ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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I was amazed the Phantom had so much to say about The Gamma People. But his review is so skillfully written, with numerous jpgs to enhance it, that I enjoyed it very much.



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It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (1963)

After scrolling down four pages of discussion on who committed what crime, who didn't and what the legal ramifications would be for each......my brain is about to explode.

I have the MGM dvd which has a running time of 161m. It was the last hurrah for a dying style of comedy and the greatest collection of comedians who ever lived.

Who's Minding the Mint, an equally brilliant comedic gem with an all star cast was released the following year and sank with little fanfare.

Within a few years, Mel Brooks, Saturday Night Live and the Monty Python Brits would totally transform movie comedy.

It might be an interesting bit of trivia to note who wasn't in Mad (etc.) World:

Bob Hope
Lucille Ball
Ed Wynn
Danny Kaye
Art Carney

Kramer may have approached Harold Lloyd but Chaplin, of course, would be out of reach.

Stan Laurel vowed to never work again after the death of Oliver Hardy, and he held to that promise.

Bud Abbott was still alive but died a year later, so his health might have prevented his participation

Even if he had been approached, George Burns would probably have declined. Gracie Allen was ill and would also die the following year.

One last note on Hackett, who (whom?) I agree was one of the funniest men who ever lived. I have copies of two of his Las Vegas shows that I transferred from vhs to dvd. It would seriously depress me to lose them.

I saw his duck story that he did on the Carson show. If that isn't the greatest delivery of a punch line in comedy history, I don't know what is.]
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The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Harryhausen's hand puppet that sank a ship. I don't remember why he used it. It must have been some technical problem. Until he revealed the trick, I don't think anyone who ever saw the movie spotted it.



The single image in the film that is not up to Harryhausen's standards. Ocean water at that depth would be almost pitch black. The shot is too clear to hide the fact that the diving bell is a model.



New York City is the greatest city in the world. These two images of NYC take my breath away. No matter how many times I watch the movie, I have to pause at this point and feast my eyes on images of NYC that no longer exist.



Times Square. My parents took me to NYC for the first time when I was nine years old. I still remember the waterfall on top of a building, the man blowing smoke rings on another and a poster of Forbidden Planet that must have been five stories tall.



The fiery conclusion. I was actually able to walk on the Cyclone during a film shoot. I tried to walk up the first incline but it was so steep I didn't get to the half way point.



The Beast was given the most spectacular death scene of all his creations.


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The Gamma People (1956)

Odd combination of science fiction and comedy in a Ruritanian village where a nefarious scientist has set up shop in order to conduct gamma ray experiments on the local populace. This b-level thriller is briskly directed by John Gilling who manages to get more out what he has been handed than the modest budget allows.

American actor Paul Douglas heads the cast, probably as insurance for the U.S. market. Born in Philadelphia in 1907, the burly Douglas built up a successful career as a radio/sports announcer before becoming an actor on stage in the smash Broadway success Born Yesterday co-starring Judy Holliday. He was as acerbic in real life as he was on screen, fiercely protective of his career, the roles he was offered and the terms of his contracts. Why he accepted The Gamma People when it was offered is a mystery, but his thoroughly abrasive and unlikable character is probably a reflection of just what he thought of the movie. Billy Wilder cast him as the philandering husband in The Apartment, but Douglas died before filming started and he was replaced by Fred MacMurray.

Leslie Phillips, the comic side of the duo, was born in London in 1924 and played a series of stereotypical Englishmen until called to duty in WWII. After an early release from the military because of shellshock he returned to acting and became one of the most likable character actors on the British screen. In 2008 he was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) during the Queen’s New Year Honors ceremony for his services to the drama. At this date, Phillips is still alive and makes infrequent appearances, including the voice of The Sorting Hat in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2011)



An unlikely coincidence: the car in which they are riding breaks loose from the train at the same time that two mischievous boys switch the direction of the tracks.





Mike Wilson (Douglas) and companion Howard Meade (Phillips) make history as the first train passengers to arrive in the village of Gudavia in five years. The disgruntled Wilson becomes increasingly agitated when they discover that Gudavia isn’t on the map and there is no car to take them to their intended destination. He bullies Koerner, the flummoxed village constabulary, who ushers them to the hotel where they can rest for the night until someone can come up with a vehicle. Wilson may have reason to be abrasive about the situation but he treats everyone like a lackey. Without Howard around as a kind of befuddled Watson to Douglas’s nasty Holmes, this movie would be very difficult to digest.



