IMDb runtime is 1 hour and 25 minutes, rated 6.2 by 292 cinemitizens.
Genre: krimi but honorary Sy Fy, as below.
It opens with Trinity at 05:29 on 16 July 1944 in the Jornada del Muerto desert. In just over three weeks another gadget destroyed Hiroshima.
The Atomic City is Los Alamos, shown here enclosed by cyclone fencing topped with barbed wire, the perimeter patrolled by armed guards with dogs, entry and exit is tightly controlled. (Much more tightly than the Brits did in ‘Spaceways’ [1953]. Much.) Inside the wire no one talks about the work but everyone works on weapons. Secrecy is all.
A part of Los Alamos in 1952.
Top Scientist is distressed by an accident at work in which a worker was badly burned. That the burns are very serious is made clear. At the time the official line was that worries about radiation were evil Commie propaganda to undermine Yankee-doodle nuclear research. While no fuss is made, any viewer, apart from the fraternity brothers, can see these burns are likely fatal.
His home life is displayed with Corporal Rusty much in evidence. The tone of the film is set by Rusty when he says, ‘if I grow up,’ and is corrected by his mother to say ‘when I grow up.’ But he lapses back to the subjunctive ‘if.’ That word ‘if’ conjures the threat nuclear war and it is striking. Well done, screenwriter Sydney Boehm, who also did ‘When Worlds Collide’ (1951).
Mrs Top Scientist, and that is how she introduces herself, worries that Los Alamos is a bad environment for Rusty surrounded by all these mad scientists dedicated to blowing things up with the prospect of more burns. Until the Big One.
Published by Katrina Mason in 1995, recollections of some who lived there.
Top points out that there are 4000 other children, the schools are excellent, there is no crime, and the newspaper is delivered on time. Enuf said.
Nonetheless it is also true that every time he steps out of the house he is followed by security officers who dog his every step, the mail is censored, the telephone calls tapped, the kitchen cupboards bugged. That he has to show his pass at every corridor and so on. He chafes at this while accepting its purpose. Inside the wire it is a benign police state.
Everyone and everything is searched even inside the wire.
Top accepts this situation as necessary and in this acceptance he is far more mature than many of the scientists who developed the bomb there a few years earlier.
Rusty goes on a school outing to Santa Fe where THEY snatch him. THEY are RED. What is interesting about these Reds is that they are all homegrown. Not a creepy Eastern European accent among them. They want to extort atomic secrets from Top in return for Rusty’s safe return. Top and Mrs are distraught and try to go it alone, as per the instructions of the Red Rusty-nappers. See ‘Tobor the Great’ (1954) for a parallel plot done badly, reviewed elsewhere on this blog, where Steven Geray added menace with his accent.
But the ever vigilant FBI agents — well it is a work of fiction, hooted the fraternity brothers — have already noticed Rusty’s absence and spring into action, led by Doc Adams.
The Reds are ruthless and murder their own to cut the trail. Bad Reds!
When the FBI agents finally arrest a suspect, they must not waterboard him, because if they do, then they become just like THEM, says one agent to another in restraint. This tension is one of themes in the film. To defeat the merciless totalitarian Reds, the Yankees may have to be equally totalitarian and merciless.
In the story the tension is resolved in another good scene. When Top confronts the suspect and says his name. The gloves are off! Out comes the waterboard off camera.
Aside, early on we have a scene at a minor league baseball game, probably the Lost Angeles Cubs in those days. It is a nice bit of location shooting that is done very well. But what is striking at this remove is that the crowd at the game is integrated, conspicuously so. Check the date, 1952.
While we see much FBI effort, there is no result apart from the little info Top beat out of the suspect using a waterboard as a cudgel. And that goes nowhere.
Meanwhile, we see a grimy Rusty imprisoned by the All-American Reds in the Puye Caves of the cliff-dwelling Anasazi People. He is ever so polite, but even so we can see he is sizing up the situation and does not believe a word of the assurance the villains give. Remember ‘if I grow up.’ He does.
When the Reds are busy planning world domination (but not smoking), he sneaks off, and makes use of the cave system to worm his way into tunnels the beefy All-American Reds cannot enter. Nice use of the location with some grand vista shots.
It must have cost a packet at the time to hoist the camera to the top of that mesa. Equally it must have taken an effort to film at the baseball game with a camera the size of an automobile.
While all the principles are white-bread there are Latinos, Indians, and Blacks in the background at the ballgame and in Santa Fe. Even that little is rare for the time when Hollywood was All Aryan.
In addition to Mrs Top who does a lot of knuckle biting, there is a sassy school teacher. They add emotional depth, though Top is good at distraught, too.
There is cigarette smoking, to be sure, but it is not quite as overwhelming in this offering as it sometimes is. Hence the parenthetical remark above.
Honorary Sy Fy when it showed up in searches for Sy Fy because at the time anything atomic evoked Sy Fy. In addition, Top went on the beat the Martians in the next year and later to save the world on the 27th day.
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