JAMES KENNAWAY – The Mind Benders. Atheneum, US, hardcover, 1963. Signet P2515, reprint paperback, September 1964. UK edition: Longmans, hardcover, 1963.

Film: THE MIND BENDERS. Anglo-Amalgamated Films (UK), American International Pictures (US), 1963. Dirk Bogarde, Mary Ure, Stanley Clements, Michael Bryant, Wendy Craig, Edward Fox. Screenplay: James Kennaway. Director by Basil Deardon.

   The actual experiments in sensory deprivation that took place at McGill University and the University of Indiana and later across the United States were originally designed to test how astronauts might fare after long periods alone in the isolation and zero gravity of outer space, but the sometimes bizarre behavior it induced in participants and the effect on their personalities soon inspired study to move into other areas of the human psyche.

   Much of sensory deprivation theory has been discarded as useless today since it varies so much between individuals and is subject to so many unpredictable variables, but when this novel was written it was still the cutting edge of psychological experiment.

   The TV series Twilight Zone did a memorable episode with Earl Holliman on the theme (though without the classic sensory deprivation tank), and of course Paddy Chayevsky later wrote the novel Altered States that became the over the top Ken Russell film with William Hurt and Blair Brown. It even featured in a memorable episode of Hawaii Five-O with Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett captured by Wo Fat (Kingh Deigh) and subjected to the treatment.

   But by far the best handling of the subject was James Kennaway’s 1963 novel and the Basil Deardon film that followed, The Mind Benders.

   Major “Ramrod” Hall is an old time counter-intelligence agent keeping an eye on Nobel laureate S.V. Sharpey, who maybe disseminating information to a foreign journalist about his work in sensory deprivation (“All men were traitors or patriots, as all eggs were good or bad.”) when Sharpey throws himself from a moving train and is killed.

   That leads to Longman, a scientist who worked with Sharpey in the United States on Reduction of Sensation therapy, and who has recently been absent from his teaching duties. Longman is something of an odd duck who tends to put himself into his experiments.

   As Hall watches a film of Sharpey’s experiments he hears Sharpey’s narration state:

   Which leads to questions: Did Sharpey die because of his studies; could the Reduction of Sensation be used in espionage?

   And has it been?

   Tate, one of Longman’s assistants brings him news of Sharpey’s death, which more than upsets Longman’s beautiful and loving wife Oongah (“… originally came from Orkney, or Shetland, or Finland, one of those places where the wind blows a girl until she has the look of a modern statue.”) and lives with Longman and their children in an eccentric but happy and rather sensual household.

   Soon that happy household is going to come under incredible tension.

   The Mind Benders is a slow almost deliberate novel — short — but building an accumulation of details as it builds up its tensions and the impending feeling of terror once Longman submits himself to the experiment that led to Sharpey’s death.

   A psychological novel in the purest sense, The Mind Benders slowly and quietly builds as the experiment begins to unravel Longman’s personality, turning his love for his wife to distaste, then hatred — but enough to lead to violence? Can a man be made to hate something he actually loves merely by suggestion induced under the extremes of sensory deprivation?

   How much responsibility for our own actions can we count on under such pressure?

   Just how far can the victim be manipulated? Longman seeks to find the answer, and more importantly can he fight back. At stake is more than the fate of nations or the solution to mysteries. At stake is Longman’s marriage and his love for his wife.

   There is little action in the book. It is mostly a case of suspense and drama. Talking heads if you will, but exceptionally intelligent and compelling talking heads.

   The Mind Benders is a one of a kind thriller made into a splendidly faithful and thoughtful film with Dirk Bogarde as Longman and Mary Ure as Oongah by Basil Deardon. It’s finally available in Region 1 DVD format and well worth catching, suspenseful, almost Gothic, and more unsettling than many a horror film filled with actual monsters other than those from our unconscious mind.

   A splendid cautionary tale that has the feel of the best science fiction and horror, but is rooted firmly in actual experiment and human behavior, it is one of the most disturbing books and films you will ever read, but ultimately also one of the most reassuring.

