80,000 Suspects

Nice to see the city of Bath used for location filming, and in the one of the coldest winters the UK had seen in 1963! The snow was definitely authentic. The Abbey and Pump Rooms used to good effect but wasn't parking easier then?! Otherwise, a bit of a pot boiler with a stilted script and over dramatic storyline but Claire Bloom and Richard Johnson looked lovely and sexy in the snow.

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.

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

After a New Year's party, Dr. Steven Monks plans to head away on holidays with his wife Julie to patch up their weary marriage, but when later that night he diagnoses a patient of smallpox. Soon enough the city of Bath is facing an epidemic and Julie (who's an ex-nurse) wants to stay back and help out. The medical team led by Dr. Monks slowly starts to contain the outbreak after some early deaths and Julie being infected, but this leaves one case involving his colleague Dr. Clifford's runaway wife Ruth, who could be carrying the virus. What makes it harder for Monk, is that he had an secret affair with the lady, and this stressful situation has brought up the issue.

What looks like a crisp BW medical thriller on the surface turns out to be much more a melodramatic story centred on human interactions on a personal level. Where marriage is tested, adultery is looming and the smallpox epidemic is an interesting backdrop tool. This one is inspired off Elleston Trevor's novel "The Pillars of Midnight" and Val Guest would go on to direct and write the feature (which has dated considerably). Guest achieves a nice sense of realism with its workable semi-documentary touch, authentic locations and glum atmospheric air, but underneath that it never raises any intensity or urgency within the spreading outbreak and the personal side of the story lacks emotion and ends up pretty square. This makes way for a plodding pace and in the long run being a tad overlong. Guest's sedated, but standard handling in direction is competent and careful, but never entirely gripping and his material, while admirable never really clicks or takes off, like it could have done. It settles on a familiar and safe tone for most part. The talkative script is thickly verbose and strikes up few interesting character developments, but more often falls into many deadpan exchanges. The performances are acceptably durable, but better then the material they're given. Richard Johnson is rigidly ice-cold as Dr. Steven Monks and the stunning Claire Bloom impresses as Julie, but her classy turn is simply pulled back by the material. In able support roles is Michael Goodliffe, Cyril Cusack and an eccentric Yolande Donlan.

"80,000 Suspects" is stuffy and predictable, but in it stays watchable because of a solid looking production and some captivating, if not spectacular factors.

Guest shows himself as a competent all rounder (Wrote, Produced and Directed) but needs Bloom and Johnson to cover over direction which lacks at times. Bloom is given too little material for a pedigree which was demonstrated better both before and after, Johnson is archetypically stoic, if a little wooden. It is fair to say that it is dated, but still watchable, and the formula is true to what still makes a reasonable movie today. Emphasis is rightly on the characters and there are sufficient character subplots to keep us interested, though a little more development wouldn't have gone astray.