Howard heads to the local telegraph office to post a message to friends waiting at their destination.
Howard: How much will that be?
Clerk: There is no charge, sir.
Howard: (delighted): When will it be delivered?
Clerk: It won’t be, sir.
Howard: Why not?
Clerk: There is no telegraph service here, sir.



The most chilling scene in the movie, children undergoing the gamma experiments of Dr. Boronski in his hilltop chateau overlooking the village. Selected victims of Boronski’s gamma ray treatment emerge with superior intelligence stripped of human empathy, the rest as moronic goons which the scientist uses as his “storm troops” to terrify the villagers into submission.



At the hotel, Wilson discovers Hedda, a young girl expertly playing a difficult piece of classical music while Hugo, a stern looking youth, stands over her. When the boy berates her for allowing emotion to guide her playing, she angrily launches into an even more difficult piece. The children are two of Boronski’s gamma geniuses. Hedda has emerged as a musical prodigy; Hugo is an unemotional martinet, the perfect acolyte who will follow Boronski’s orders without question.



Hugo is played by Michael Caridia, born in Norfolk, England in 1941. Although his film and television career lasted from 1954 until 1961, there is no detailed biographical information on him in the IMDb. His performance as the demanding and completely unsympathetic Hugo is flawless.



Mayhem in the streets. Someone has been murdered for talking too much. When Joe and Howard investigate they are briefly separated and Howard has an encounter with a gang of Boronski’s goons.



“The man looked normal but different”, he tries to explain to a skeptical Wilson. "They looked like ordinary men, but without minds."



At their meeting with Boronski, the scientist divulges that he is experimenting with gamma rays. Wilson, who was a reporter during WWII, recognizes the man as an escaped Nazi scientist.



Boronski’s successful subjects apparently have an artistic flare and are creating masks for an upcoming village festival. Hugo startles everyone with his subject. “Most of them are portraying the past. I’m portraying the man of the future.” In keeping with Boronski’s hidden background, Hugo’s man of the future looks uncomfortably like an emaciated concentration camp inmate.



Hedda and her father attempt to escape the village and are attacked by Boronski’s goons. He is killed; she is kidnapped and taken to the chateau.



The assault is witnessed by Paula Wendt, Boronski’s chief assistant who has been having second thoughts about his nefarious activities.



Paula is played by Eva Bartok, whose life reads like a Hollywood concocted tragedy. Bartok was born of a Catholic mother and a Jewish father in Budapest, Hungary in 1927. After her father vanished without a trace, she was forced to marry a Nazi officer to avoid being sent to a concentration camp. After the war, she entered the acting profession, only to face further persecution under the communists. She escaped by marrying Hollywood producer Alexander Paal and for the next five decades her life was a roller coaster ride of career ups and downs, several marriages and a brush with death due to cancer. She died in London in 1998.



On Boronski’s orders, Koerner cancels the festival. Wilson survives an attack by the goons and confronts Koerner in front of the villagers who have had enough. They rebel by tearing down the “verboten” signs and rushing into the streets, singing and dancing in the spirit of liberation.



With Paula’s help, Wilson secretly enters the chateau to rescue Hedda and stop Boronski.



As they make their escape, Hugo arrives, blocking their way. He is undaunted when Paula tries to reason with him and remind him that she is his sister. Hugo pulls the alarm and flees into the lab.



The scientist turns his gamma ray gun on Wilson, Paula and Hedda, calmly but viciously describing the sensations they will feel as the heat increases and their minds dissolve.





At the window, Hugo observes Howard and the villagers he has rounded up engage in a desperate fight for survival against the goons.





If you have ever wondered what a science fiction opium dream would look like, this movie probably comes as close as any to answering the question. John Gossage and John Gilling provided a screenplay based on a story by Louis Pollock based on an original story by Robert Aldrich. The committee stopped there and left it up to Gilling to fashion the schizophrenic result into something coherent. We are fortunate he failed in the attempt.

A person could suffer whiplash watching the cascade of mad Nazi scientists, comic opera villagers, brain dead storm troopers and mind altering gamma ray experiments clashing in a tight 79 minutes. The movie is no one’s favorite but it is entertaining. Despite the lunacy of it all, it is not a bad film like the wretched Killers From Space and the equally abominable The Beast With A Million Eyes.

George Melachrino’s elaborate musical score is a definite plus, from the rather dreamy opening theme to the exuberant carnival furioso, not something you might expect from a b-level science fiction film.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)