Guilty(?) Pleasures: The Gamma People

This may be the start of an ongoing series…


Pauline Drewett and Goon

For all six people who were wondering what screen bulldozer Paul Douglas was doing between The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) and This Could Be the Night (1957), it was The Gamma People (John Gilling, 1956). I like it because it’s a mixed bag: a quasi-science fiction, quasi-political quasi-comedy from Warwick Films, a company headed by future Matt Helm producer Irving Allen and James Bond’s Cubby Broccoli. (The Gamma People’s DP was future Bond vet Ted Moore.) Paul’s sidekick is the eternally flustered Leslie Phillips, one of my favorite comedy actors. They’re trapped in the mythical Iron Curtain country Gudavia, lorded over by mad scientist Walter Rilla and an army of slackjawed goons whose brains have been melted by Rilla’s insidious gamma rays. As an added bonus, the coldly stylish Eva Bartok wavers effortlessly from femme fatale to Paul’s unlikely love interest. Director Gilling did a few pictures for Warwick, and later for Hammer, but I’ve yet to see one as spontaneous and animated as Gamma People: Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952), Odongo (1956), The Flesh and the Fiends (1960), Night Caller from Outer Space (1965), Where the Bullets Fly (the second and last of Tom Adams’s Charles Vine spy series, 1966), and The Mummy’s Shroud (1967). You can check out Gilling’s other credits at IMDb. While it was released ages ago on VHS, The Gamma People isn’t available on DVD.

The images below were pilfered from Wrong Side of the Art (click to enlarge):