The Strange World of Planet X

A pair of scientists experimenting with magnetic fields inadvertently open a pathway from our three-dimensional universe into a fourth dimension.

Laird soon displays a reckless ambition that forces Graham to attempt to sabotage their work in order to slow it down and buy time, hoping to convince his colleague to be more cautious.

Caught between them is Laird's wife Fenella, who is only distantly aware of the nature of their work, but is increasingly alarmed over her husband's single-minded obsession with these experiments and also horrified by a cruel, dangerous side of his personality of which she had previously been unaware.

Overlapping games of cat-and-mouse, as Laird and Graham each try to thwart the other's efforts ensue, with Laird—the more reckless of the two—almost always having the upper hand, even to the point of conducting lethal experiments on human subjects.

The film introduced wholly new elements to the plot, including the experiments attracting the full attention of the government, and also manifesting their effects outside of the laboratory, creating giant insects and spiders with the resulting radiation bursts caused by the powerful artificial magnetic fields, and also attracting the attention of alarmed extraterrestrials.