SPY HUNT. Universal International, 1950. Howard Duff, Märta Torén, Philip Friend, Philip Dorn, Robert Douglas, Walter Slezak, Kurt Kreuger. Based on the novel Panthers’ Moon by Victor Canning. Director: George Sherman.

   When a young woman (Märta Torén) posing as a journalist slips some vital information on microfilm into the collar of one of two rare black panthers that Steve Quain (Howard Duff) is taking from Milan to the United States – they are in fact his ticket back home, as he is otherwise flat broke – it’s the beginning of a fine tale of not so much espionage but high adventure in the heart of postwar Europe.

   When the railroad car that Quain and the panthers are in is separated (intentionally) from the rest of the train, it crashes somewhere in the Swiss Alps. When Quain awakes, he is in bed in a ski area hotel, and the panthers are loose.

   On the scene are a small but significant number of suspicious characters: a newspaperman, a big game hunter, and an artist, and the hunt is on. But who’s the one who’s after not the panthers but what’s in the male panther’s collar?

   So hunting the down the spy is where the title comes from, but if you were to ask me, I think that they wasted a perfectly good one in Panthers’ Moon, the book by Victor Canning this movie is based on. The panthers play their part very well [FOOTNOTE], but so does Howard Duff, even though his voice and slightly perplexed speech patterns sound exactly like that fellow on the radio. Sam Spade – that’s the one.

   Equally effective as essentially the only female character in this movie is the dark-haired and very pretty Swedish actress Märta Torén, whose several other American movies I am in the process of tracking down, many of them in the same noir or near noir category that this one’s in — that’s how great an impression she made on me. (Other the other hand there is a long list of female movie stars I say the same thing about. Fickle, I am.)

   Märta Torén married writer-director Leonardo Bercovici in 1952 and the final few films in which she appeared were made in Italy. She died in 1957, only 31 years old.

FOOTNOTE.   The black panthers were played by a pair of mountain lions who were dyed black for the film.

CROSSPLOT. United Artists, 1969. Roger Moore, Martha Heyer, Claudia Lange, Alexis Kanner, Francis Matthews, Bernard Lee. Screenplay by Leigh Vance, with additional dialogue by John Kruse. Director: Alvin Rakoff.

   This swiftly paced thriller made between Roger Moore’s stints as the Saint and James Bond is an entertaining exercise in minor Hitchcock with good overall performances and a complex and twisty plot.

   Moore is Gary Fenn, a playboy advertising executive in swinging sixties London who finds himself up to his neck in intrigue a la John Buchan when the bad guys have the bright idea to use him to find Marla Kugash (Claudie Lange), a Hungarian model who has overheard an assassination plot at the hands of her aunt, television producer Jo Grinling (Martha Hyer), and assassin Ruddock (Francis Matthews — television’s Paul Temple and a Hammer film regular).

   Written by Saint script regulars Leigh Vance and John Kruse (who even wrote some of the non-Charteris Saint novels), and directed by Saint regular Alvin Rakoff, with much of the production crew from the Saint series (which had just wrapped up), this mostly looks like a made-for-television movie with a bit of nudity thrown in, but isn’t bad for that.

   The comedy is light, the suspense mild but effective, and there is at least one well done chase (despite some bad back projection) with Moore in a vintage car being pursued across the British countryside by a low flying helicopter.

   Despite the made for television look of the film, it has some effective moments when it almost rises above its television roots, and a likable and attractive cast hold it together.

   Moore was a natural at this sort of thing, though having just played Simon Templar and soon to do The Persuaders and then James Bond, it’s a bit hard to imagine that he’s any real danger from this lot of conspirators.

   Lange proves an attractive and offbeat heroine, and has a nice tasteful nude scene. Hyer is largely wasted in what is little more than the guest villain in a Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode, but Bernard Lee, M in the James Bond films, has a nice villainous turn to class the proceedings up.

   Complete with corny, but catchy, theme song, and psychedelic title credits, this is light entertaining fare you will likely feel more affection for than it actually deserves thanks to an attractive cast and low ambitions.

