Watch The Gamma People For Free

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Two reporters, one American and one British, have their train car (not the train itself) accidentally diverted into the tiny country of Gudavia where their arrival causes excitement. Once there they eventually discover nefarious goings on performed by the evil Boronski, namely subjecting people to gamma rays to make them brainy or brain-dead. It sounds strange and it is but I found it enjoyable and watched all the way through. It starts off like Ruritanian comedy then moves into a more sinister direction. There are some creepy scenes, comic scenes and dramatic scenes. There is a classic in there somewhere but unfortunately it didn't come out.The reporters, Paul Douglas as Mike Wilson and Leslie Phillips as Howard Meade are chalk and cheese but actually they make a plausible pairing. Philip Leaver is good as the chief of police with the elaborate headgear and Michael Caridia as the boy Hugo is quite scary. Eva Bartok is adequate but Rosalie Crutchley gives another good intense performance. Walter Rilla makes a fine villain but is not in it enough.There are two scenes that impressed me a lot. The first is when the reporters hear a child playing the piano really well and on seeing her the are delighted with her skills but hovering over her is Hugo and it becomes apparent that the child hates being a brilliant player and when she makes a mistake Hugo berates her in a cruel fashion. What began as a charming scene develops into something a lot darker. The other scene is the carnival where amidst the revelry is drama and danger. The carnival is also wonderfully edited by Jack Slade.All in all an odd one but worth seeing nevertheless.

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.

Gamme People, The (1956) ** (out of 4) Extremely bizarre science-fiction film from Columbia has Paul Douglas and Leslie Phillips playing American and British journalists who accidentally wind up in a small European town, which seems to be ran by a strange scientist. After a slow start the journalist soon learn that the scientist is doing experiments with a gamma ray, which he's using to try and create geniuses. Of course, whenever the experiments fail he ends up with ghouls who will do all his evil deeds. I don't think anyone in their right mind would put THE GAMMA PEOPLE on any sort of "Best of.." list but you could possibly find it on several "WTF" lists. This is without question one of the strangest films to come from the 1950s because not only does it try to capture the horror/sci-fi genre but it also mixes in some very strange comedy as well as some political undertones. All of this stuff thrown into one screenplay just leaves the viewer scratching his head because it's impossible to really figure out what's going on or what the filmmakers were trying to do. The screenplay itself is a mess as it's all over the map and what's worse is the horrid bits of comedy that are thrown in. At times it almost seems like you're watching a spoof of a horror movie but then you get more ghoulish activity that reminds you that this is supposed to be a horror film. Speaking of ghouls, the monsters here are downright silly and it's doubtful the youngest viewers in the world would be remotely scared of them. Not for a single second are any of them scary and that silly walk they do makes one want to laugh more than anything else. With this strange blend of genres you're almost looking at a horrid movie but what saves it from the "so bad it's horrible" file are the strong performances and the fact that it's rather well-made. When I say well-made I do mean on a technical level because the direction holds the material about as well as one could hope and the cinematography is also quite nice. I'm not sure how much they had to pay Douglas to appear in this film but he does a very good job in the lead and plays it straight throughout. Phillips is also very good in his role as is Eva Bartok who plays an assistant who finally gets some courage to fight back. THE GAMMA PEOPLE has pretty much been forgotten over the years but it's certainly an interesting little experiment. It certainly doesn't work but fans of the genre will want to check it out just to see how strange it actually is.

Although he looked like a VERY ordinary man, in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s Paul Douglas was an actor highly in demand--particularly at 20th Century-Fox. He's appeared in lots of big-budget prestige films such as "A Letter to Three Wives", "We're Not Married", "Executive Suite", "The Solid Gold Cadillac" and "Clash By Night". In addition, he was a very frequent guest star on television. In light of this, I have no idea why he would ever agree to star in a silly film like "Gamma People". When I tell you the plot, you'll understand what I mean.Two reporters are traveling through Europe by train. One is an American (Douglas) and the other is a Brit (Leslie Phillips). However, in a hard to believe twist, the train car they are on (and no one else) become uncoupled from the train and drifts into a tiny fictional communist country. Once there, they are initially arrested but they soon let them go--for fear of an international incident. And, while they are waiting to get out of this country that seem stuck in the 19th century, the authorities give them the run of the country--but they also are careful NOT to let them learn about the 'Gamma People'. What, exactly, are Gamma People? Well, it seems these evil commies are using gamma rays in order to turn the people into obedient little pawns of the State! In a way, this combines two B-movie genres--sci-fi and Red Scare films. Can Douglas and Phillips learn the truth AND manage to make it out of this dictatorship alive? In addition to being an odd plot, this film is odd because of its tone. Often it's played for laughs--yet other times it's deadly serious. This is often a bit jarring and I really think the comedic elements should have been excised--or at least toned down quite a bit. I think the paranoid deadly serious stuff was a lot more entertaining and in keeping with the story idea.All in all, this is a film you watch less for the film's quality and more because of its historical value. It certainly is an odd little curio from the 1950s! Not great but enjoyable...if that makes any sense. Plus, I learned an invaluable lesson. If I am ever stuck in a repressive country, I should do what Douglas does--loudly complain and start sluggin' folks!