80,000 Suspects

Director Val Guest's DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE ranks among the great British science fiction films that doubles as one of the best newspaper films as well. A cautionary tale which expertly tapped into the A-bomb jitters of the early sixties, the film centers on the aftermath of a nuclear upheaval which sends the world on a crash course towards the sun. The hook of the film is that the action is seen through the eyes of journalists who chart the story and eventually arrive at the truth despite the web of official government lies and deceit.

80,000 SUSPECTS, released only two years later, is something of a companion piece, once again centering on a group of professional people struggling to balance their personal lives as the world is falling apart around them, in this case it's a smaller-scale disaster in the form of an outbreak of smallpox. Guest uses the exact same technique: gritty black and white photography and ample use of authentic locations and hand-held camera conveying a newsreel look. With everything in place for a sizzling apocalyptic thriller, it's a pity 800,000 SUSPECTS wastes it all on the director's own turgid and profoundly tedious script. The cast of lovable cynics spouting razor-sharp dialog in DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE is sorely missed. Instead, the characters are so akin to a Hollywood hospital soap opera a la THE INTERNS, I half-expected to see Michael Callan lurching around in his white scrubs.

As the married doctor-and-nurse team who tackle the epidemic head-on, Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom are never less than professional but never more than marginally interesting (the pair would shortly reunite as the leads in Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING). More disappointingly is that Mr. Guest uses the opportunity to give a plum role to his wife, the talented Yolande Donlan who several years earlier became the toast of London's West End recreating Judy Holliday's role in BORN YESTERDAY. Unfortunately, her big scene playing drunken wife of a staff physician is overlong, over-written and serves to slow the film down even before it has a chance to begin. It's not surprising that this film has dropped into obscurity.

There are filmmaker who deserve further analysis, but who are forgotten for being artisans dedicated to genre films made with small budgets. However, some made a handful of films exceeding their limitations, and are better than overrated directors. Val Guest is one of them. Judging by his statements, he was a man of no pretensions who wanted to do his job well.

Born in London, Guest worked for many years with Gainsborough Pictures and Hammer Film, but he made movies through his production company. He put Hammer on the international map with «The Quatermass Experiment» (1955) and in 1961 his name was cemented with the sci-fi classic «The Day the Earth Caught Fire.»

Apart from works for Hammer, as the remarkable «The Abominable Snowman» (1957), or his participation in big productions as "Casino Royale" (1967), Guest remained in low-budget films, in which we sometimes discover his ability to enhance them and give the public good entertainment, often in black and white and wide-screen.

In this format, he produced and directed the drama «80,000 suspects», which presents a group in crisis, as in «The Day the Earth Caught Fire», but here there is no global alert, rather the alarm is limited to the city of Bath. Based on the novel «The Pillars of Midnight» by Trevor Dudley Smith, Guest recounts the drama of a smallpox epidemic that suddenly breaks out, causing numerous deaths during the collective struggle to control it.

The situations of the operation with health personnel, police officers and journalists are handled at a good pace and efficiently, even with a couple of image transitions planned on set, with very good use of the CinemaScope format, as he did on other occasions. The theme of adultery between doctors and wives, plus the participation of a priest, do not obstruct the drama of the epidemic, but are revealed as key elements of the story, although the dialogues slow down the plot, by today's dramatic standards.

All in all, Val Guest's «80,000 suspects» is a good contribution to the British film industry of those years, in which he combined current issues (smallpox killed about 300 million people in the 20th century), the ethics of life in couple, and the good effect that religion can have on people's lives, instead of bothering them with old-fashioned and obscurantist notions.

(*) Now I realize that, with «The Day the Earth Caught Fire,» Guest and his collaborators anticipated the current alarming global warming; and «80,000 suspects» describes a situation similar to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Watching the advert I thought the film was going to be a quite dramatic thriller, focused on a deadly outbreak of smallpox. Instead, the film is 70 percent melodrama, 30 percent thriller, it's actually pretty slow, if you're expecting an energetic thriller, you'll be disappointed.

It was made back in 1963, so gore and terror aren't expected naturally, but the main issue is the pacing, a deadly outbreak and everyone is meandering about.

It is watchable enough, the characters themselves are quite interesting, it's well acted, and looks pretty good.

Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom and Cyril Cusack are all decent, but it's the actress behind Ruth that steals it, Yolande Donlan, she adds some much needed energy and enthusiasm into a pretty slow film.

It's ok. 5/10

Leaving a New Years party, Steven Monks leaves his wife to drop a friend home while he pops into the hospital to pick up a camera. When he arrives he is asked to consult on a patient upstairs only to find that she has a case of smallpox. When a second case comes in the next day, a outbreak is feared and the doctors and police begin to try and trace the original case's movements. While Steven tries to help fight the disease, he cannot manage to hold together his crumbling marriage and the race to contain the outbreak proves to be a personal one.

I wasn't sure what this film was about when I sat down to watch it, and I'm not too confident now of being able to pigeonhole it into a genre. The plot is a mix of two different threads. The first thread is the outbreak of smallpox; this is delivered reasonably well, with some vague tension early on. However as the film progresses it just becomes a bit flat and there is no urgency and the plot gradually becomes more about the second thread. The second thread is a personal one of marriages, adultery and pain and it is interesting even if the setting of an outbreak seems to be out of place. Steven and Julie are having major problems – not helped by his secret affair with the wife of another doctor. At times this is interesting but for most of the time it is all very stiff and kitchen sink – only once (Steven with the priest) do raw nerves get exposed and challenges made, but then even this is a fleeting moment. This is a shame because it could have been a tense relationship moment set against a tense background of disease, but it didn't manage to do either that well.

This is not to suggest that it is rubbish, because it isn't. The writing is good and the film as a whole is enough to keep you watching but I didn't ever feel really involved or gripped in either storyline. Writer/director/producer Val Guest must take some of the blame for this, even if he has quite a few famous films under his belt, he can't quite do it here. His words are stiff and his direction matches it – it's all very, well, English, but I didn't think that that fitted with the reality of the story that was being told. I could forgive some of it for being dated and perhaps told at a different pace; but then on the other hand the film also seemed to be pushing the boundaries of the period with rather frank tale at times, the adultery theme running through and a bit of slight nudity.

The cast are reasonably good but none of them really get panicked about the disease or deeply emotional over their marriages; the most we really get is a bit of sobbing here and there. Johnson is solid as Steven and he isn't afraid to let his characters weaknesses come out even if I think he let him off a bit lightly at times. Bloom is better but the material doesn't let her go as far as her performance indicated that she was trying to. Support is all solid enough – like the lead two, they all do well with what they have but none really stand out.

Overall this is not a bad film but I wouldn't describe it more that interesting or watchable. The two threads make for an interesting mix and potentially a dual interest story but they don't mix that well (one gradually taking over the other) and neither is really engaging or emotionally involving as they should have been given their tense and/or emotive themes. An interesting watch but not one I could imagine sitting down to again for a long time.

This film was shot in my home city of Bath, when I was ten, and watching it reminded me how much of the city has changed and how much local history has been lost. It was made during the big freeze of 1963 and whilst being filmed the thaw set in! to ensure continuity the production company had bring in "Artificial Snow" to replace the melted snow, also the only resident to appear in the film is the newspaper seller in the Abbey Church Yard - it was his "normal pitch". The premier was held at the Local Odean Cinema - the smallest in the city. The title 80,000 suspects was taken from an estimate of the city's population.