80,000 Suspects

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

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.

Officials in the City of Bath have to find "80,000 Suspects" in this 1963 film starring Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Yolande Donlan, and Cyril Cusack. Johnson is Steven Monks, an overworked doctor, and Bloom is his wife, Julie, an ex-nurse, who delay their vacation to fight a pending epidemic of smallpox. There is tension between the two; Monks had an affair with another doctor's wife, Ruth (Donlan), who becomes the subject of a search when it's learned that she was with someone infected with smallpox.

A very uninvolving movie that concentrates more on the relationship of the husband and wife than it does the tracking down of people who may have been infected with smallpox. That doesn't necessarily make it less interesting, but in this case, it's hard to warm up to the main characters. The lesser characters are actually far more likable and interesting - Michael Goodlife as Ruth's devastated husband and Basil Dignam as the worried chief medical officer.

There's not much in the way of raw emotion from either Johnson nor Bloom, both excellent actors but neither one particularly warm. The script calls for them to be very stoic.

Could have been compelling - isn't.

People required to isolate themselves, asked to keep their distance and resources stretched to breaking point..... All this sounds horribly familiar! On New Year's Eve Dr. Steven Monks is asked to examine a patient with unusual symptoms. We know there's something distinctly unpleasant ahead when he asks her the ominous question: "Have you been in contact recently with anyone from the Far East?" It turns out to be smallpox which even if it doesn't kill can wreak havoc with the complexion. As luck would have it there are sufficient stocks of vaccine to immunise what appears to be the entire population of Bath but of course one has slipped under the radar.......... Director Val Guest who has adapted this from the novel of Elleston Trevor, keeps the tension and momentum going and has the services of some fine actors. Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom are excellent as indeed they are in 'The Haunting', released the same year. Great support from Michael Goodliffe, Mervyn Johns and inveterate scene-stealer Cyril Cusack. The character played by Yolande Donlan seems rather silly and shallow at the outset but certainly shows another aspect of her character towards the end! It is Basil Dignam as the health officer who is gifted the best line. When reading out the varied professions of those who have succumbed he remarks: "The earth's all the same shape." We hardly need reminding that the Grim Reaper is no respecter of persons.

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.