Le Rayon de la mort

Bryant Haliday plays a research scientist named Paul Steiner, who's hard at work on a "projection" experiment: he hopes to be able to transmit matter from one place to another. His process works on inanimate objects, but not on living things. Despondent when it looks like the plug will be pulled on his entire operation, he uses himself as the first human guinea pig. As you can expect, this has disastrous consequences. When he regains human form, he's horribly disfigured, and has gained the "touch of death". (When he lays his mutilated hand on someone, they are electrocuted.) And, of course, he's now insane.

This British sci-fi / horror effort does owe a fair bit to "The Fly", putting just enough of a spin on the premise to not come off as a carbon copy. It's not a great story, but it does entertain quite capably nevertheless. It's paced reasonably well by directors Ian Curteis and John Croydon, clocking in at a painless 78 minutes. A great deal of what effectiveness it possesses comes from the performances of an excellent cast. Haliday is an earnest, sympathetic lead turned deliciously crazed antagonist, and ultimately tragic character. Ronald Allen and Mary Peach, as his worried colleagues, figure into a romantic subplot that doesn't waste too much of the running time. Norman Wooland and Derrick De Marney are superb at playing sneaky, nefarious types trying to discredit / ruin the experiment. Gorgeous Tracey Crisp is appealing as the helpful secretary, and Derek Farr has a solid, reliable presence as the obligatory inspector who picks up Steiners' trail. Legendary stuntman Alf Joint plays the security guard. The makeup by Eric Carter is pretty good for the time this was made, Kenneth V. Jones' music is good, and the widescreen photography helps to keep things visually interesting.

While the tale it's spinning is definitely on the routine side, this still makes for an enjoyable movie watching evening for fans of the science-fiction and horror genres.

Seven out of 10.

It's a delightful but typical and overused cliché in horror movies that brilliant and obsessive scientists suddenly go bonkers and ruthlessly use themselves as guinea pigs with grotesque and catastrophic consequences. It's what makes this kind of movies entertaining, of course, but it's not exactly plausible. These brilliant men (or women) of science risk their lives even though they are practically certain the outcome will be irreversible and most likely fatal? Anyways, I'm always eager to watch a good old- fashioned "science gone wrong" horror flick; especially when it was made in Great Britain during the most flourishing decade for the genre (1960 – 1970). "The Projected Man" understandably became somewhat forgotten in between all the popular and high-grossing "Frankenstein" and "Quatermass" movies produced by the legendary Hammer Studios, but it's still a worthwhile effort with a decent screenplay, reasonable amounts of suspense and good gruesome make-up effects for its time. Doctor Steiner is a smart man, working on a hi-tech device that – during the first stage – vaporizes objects and then transforms them into pure energy that is kept is a cell, and then projected back into its original forms by a super-powerful laser. Don't ask me how it works, because I didn't understand one iota of all the technical details (and there are far too many overlong and purely technical monologues, by the way) but it's somewhat comparable to the "Tele-Pods" that previously featured in "The Fly". And here as well, the device works perfectly well with lifeless objects, but when Steiner attempts to project living tissue, the test animals die instantly and give off incredibly heavy electric shocks. Meanwhile, the director of the research facility wants the experiments to fail and even sabotages crucial demonstrations. I didn't quite capture why he – Dr. Blanchard – must terminate this genius scientific breakthrough, but at least he succeeds in driving Dr. Steiner to madness. He uses the unstable device on himself and re-emerges with a half-demolished face, a burning pair of hands capable of inflicting sudden death through electrocution and a lust for murdering everyone who gets in his way. I know it has a bad reputation, but I quite enjoyed "The Projected Man". Admittedly you require a fair share of patience and tolerance regarding stupid plot twists, dire love stories and tedious sequences set in cheap laboratory settings full of blinking lights and annoying buzzers. But when Steiner eventually goes on his rampage, it turns into a fun and unscrupulous midnight movie that I warmly recommend.

Start with a knockoff of "The Fly" with the setting changed from Montreal to London (England, not Ontario) with added elements of "Darkman" (though that movie was still more than 20 years in the future). Add liberal amounts of nondescript English actors, add an officious bureaucrat who looks like G.I. Joe (the one with the fuzzy hair and beard) and a cute young blonde who spends much of the movie in her underwear. Fold in lots and lots and lots of talking and top off with Bryant Halliday in some pretty cool monster makeup, and you have this movie.

Was it any good? Well, it was OK, but a movie like this seems like it should have been much more interesting. David Cronenberg could have done this much better. Heck, Freddie Francis could have done this movie better....

Someone knocked the script for this off about 10 minutes after watching THE FLY and they threw in a bit of MAN MADE MONSTER to make it look original. Bryant Halliday (CURSE OF THE VOODOO, etc.) is a scientist working on a matter transport device. Apparently he has not consulted the Delambre family in Canada or he'd know better. Even though he has never succeeded in teleporting living matter he decides to project himself right into the living room of the department head so as not to lose his funding. Bad move! Well Bryant does not end up with a fly head, no he is burned rather like Tor Johnson in NIGHT OF THE GHOULS but he gains to power to electrocute people by touching them. He seems to have changed so much that electricity has become his food; he gets weaker the more power he uses. An interesting concept suffers from the ho-hum approach and an ending, which I will not reveal here, that does not so much end the movie as it "stops" it; like they had run out of ideas to advance the plot and so just ended everything. Saturday afternoons were made for movies like this. Don't think about what you are watching, take it at face value and you will have a good time.

Scientist has terrible accident with his teleportation device and ends up horribly disfigured and with the power to electrocute people with his hand!

Intriguing enough science-gone-wrong thriller from Britain. There's some decent suspense and occasional shock (no pun intended) to be had. The cast isn't half bad, star Bryant Haliday is the best as both the films tragic hero and semi-frightening villain. The makeup work on Haliday isn't half bad. Nice dramatic music score as well.

Over all a decent enough sci-fi flick, but it doesn't match The Fly.

** 1/2 out of ****