IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 19 minutes, rated 5.3 by 435 cinemitizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Mixed. Good moments but no whole.
Two journalists mistakenly enter the Democracy of Gudavia and soon wish they had not done so. They are an odd couple, Brit Leslie Phillips is the photographer who plays the effete skirt chaser he made his own and burly and blunt and brash Paul Douglas is the American wordsmith.
They discover that once in Gudavia there is no way out for in the alpine castle is a mad scientist trying to develop super humans by dousing them with gamma rays. He wants no publicity from these two. One of his prodigies is the piano playing Hedda who resists by being creative, and the other is the martinet Hugo. These two are both about twelve years old.
They also find Eva Barton; that convinces them to stay. ‘Amen,’ sighed the fraternity brothers.
There are some nice scenes of the mountains on travelling mattes. A few scary moments with zombies from the mad scientist’s failed efforts. For, as he notes, mindless zombies have their uses, in a remark that anticipates the Tea Party. There is another scene that anticipates ‘The Village of Damned’ (1960).
But Hugo steals the show. He is the super-kinder who does the Mad Scientist proud. His weakness at the end is finely judged and effective though his subsequent transformation is saccharine. But the turning point is well done. He is played by Michael Caridia who was fourteen at the time.
The screenplay draws on many tropes, the micro state of Gudavia that appears on no maps, the mad scientist in the hilltop castle playing god, his hollow-eyed zombies, the Hitler youth uniform Hugo wears, the loving grandfather…… It has so many loose ends that none of them are tied. It is partly farce as with the comic opera military of Gudavia, and deadly serious when Hugo is a piano critic.
Eva helps Dr Mad in his experiments without a qualm until the journos arrive, and then goes all distressed. See, here is the evidence, and get a load of those condensers.
There is a nice scene in the telegraph office where the official is the perfect bureaucrat. Ever so polite and ever so pointless.
The project had a vexed production and at some point a young Albert Broccoli with Irving Allen took over production. Yep, them. Looking back from Chubby’s later career, one can see first drafts for scenes used later in the Bond films.
It was made in England. Douglas was there with his wife Jan Sterling who was playing Julia in production of ‘1984’ (1955), which has its own version of little Hugo. ‘1984’ and this film were released as a double bill at the end of 1956, one dead serious and one not.
There are comments on Paul Douglas’s career in the review of ‘It Happens every Spring‘ elsewhere on this blog and also on Eva Bartok’s in the review of ‘Spaceways’ elsewhere on this blog. He quit a successful career in radio sports journalism to try his hands in movies at age 42. She had more drama in her private life than in any movie she made, escaping Naziis and then Communists, and then a great many men.
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