Timeslip ** (1955, Gene Nelson, Faith Domergue, Peter Arne) – Classic Movie Review 10,304

Director Ken Hughes’s weird 1956 British sci-fi espionage thriller film Timeslip [The Atomic Man] stars Gene Nelson and Faith Domergue as a US newsman and his girlfriend, who stumble across a near-drowned man, who turns out to be the double of a supposedly dead eminent atomic scientist (Peter Arne), a victim of radiation through an experiment accident.

Spies are trying to exploit him because he has been sent on a timeslip only moments into the future after radioactivity has put him seven-and-a-half seconds ahead of us in time.

Pedestrian acting and the plodding pace spoil an original, rather exciting idea, which is just intriguing enough and decently developed for a quick look. Unusually, the writing remains the best thing in the movie. Domergue and Nelson are welcome presences but seem uncommitted as the imported mini-stars.

The screenplay by Ken Hughes and Charles Eric Maine is based on a 50s TV play by Charles Eric Maine.

It runs 93 minutes. The US cut version runs 76 minutes.

Also in the cast are Joseph Tomelty, Donald Gray, Vic Perry, Peter Arne, Launce Maraschal, Roland Brand, Charles Hawtrey, Patricia Driscoll, Vanda Godsell, Percy Herbert, Philip Dale, Mary Jones, William Lucas, Susan Chester, Muriel Young, Martin Wyldeck, Carl Jaffe and Barry Mackay.

Timeslip [The Atomic Man] is directed by Ken Hughes, runs 93 minutes, is made by Merton Park Studios and Anglo Guild, is distributed by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (1956) (UK) and Allied Artists Pictures (1956) (US), is written by Ken Hughes and Charles Eric Maine, is shot in black and white by A T Dinsdale and Ron Robson (camera operator), is produced by Alec C Snowden and is scored by George Melachrino (composer: stock music ) and Richard Taylor (musical director), with Art Direction by George Haslam.

It was shot at Merton Park Studios, Merton, London.

It was released by Network Distributing in 2014 in the UK on DVD.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,304

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