The Flame Barrier is a mixed bag of science fiction and jungle adventure, with too much of the latter for too much of its 70 minute running time. And that's a shame, as it's a lousy jungle adventure, but it's a great idea for a science fiction thriller, almost worthy of a Quatermass movie -- and it sort of resembles The Quatermass Experiment in some aspects of its plot, though in terms of budget and look it's closer in nature to Edward Bernds' Spacemaster X-7. And what's more, the idea is so good, that it nearly pulls it off, despite a perilously low budget and a far-from-perfect script -- indeed, aspects of the movie even manage to anticipate elements of The Outer Limits, right down to the presence of a "control voice" type narrator at the front and back ends of the story. George Worthing Yates' underlying tale is a good one, with just the right mix of horror and mathematical inevitability to make the science fiction/thriller aspects near the end credible; and once it gets there, the screenplay by Yates and Jim Fielder does pretty well with the science fiction side of the story, which is mostly contained in the last 15 minutes of the movie. The problem is the 55 minutes of hackneyed jungle adventure that it takes to get us there -- not a cliche is missed or a too-familiar stone left unturned (or its underlying contents, equally familiar, exposed). Luckily, there is half a good cast, in Arthur Franz and Robert Brown, who try very hard with their roles (and appear to get precious little guidance from director Paul Landres, who seems to be mostly interested in getting a scene in the can); and they succeed half the time. Kathleen Crowley comes off less well in an even more poorly written part, and at times the whole picture resembles nothing so much as an emaciated B-movie remake of Henry Hathaway's Garden Of Evil with a sci-fi twist and woefully missing Susan Hayward. But the action, such as it is, does move along briskly, especially in the second half, despite some loose ends in the plot. And the science fiction side, when it finally gets here, is pretty neat -- at least, it respects our intelligence more than the usual B-picture of this sort does. Gerald Fried's sting-laden score helps immeasurably once the pacing notches up, and the performances are just good enough so that the ending, when it comes, is suitably dramatic and memorable, within the limitations of the script and budget. As a bottom-of-the-bill B-programmer, this movie didn't cheat anybody, though the idea is good enough that there could have been a better movie here. The two producers, Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner, had no reason to be ashamed of The Flame Barrier (even the title of which, memorable though it is, is a little confusing in terms of the plot) -- but this movie was easily eclipsed by their 1957 sci-fi/horror effort, The Monster That Challenged The World.