In 1957 a group of astronauts, Commander Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh), engineer Henry Jaffe (Christopher Dark), radioman Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor) and scientist John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), are travelling back to Earth after taking their rocket ship out for a test run around Mars.

Upon returning to Earth the ship suddenly accelerates and knocks the crew unconscious. When they awake they discover that the ship has crash landed on Earth into a snow covered mountain. Confused the crew try to figure out what has happened.

They discover that they have time traveled into the future and what’s left of Earth is a mess. There’s giant spiders that attack them and even worse the human race seems to evolved into a caveman like creature or mutate from nuclear war and the creatures constantly attack the astronauts. While fleeing the mutates the astronauts end up in a cave. They discover that there’s an underground city where humans have fled the nuclear war and have survived and advanced over the years.

The humans who live underground are peaceful and happy but the men have become weak and sterile while the women have become, well let’s just say they are happy to see the astronauts. The astronauts discover that it’s the year 2508. They then try to get the underground humans to fight back against the mutates but nobody really wants to.

This low budget b-movie was made trying to reuse some of the stock footage from 1951’s Flight to Mars. The studio actually tried to make the most of the budget and it doesn’t look too bad. When the film hits theatres H.G. Wells estate sued the studio over copyright infringement arguing that the movie was too close to The Time Machine.

Edward Bernds was a prolific director who made a ton of Three Stooges shorts in the 1940s. In the 1950s and early 60s Bernds started making feature films. After directing this he went on to make Space Master X-7 and Queen of Outer Space.