   It does exactly what it sets out to do without embarrassing itself, its cast, or the viewers’ intelligence, which is higher praise than many a more ambitious thriller. It’s a lightweight romantic comedy thriller, and that’s all it had any ambition to be. You can’t complain too loudly when a film succeeds at exactly what it intended to be, and nothing more.

BACKGROUND TO DANGER. Warner Brothers, 1943. George Raft, Brenda Marshall, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Osa Massen, Turhan Bey. Screenplay by W. R. Burnett, based on the novel by Eric Ambler (1937). Director: Raoul Walsh.

   I think everyone who watches this movie today wonders who they might have cast in place of George Raft in the leading role. I also think that everyone who watches old movies like this one today wonders how it was that stony-faced George Raft was ever considered a movie star. He’s actually pretty good in this one, but it’s still a mediocre movie.

   Would it still have been mediocre if Humphrey Bogart (say) had played Raft’s part? Maybe. That and a complete rewrite, that would have helped. As it is, I really think they missed the point of the book.

   Raft plays a guy selling heavy machinery in the Middle East who meets a girl on a train who gives him an envelope filled with stock securities (she says) across the Syrian-Turkish border. Turns out that the contents are photos of maps indicating (falsely) Russia’s plan to invade Turkey.

   Turns out that the Nazis are behind the scheme, and that Sidney Greenstreet is the man who thought it up as a way to drive Turkey away from Russia and into occupation by Germany. Turns out that Peter Lorre and Brenda Marshall are brother and sister (they say) and agents of Russia (again so they say), and it turns out that George Raft’s character is the guy right in the middle of everything.

   Who is who and on which side they are is part of the mystery for a while, but this film is filled far more with talk than it is with action. Greenstreet has to explain his plan several times over, for example, just to make sure (one is allowed to assume) that the audience knows at least what his role is.

   No film with both Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in it is completely bad. In fact, Peter Lorre is the one bright spot in the film, both broodingly mysterious and amusing, and sometimes in the very same scene. Usually the leading female is the bright light for me, but Brenda Marshall is not given very much to do. Too bad.

   They also changed the story. I can’t say that I remember the details of the book, which I last read in the mid-50s, but of course the book was pre-war and the movie takes place while the was is going on. A small but significant change in perspective.

   A bigger change, as I remember it, is that the hero in the book is an innocent who does his best, but when it comes to international politics, he’s in over his head. George Raft’s character – well I won’t tell you a whole lot more. He’s a tough guy who can take what’s dished out to him, but as I say, they really rewrote the part as far as he’s concerned.

   And not for the better.

[UPDATE] 09-17-10.   Mike Grost does an in depth critical analysis of this film on his website, in a page in which he discusses many of director Raoul Walsh’s films — an excellent piece of work!

THE SPY IN BLACK. Columbia Pictures, UK, 1939. Released in the US as U-Boat 29. Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Sebastian Shaw, Marius Goring, June Duprez, Cyril Raymond. Screenplay: Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel by J. Storer Clouston. Director: Michael Powell.

   What’s unusual about this wartime movie is not that it takes place in World War I, but for at least the first half of the film it’s more or less from the point of view of a German submarine captain (Conrad Veidt) who undertakes a deadly game of espionage in the Orkney Islands (all the way in the UK, off the northen tip of Scotland).

   Aided by a phony schoolteacher (Valerie Hobson) and a turncoat British naval officer (Sebastian Shaw), Captain Hardt lays a deadly U-Boat trap for a large contingent of British warships. If he can pull it off, it would be a serious blow to Britain’s war making capabilities.

   Things don’t go as planned, however, and that’s when the fun begins. The local vicar expects the new schoolteacher and her fiancé to come to dinner, and neither the phoney schoolteacher nor her new boarder expect the fiancé at all.

   And of course that’s only the beginning. Since of course the spectacular event in the works never happened, there’s no suspense in that regard, but how it’s avoided – and who survives – is still very much up in the air.

   Getting back to my first paragraph, though, it’s quite remarkable that a German officer could be portrayed as sympathetically in 1939, sort of, as Captain Hardt is in the first part of the movie – finding a good meal – with real butter! – one of the great advantages of going undercover in wartime Britain. Of course when his role requires him to become a deadly enemy, he does that too – but honorably.

