Science is a series of risks. All therapy eventually reaches a point of no return.
This week's TCM Underground feature was Motel Hell, which I've seen before, so instead I watched the movie they showed last week, 1956's The Gamma People. Co-written and directed by John Gilling before he was in the employ of Hammer Films, it stars Paul Douglas and Leslie Phillips as a pair of reporters (one a brash American, the other an equally stereotypical Brit) who are traveling by rail to the Salzburg Music Festival and are waylaid when their car is separated from the rest of the train and diverted to the tiny, Eastern Bloc-style Democracy of Gudavia, which may very well have been inspired by Leonard Wibberley's novel The Mouse That Roared. In contrast to the satirical goings-on in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, though, Gudavia's citizens are held in the thrall of a mad scientist (Walter Rilla) who is using gamma rays to experiment on their children, turning some (like Hitler Youth wannabe Michael Caridia) into tyrannical geniuses and others into mindless goons. Eva Bartok co-stars as Rilla's unwilling assistant, and Philip Leaver plays the comical commandant, who tries to smooth things over after first locking Douglas and Phillips on suspicion of being spies. Even if they aren't, they still manage to get to the bottom of things, but only after multiple foot chases (the backwards Gudavia is remarkably short on cars) and run-ins with Caridia's gang and Rilla's goons. The results may not be terribly exciting, but I can think of much worse ways to pass 80 minutes.