THE FLAME BARRIER (1958)

A new satellite, the X-117, is launched with a chimp on board but is lost 200 miles up, somewhere around the "flame barrier" where the Earth's atmosphere ends. The satellite is presumed to have disintegrated but actually it falls to Earth in a Mexican jungle. Scientist Howard Dahlmann takes off to find the wreckage but isn't heard from for months and his wife Carol heads down to hire a search party led by the reliable Dave Hollister and his cocky ne'er-do-well brother Matt. It's the rainy season and Dave is reluctant to go, but Carol offers them $7000 if they find Howard alive or 10% of his estate if he's proven dead. Villagers warn them that animals in the area are dying. They find a skeleton that Carol thinks is Matt but it's actually a native who was mysteriously burned up. Soon some of the team members have left and tensions grow between the brothers, in part because Matt is putting the moves on Carol, though Carol seems more attracted to Dave. Another native is found with chest burns; he eventually dies and his flesh melts off leaving just his skeleton. Finally they find the satellite in a cave, with Howard's body engulfed in a glowing pulsing blob. An invisible forcefield extends from the satellite which sets fire to anything it comes in contact with, and it's doubling in size every two hours. If the search party leaves, that means they'll be leaving the nearby villagers, and eventually the entire world, at the mercy of the force. But can they quickly find a way to fight and destroy it?

The bulk of this B-movie is of the jungle adventure genre with sci-fi elements thrown in at the beginning and end. If you plan to watch this as a sci-fi film, you'll be disappointed. It's fairly short, 70 minutes, and the jungle melodrama, complete with dangerous animals and sweaty trekking, tends to drag in the middle. But the climactic scenes are tense and effective. Some critics assume that this was originally intended to be all jungle story but the Russian launch of Sputnik, which occurred just a couple of months before filming began, may have influenced its turn toward satellite sci-fi. It's no gem but I enjoyed the mash-up of genres. Kathleen Crowley holds her own as the strong lead female, though she does come off as a little whiny in her single-minded focus on her mission, ignoring the bad outcomes for everyone else that seem likely. Arthur Franz is serviceable as Dave, the good brother, though he's awfully bland compared to the handsome Robert Brown as Matt, the less-good brother—he's not really bad, just a problem drinker who tends to be full of himself and redeems himself in the end. Brown went on to minor fame as a regular on the late 60s TV show Here Come the Brides. If the unusual combo of genres sounds appealing to you, you'll like this one OK. Pictured are Franz, Crowley and Brown. [YouTube]