. Ulmer’s picture may even have been the first in that decade’s UFO cycle. Planet X’s is set in a landscape more familiar to werewolves and vampires than space aliens—the misty moors of a remote Scottish isle, where an American scientist, his comely daughter, a dubious researcher and a scrappy reporter have gathered in an ancient watchtower to observe the close approach of a previously unknown planetary body. The astronomical expedition in the bleak, bare-tree landscape discovers an alien craft piloted by a creature resembling a Kubuki figure encased in a glass space helmet. Is the visitor friend or foe or… will the bad behavior of greedy humans turn him against us?
A bleak but not entirely unhopeful vision of humanity can be discerned in many Ulmer films. Beyond the Time Barrier concerns a U.S. test pilot who stumbles into the future, 2024, and the warring survivors of an influx of cosmic radiation caused by the degradation of the Earth’s atmosphere (holes in the ozone?). Almost everyone double-crosses almost everyone else, yet the pilot’s motives are true. In its best scenes, Time Barrier is reminiscent of a “Twilight Zone” episode, especially the pilot’s uncanny bewilderment upon returning from a half-hour flight to find the world he knew had vanished.