   I wish I could tell you what it is that makes a movie like this one so unmistakably British, but it is – a certainly style, a certain attitude – whatever it is, I think it mirrors the British people as well.

   So British, I have to admit, as to make the opening scenes, taking place in Germany, somewhat awkward, if not clumsily done. The newspapers are in English, not German, and the people in the tavern speak English, not German.

   Once Captain Hardt is back at sea, though, and his mission is underway, the film gets off this small artifice and the crew members speak German, or largely so.

   Other than that, while not an award-winner by any means, this is still a better than average wartime thriller. It’s also one that takes place not on the battlefield or at sea, but on the home front, just in time for the next one.

THE 49th MAN. Columbia Pictures, 1953. John Ireland, Richard Denning, Suzanne Dalbert, Robert Foulk, Mike “Touch” Connors, Richard Avonde, Peter Marshall, Geneviève Aumont. Director: Fred F. Sears.

   A less than semi-scary story told in semi-documentary style, a cautionary tale told in the midst of the Cold War. A kid in a hot road crashes off a road in the Southwest US, setting off a nationwide hunt for 47 other parts of atom bombs being smuggled into the US, piece by piece.

   Assigned to head up the investigation is John Williams (John Ireland), who reports to Richard Denning’s Paul Reagan back in Washington. Each of twelve bombs comes in four parts, one part per state. They come into the US by many different ways, and you’d be surprised how many of them are intercepted, mostly by chance, as far as I could tell.

   This is the semi-scary part, and you could even convince me that it’s scary without the prefix semi. The trail leads Williams to Marseilles, France, and a jazz bar, where — I can’t tell you more. The case is solved far too easily, if you were to ask me, but there is a twist toward the end that I can’t tell you about either, and a finale which is really a blow up job, bar none.

   Denning is as earnest in his role as usual, and Ireland, well, he’s as dour as he ever was. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile in a film he was in, but I’m probably wrong about that. What I’m probably right about is that you will find as little of major interest in this movie as I did. Minor interest yes, but nothing more.

    This particular list of motion pictures was prompted by Walter Albert’s recent review of De Luxe Annie (1915), in which all of the heroine’s difficulties stem from being knocked unconscious early on and suffering from amnesia for the rest of the movie, or almost.

    In a comment that he left soon after the review appeared, David Vineyard wondered “where would suspense fiction and movies be without it?”

    “It” referring to the concept of amnesia, as practiced in the movies and crime fiction. Which of course triggered the obvious question from me to David. The rest of this post is his reply. Thanks, David!

             >>>

   Movies with an amnesia theme. This one could get pretty long fast, but I’ll try to restrain myself:

Street of Chance — Burgess Meredith. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s Black Curtain about a man with short term amnesia who thinks he may have committed a murder.

Female Fiends — Lex Barker. A writer and producer who wakes up with no memory and in the middle of a murderous plot; based on Q. Patrick’s Puzzle for Fiends.

Stage Fright — With Jane Wyman. Richard Todd’s character suffers partial amnesia involving the murder the police want him for.

No Man of Her Own — Barbara Stanwyck claims partial amnesia to cover lapses in her memory in pretending to be another woman; based on Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man.

Mister Buddwing — James Garner. Based on the novel Buddwing by Even Hunter a man with amnesia stumbles from one woman in his life to the next trying to put together who he is.

36 Hours —James Garner again. German doctor Rod Taylor uses drugs to induce amnesia in order to get Garner to reveal the true site of the D-Day landings.

The Third Day — George Peppard. An obnoxious millionaire struggles to remember who is trying to kill him; based on Joseph Hayes’ novel.

Power of the Whistler — Richard Dix. An amnesiac tries to clear himself by regaining his memory.

The Manchurian Candidate — Frank Sinatra. An Army officer tries to combat drug induced memories implanted as part of a Chinese plot from Richard Condon’s novel.

Fear in the Night — Deforest Kelly. Jazz musician gets help from his cop brother-in-law Paul Kelly to recover marijuana induced memory loss and clear his name; based on Cornell Woolrich short ‘Marijuana’ and remade with Kevin McClory and Edward G. Robinson as Nightmare.

