An American reporter smells a story when he is stranded in an Iron Curtain country where the local dictator is using gamma rays to transform children into mutated henchmen.
23 Jul The Gamma People (1956)
Women, Trained
The story here is a bit interesting, deriving from Nazi experiments with children and indicating a trend actually well supported in the US. But the production is ho hum and it has no value for what it is.
But it is an example of something that is a minor interest of mine: actresses in relationships with filmmakers, where that relationship obviously built the actress’ career, and the filmmaker is obviously making love with the camera. Of course the two overlap. This seems to have worked in Europe more than in the US where the tabloids had more sway.
In recent viewing, I saw Asta Nielsen a Danish-German woman with some talent, but clearly bumped up by her lover. And then there was Anny Ondra, a Polish-Czech woman who had or more likely developed screen appeal, nurtured by her lover/filmmaker and graduating to Hitchcock films.
And here we have Eva Bartok, a Hungarian-Polish woman who literally was trafficked, and somehow through serial relationships had a strong career in B-movies. Walking through the 40’s and 50’s there seem to be many cases of female film personae like this.
That the story here of artificially enhanced people overlaps a bit is mildly interesting. The end has a pretty impressive shot of the castle laboratory burning and exploding.
Posted in 2025
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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