The Gamma People ** (1956, Paul Douglas, Eva Bartok, Leslie Phillips, Walter Rilla) – Classic Movie Review 4415

John Gilling’s interesting and elaborate 1956 British sci-fi movie The Gamma People stars Walter Rilla as crazy scientist Boronski, who is attempting to create a stream of brilliant children by blasting them with gamma rays.

Co=writer/ director John Gilling’s interesting and elaborate, but rather undigested and muddled 1956 British sci-fi movie The Gamma People stars Walter Rilla as crazy scientist Boronski, who is attempting to create a stream of brilliant children by blasting them with gamma rays. This fast-track intervention certainly beats the slow, boring job of having to teach them! Boronski is working for the mad local Iron Curtain dictator to create mutated henchmen by transforming the country’s youth into geniuses or subhumans.

Paul Douglas and Leslie Phillips are the main stars as travelling newsmen, American reporter Mike Wilson and his photographer Howard Meade, whose passenger car by chance breaks away from their train, ending up on a side-track. They are stranded and stop over in Boronski’s isolated Ruritanian-style small town of Gudavia, where they smell a story when they find the mad scientist, start snooping around and are arrested as spies.

However, after they are released, they are met by a woman called Paula Wendt (Eva Bartok), who tells them her brother Hugo (Michael Caridia) has been made a super-brain by Boronski. They set out to report the story and to try to stop Boronski and the dictator.

Despite the intriguing premise based on a story by Louis Pollock, there are hardly any thrills or particularly good acting to report here. Gilling’s and John Gossage’s screenplay has huge problems sorting out all its many strands and issues, and the obviously tiny budget helps to sink it further. Nevertheless, it stays interesting for all its mind-bending ideas.

Also in the cast are Martin Miller, Pauline Drewett, Jackie Lane [Jocelyn Lane], Leonard Sachs, Paul Hardtmuth, Cyril Chamberlain, John Stuart, Philip Leaver and Rosalie Crutchley.

The screenplay is by John Gilling and John Gossage from a story by Robert Aldrich and Louis Pollock.

It evolved from a 1951 screenplay by Oliver Crawford and a story by Louis Pollock, and a later script written in the early Fifties by Robert Aldrich. In June 1951, producer Irving Allen announced he would make The Gamma People in Austria with Brian Donlevy and Virginia Grey. Then in December 1951 he announced, having formed Warwick Productions with Albert Broccoli, he would make The Gamma People with Robert Aldrich directing and Dick Powell to star. Four years went by till the film was made in 1955 with Paul Douglas as star.

It is made by Warwick Films and distributed by Columbia Pictures, released in the UK on 30 January 1956, and in December 1956 in US cinemas in a double bill with the 1956 British sci-fi movie 1984.

Writer Louis Pollock was blacklisted for five years, confused with Los Angeles clothier Louis Pollack, who refused to give testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The cast are Paul Douglas as Mike Wilson, Eva Bartok as Paula Wendt, Leslie Phillips as Howard Meade, Walter Rilla as Boronski, Philip Leaver as Koerner, Martin Miller as Lochner, Michael Caridia as Hugo Wendt, Pauline Drewett as Hedda Lochner, Jackie Lane [Jocelyn Lane] as Anna, Olaf Pooley as Bikstein, Rosalie Crutchley as Frau Bikstein, Leonard Sachs as Telegraph Clerk, Paul Hardtmuth as Hans, Cyril Chamberlain as Graf.

The 1950s and 1960s actress and model Jocelyn ‘Jackie’ Lane (born 16 May 1937) was married to Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Her film and TV career ran from 1954 to 1971. She turned 85 on 16 May 2022.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4415

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