Phantom Lady — Alan Curtis man’s drink induced memory loss means his friends have to follow abstract clues from his flawed memory to save him from execution based on Cornell Woolrich novel.

Memento — Man who loses his memory every time he goes to sleep tries to solve the murder of his wife by leaving clues behind to follow each day.

Dark City — Rufus Sewell. A man with amnesia struggles to recall reality in clever noirish sf film based on a graphic novel.

The Matrix — Keanu Reeves. Man begins to see through the illusion he lives in.

Two in the Dark — Walter Abel . Female cabbie helps a man recall his memory as they race to solve a murder, remade with Tom Conway and Ann Rutherford and directed by Anthony Mann as Two O’Clock Courage.

Mirage — Gregory Peck. A city-wide blackout triggers a crisis for a businessman whose life begins to unravel when nothing he remembers is real.

Blindfolded — Rock Hudson. A psychiatrist tries to help agent suffering from trauma induced memory loss but finds himself in a spy plot.

Who? — Elliot Gould. Investigators try to understand what happened to man with robot head; based on Algis Budrys’s novel.

Random Harvest — Ronald Colman. The granddaddy of them all, based on James Hilton’s novel.

Somewhere in the Night — John Hodiak. A private eye returns from the war with memory loss.

The Long Wait — Anthony Quinn. A man returns home with memory loss; based on Mickey Spillane novel.

Singapore — Fred MacMurray. A woman loses her memory and can’t remember the man who loved her. Remade as Istanbul with Errol Flynn.

As You Desire Me — Greta Garbo. A woman with amnesia returns to husband she doesn’t remember, from the Pirandello play.

Spellbound — Gregory Peck. Am amnesiac poses as a psychiatrist but becomes the patient; based on Francis Beeding’s The House of Dr. Edwards.

The Woman With No Name — Phyllis Calvert. A woman sufferis from amnesia.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes — Robert Stephens. A woman claims to have lost her memory and seeks help from Sherlock Holmes.

The Seven Percent Solution — Nicol Williamson. Sigmund Freud helps Sherlock Holmes recover repressed childhood memories so he can solve a case and cure himself of cocaine addiction.

Love Letters — Joseph Cotton. GI Cotton comes to England to meet Jennifer Jones whom he corresponded with who has lost her memory and may be in danger, with a screenplay by Ayn Rand.

I Love You Again — William Powell. Con man regains his memory and tries to save his new respectable life with wife Myrna Loy from his old pals in this screwball comedy.

Crossroads — William Powell. French diplomat must regain his memory to save himself.

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? — Doris Day tries to remember what happened the night of the blackout when she had too much to drink.

The Witches — Joan Fontaine. A woman’s loss of memory puts her in danger from a coven of witches.

Carnival of Souls — Candace Hilligloss. A woman wanders around in weird haze.

Portrait of Jennie — Jennifer Jones. A young woman doesn’t know she is a ghost.

The Mummy’s Curse — Lon Chaney Jr. Young woman doesn’t recall she is 3000 years old; basically the plot of Blood on the Mummy’s Tomb and The Awakening; based on Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars.

The Black Angel — Dan Duryea. A man plays detective to help a woman clear her husband with surprising results; based on the Cornell Woolrich novel.

The Haunted Strangler — Boris Karloff. In retrospect mystery writer Boris should never have opened up the twenty year old murder case …

Hangover Square — Laird Cregar. A pianist and composer doesn’t quite remember what he gets up to when the music compels him; based on Patrick Hamilton’s play.

Suddenly Last Summer — Elizabeth Taylor. A psychiatrist tries to help young woman recall traumatic event while battling her over protective mother-in-law.

Landslide — Anthony Edwards. A man suffers selective memory loss after an accident.

The Bourne Identity — Matt Damon. A spy is hunted on all sides and doesn’t recall why.

The October Man — John Mills. A man with mental problems has to clear himself of murder and prove to himself he didn’t do it. Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay.

