The Gamma People

A mad professor takes over a castle in a country no one knows and creates weird kids and goons like something out of Village of the Damned, only this movie came out before the book. If you are up for watching a B grade horror / Sci-fi from yesteryear, it might be worth trying. Incredibly silly.

This one will leave your head spinning like an Ed Wood film. It is a surreal stew of so many styles and symbolism that a reference point is reticent.

Ten years after WWII the fascist fear was forever present. Here we have science-fiction mind control based on factual events that instill a real life horror and remembrance of a not too long ago plague of pathology.

Hitler youth, enslavement encampment, and a mad scientist are at work here along with foreign journalists and feather headed throwbacks in this offbeat and mind-boggling concoction that almost but doesn't quite work.

The movie also, for some reason, throws in a bit of slapstick humor and coy dialog that got lost on its way to some other film and found its way into this sometimes sombre scenario of tortured children and monstrous and zombified men who were victims of the villains.

The result is a jigsaw made up of pieces from different puzzles. Interesting and never dull, but occasionally so twisted and ill fitting that one is left with a jaw dropping experience that will have you shaking your head, and that just might be the effect of that mind-melting gamma ray gun.

This is more of a light comedy than a science fiction thriller. It's actually a film about the different stereotypes of nationalities, beginning with the "ugly American" and the "waggish British" reporters.

The film always moves briskly, due more to clever writing, good casting, and strategic directing, than on effects and big money. This is a textbook film on how to make a film look like it's more action packed than it really is.

We know it's a spoof on the nationalities from the start, as the pair of reporters are oblivious to their train car being dislodged, by accident, and rolling into a "duchy" that resembles the European duchy we get in classics like THE INSPECTOR GENERAL, THE MOUSE THAT ROARED, and others.

The duchy citizens also play to part.

However, like most good films, this takes stereotypes and changes them into three dimensional characters, or at least two dimensional. The film makes sure it doesn't lose its light hearted approach. It has the cult look of a Rocky Horror in that regard, of taking stereotypes and making more out of them.

This is a fun film, and well done, obviously low budget. There are no dull moments, which is more than I can say for most big budget science fiction movies. Much of this is because the film creates a very good atmosphere.

Never underestimate "atmosphere" and "fundamentals". This film has both.

Set in the mythical 'Democracy of Gudavia and shot in what looks the Tyrol (the locals serving as extras background just stand around and gawp), the dialogue is obviously post-synced and it has a noisy score by George Melachrino.

Paul Douglas and Leslie Phillips make a highly unlikely team in this cross between Hitchcock's 'The Lady Vanishes' and Losey's 'The Damned' as a pair holidaying newspapermen who uncover a dastardly scheme to genetically engineer a new master race.

You know you're in trouble when the project is in the hands of our old friend Walter Rilla, but Eva Bartok looks most fetching in short hair and a satin boiler suit with a Nehru collar.

An American reporter (Paul Douglas) and his very British photographer (Leslie Phillips) end up in the quasi communist state of Gudavia, which seems to consist of one village, where a mad scientist is using gamma rays to alter children's minds - some become geniuses, others become feral under the professor's control.

What a very odd, quirky film this is, unashamably mixing sci-fi horror with straight comedy with the latter taking up most of the first half of the film, before it all get quite grim and serious. There is a clear intent to look at the various and eccentric traits of Americans and British and to have the west free the world of the evils of communism and oddly this mixed bag just about works if you manage your expectations accordingly. Kitsch.