A scientist (Martin Landau) creates a laser that affords a lifeform the chance to travel to his laboratory from "beyond the universe" and the two spend the limited time it has together explaining human history (the lifeform must travel back to where it came from at the deadline or risk being forever stranded on Earth). The scientist's power-hungry wife (Sally Kellerman) wants him to gain control of his father's (Neil Hamilton) far-reaching company (mentioned by all as an "empire"). With the married couple's maid (Chita Rivera) all in on helping Kellerman attain total control (this is really about Kellerman wanting the empire, Landau just wanting to secure his father's respect and good will), the being from another dimension is shot when trying to return back from where it came...Rivera had a gun, giving it to Kellerman. Kellerman and Rivera plan to bury the lifeform while Landau is away to fetch his father (Kellerman convinces Landau that seeing is believing and that Hamilton's words would not be met with "smirking faces" if he told others about the lifeform). Kellerman had a brief conversation with the lifeform; there's an attempt from Kellerman to gain its trust so she can possibly manipulate it into staying for her husband's sake. It can read her eyes and sense possible impropriety on her part. The lifeform is equipped with a shield of protection, a button in its hand that can be pressed when it feels threatened. With Landau the being isn't under such fear because he's a scientist with no ambition besides recognition for his work on the laser and communication with it. Kellerman wants to exploit the being's existence for fame and importance (and to get her claws on the Bellero empire). Rivera wants her to reach that position because Kellerman is a woman of considerable strength and passion (Rivera mentions that she was the victim of "someone" she once used a gun to get rid of, giving the gun to Kellerman to keep the being from retreating once its window to leave was almost up), the real figure of authority in the marriage. Landau doesn't seek to gain a position as his father's. In fact, Landau is repulsed by Hamilton's quest for a weapon's defense invention so that the company would gain supreme acknowledgment in the annals of history. Landau is a scientist first. Sure Hamilton's money funds his lab and work, but Landau doesn't particularly care about reaping the rewards of fame as much as earning his father's approval. What is ultimately tragic is how the lifeform (uniformly righteous) is used by everyone seeking to fulfill their own avarice, and how Landau is left to look at his wife behind a shield no human can rescue her from.
Review of The Bellero Shield