Knock on Wood — Danny Kaye. A ventriloquist who believes is dummy is talking to him suffers memory loss and personality changes as a result of plot by his analyst to use him in spy plot.

Highly Dangerous — Margaret Lockwood. A scientist on mission for the Secret Service is tortured and afterward thinks she is a famous radio secret agent from a popular children’s show. Screenplay by Eric Ambler.

Bewitched — Phyllis Thaxter. An early variation on multiple personalities as woman committed murder in her other persona.

Three Faces of Eve — Joanne Woodward. A woman doesn’t recall what she does in alternate personalities.

   Others?

BERLIN EXPRESS. RKO Radio Pictures, 1948. Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, Robert Coote, Reinhold Schunzel, Roman Toporow. Screenplay: Harold Medford, based on a story by Curt Siodmak. Director: Jacques Tourneur.

   The reason for watching this one, or mine at least, was the promise of a movie with a train ride, always an exciting prospect.

   This one I found disappointing, though, as the people making this film had other goals in mind. The fact that the first third, perhaps, takes place on a train (from Paris to post-war Frankfurt) and then again for about five minutes toward the end (bombed-out Frankfurt to an equally bombed-out Berlin) is almost incidental.

   Filmed on location, the actual aims of this film are, first of all, to show the devastation caused by Allied bombers during the war, as a cautionary measure, perhaps; then secondly but foremost to make a call for peace between the four nation occupiers of both the city of Berlin and the state of Germany. One can only rue the fact that such a wish was not to be, and not even a movie with the best of intentions could sway the day, politically speaking.

   But with World War II so long behind us, this film, when watched today, is a reminder that the occupation of Germany was not so easy as several pages in a history textbook might have you believe. (In my own experience with grade school and high school history classes, we never even made it to World War II, but perhaps students are better served today.) Survivors of the war and the earth-pounding air raids may not all have been Nazis, but neither were they occupied easily.

   Sorry. Didn’t mean to get all preachy on us, but rather than a top notch spy thriller, the essence of this film is rather a post-war cinematic plea for peace. Paul Lukas plays a man (German) heading for such a conference (in Berlin) with precisely such a plan, and he is nearly assassinated (on the train) for his efforts.

   In the middle of the movie, he is kidnapped (in Frankfurt) and must be rescued, successfully so, thanks to a four man effort headed by Robert Ryan’s character, who’s an American, with the assistance of an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian, the latter reluctantly but in the end quite capably. (There are some twists in the tale, but those I won’t tell.)

   But perhaps you see what I mean about the moral of the tale. Merle Oberon plays Lukas’s secretary assistant equally capably, but with no particular verve or elan.

   The photography, in black and white, is very ably done, and in fact even better than that, with lots of camera angles and striking set designs, but overall, while I stand the chance of being corrected, today this film is no more than a minor relic of the past.

   The train ride, while not essential to the plot, is nice while it lasts, though!

PostScript.   The movie’s been hard to find, or so I’ve been told, but it’s been recently released by the Warner Brothers Archive and is available through them, Amazon, and all of the usual outlets.

THE SILENCERS. Columbia, 1966. Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Dahlia Lavi, Victor Buono, Arthur O’Connell, Robert Webber, James Gregory, Cyd Charisse, Roger C. Carmel, Nancy Kovack, Richard Devon, Beverly Adams. Screenplay by Oscar Saul, based on-the novels The Silencers and Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton; music by Elmer Bernstein. Director: Phil Karlson. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   I didn’t see any of the Dean Martin spy thrillers when they were released, but if this film is typical of the series, I didn’t miss much.

   There’s apparently a segment of the movie-going public that thinks that Dean Martin is a decent actor, but if he was, he wasn’t showing his chops in this gaudy, sexy, very dated entertainment. It’s a good cast, although most of the players are wasted.

   Even so, Victor Buono’s archvillain provides some intermittent pleasure, and Cyd Charisse, still looking smashing, dances for the last time in a feature. And then there’s Stella Stevens, the best reason for watching the film.

   She was this year’s third Cinecon guest, still looking good at 71, and in her screen role she’s incandescent, lighting up the proceedings with her beauty and comedic skill that go a long way toward making the often leaden, overlong proceedings (102 minutes), glide by with some grace.

