One hour and 9 minutes of running time, scored 5.5/10 from 842 votes.
More a creature feature than Sy Fy, but from a story and screenplay by that Sy Fy journeyman Curt Siodmak and starring the future governor of Hawaii, Richard Denning(er). The director was Edward Cahn.
It has a grim opening with a figure walking, dead-eyed, down a darkened, tree-bowered residential street.
Nice. It gets off to a good start.
A gangster is murdered, then the DA, each time the murderer leaves behind finger prints galore. In case plod misses them, they glow in the dark! The police swing into action, aided by the Governor. Wait! The finger prints trace back in each case to a dead man!
Yes, there is mad scientist with plenty of Bunsen burners at work, implanting electrodes into the brains of recently dead men. Being a sexist he does not body snatch dead woman and give them equal employment opportunity as criminal zombies. He powers the electrodes with radium, hence the word ‘atomic’ in the title, but the creatures are multiple not singular. Since the scientist speaks with a German accent, IMDB reviewers assume he is a Nazi, but there is nothing in the film to support that interpretation apart from the accent. In fact, the actor is Gregory Gaye who was born in Russia and he faked the accent.
His research into brains, electrodes, radium, and espresso has been funded by Frank, a notorious villain who is out to wreak vengeance on criminal business rivals and lawmen. He is as merciless as Ming. In fact, the mad scientists wants to quit but… well, research grant KPIs are KPIs
We do not get to see the body snatching but do get a look at the lead-lined laboratory, lit by Bunsen burners, Bad Frank and Mad Scientist have to crawl through some (unexplained) plastic wrap. It was an unusual effect, but there no point to it, i.e., unless in 1955 plastic shields radium. They crawl through it once and we see it four times. In case we missed it the first three times.
Inventory of the dead.
Denning goes around thinking, rather than kicking in doors, and is pleasant and polite, so different from current Hollywood Hop-Heads who yell, stomp, and sulk. He enjoys a normal home life with homemaker wife.
Denning thinking.
She is the Donna Reed stereotype of the time and place but perhaps it is more honest than those Sy Fy films of the period that include a lady scientist and then thereafter belittle her and limit her actions to serving coffee and treat her as an object fo the men to fight over.
There is also pathos when one of the avuncular police officers is murdered, and who yet in death helps to undo Big Bad Frank.
Speaking of the stereotypes of the time and place. The army and police are presented as responsive, competent, diligent, dutiful… Well, it is a work of fiction. Where are the lazy coffee drinkers, the petty martinets who will not move without a written presidential order, the oh-hummers who are bored by the end of the world, the corporate underminers? No, the forces of order are not always presented in that way in creature features of the time. In ‘Not of This Earth’ (1957) the local police are lazy, incompetent, heedless, and unresponsive. That seemed more likely to this jaded viewer.
Many zombie movies, and this is the sub-class for this one, made during the Cold War were thinly disguised references to communism. It is easy to see how that can work. Yet in this case I did not get that impression. There is no greater purpose in the film than a few twists and turns to entertain an audience.
Cahn turned out B features ten or more a year with titles like ‘It! Terror from Beyond Space’ (1958), ‘Zombies of Mora Tau’ (1957). ‘The She-Creature’ (1956), ‘Voodoo Woman’ (1957), ‘Dragstrip Girl’ (1957), ‘Invasion of the Saucer Men’ (1957), ‘Cures of the Faceless Man’ (1958), ‘Invisible Invaders’ (1959), and more. What a CV.
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