SEVEN DAYS TO NOON. British Lion Films, 1950. Barry Jones, Olive Sloane, André Morell, Sheila Manahan, Hugh Cross, Joan Hickson, Geoffrey Keen, Victor Maddern. Screenplay: Roy Boulting and Frank Harvey. Original Screen Story by Paul Dehn and James Bernard. Directors: John and Roy Boulting.

   This taut little suspense film is one of the best of its kind ever made. With an Oscar-winning original story by Paul Dehn and James Bernard (best known for composing many of the scores for the Hammer horror films) and a screenplay by co-director Roy Boulting and novelist Frank Harvey (White Mercenaries), the film is an achingly suspenseful exercise in nuclear extortion as a soft-spoken scientist holds London hostage amidst a nationwide manhunt, done in a variation of the docu-noir style of many American films of the period.

   The film also won the British Oscar, the BAFTA, for best picture and John and Roy Boulting received best directing nominations from the Venice Film Festival.

   Barry Jones (Brigadoon, Demetrius and the Gladiator, War and Peace) is the scientist, Professor Willington, who disappears from his job at a nuclear research facility and leaves a letter to the Prime Minister (Ronald Adam) stating he will destroy London in seven days at noon on the seventh day unless his demands for nuclear disarmament are met.

   The world was made in seven days, and London will be destroyed in seven days unless mankind stops the madness of nuclear research is the disturbed professor’s demand.

   Superintendent Folland (Morell) of the Yard and Stephen Lane (Hugh Cross), the professor’s research assistant and future son-in-law, head the nationwide manhunt once it is discovered that along with the professor a suitcase nuclear device is missing. (They didn’t exist then and still don’t now, but where would these films be without them?)

   The film focuses less on the hunt itself than on Willington as he flees to London and interacts with a handful of people including a somewhat flowsy Cockney woman (Olive Sloane) and his landlady (Joan Hickson — Miss Marple). The professor’s ideals are contrasted with the ordinary real people they threaten in a small Cockney neighborhood — not saints or even the salt of the earth, but human beings unaware their very existence is threatened.

   As the pressure intensifies and the noon deadline approaches, London is evacuated and the shots of the empty streets are both haunting and striking. Meanwhile the authorities close in and the professor’s mental state deteriorates more rapidly. The final confrontation in a church is both evocative and tense.

   Solid as this is as a suspense film, there is more to it, which perhaps explains why it has a resonance still today. Jones is neither an egotist nor a monster, but a kindly and gentle man driven to the ultimate act of terror by the daily horror of the work he pursues. Morell is presented as a human and understanding policeman, and everyone involved seems weighted down by the horror of both the potential destruction and the morality involved.

   Willington is a madman and a terrorist, but a real effort is made to understand his mental breakdown and stop him without killing him; something it becomes increasingly obvious they may not be able to accomplish.

   Seven Days to Noon is something more than a suspense film, an early example of the anti-nuclear movement, then in its infancy, and also a meditation on the beginnings of the arms race that would reach its high (or low) point with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The film bothers to ask important questions, and to force viewers to ask who the real madman is — the professor unbalanced by the horror of his work, or the society blithely ignoring the apocalypse under its nose.

   There are no easy answers here. Horrible as the Professor’s threat is it may be less horrible than the future he wants to prevent. The film never suggests such terrorism is justified, only that to an unhinged mind it may seem so.

   This story has been done countless times since, but seldom this well. There is an interesting contrast with a 1953 American film from Fred Sears and Ivan Tors, The 49th Man, an altogether pulpier (but entertaining) version of the A-bomb in the city story with a few nice paranoid twists and a good performance by John Ireland as an undercover operative.

   But this film is neither shrill nor melodramatic; it is quiet and powerful, and it may be more relevant today than it was when it was made sixty years ago. It also offers a fascinating look at a London still marked by the bomb craters from WW II, at a time when you could actually conceive an orderly evacuation of a city the size of London.

Note: If you go to IMDb you will discover this is the first original film score by noted British film composer John Addison.