When The Gamma People (1955) came across our screen, my Arts Editor and I didn’t know what to expect. To our burning, frightened eyes were revealed: vile attacks on innocent journalists; packs of rampaging children; grotesque carnivals; and mad scientists. What fun! But is this a progenitor film? Consider:
It takes place in a fictional European country named Gudavia, numbering amongst its inhabitants a Colonel Koerner, whose bearing and activities might be best employed in the movie The Mouse That Roared, or, stepped up a trifle, grouped with the antagonists of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; if neither of these movies have passed your optic nerve, then think of bumbling, narcissistic fools occupying high places with low faces, in countries that never existed …
We encountered a group of men, and possibly women, with horrible, frozen faces and unreasoning motivation for destruction, controlled by a whistle. I thought we might be seeing the predecessors to zombies, those speedsters from Zombieland, not the slow, inevitable creatures from the original Night of the Living Dead; not being a scholar of zombies, I cannot say how the cladistics work out…
Upon command, a group of children attacked a man with little mercy, upon which my Arts Editor remarked, “Oh! Reminds me of Star Trek. He must be a Grup!”
And yet another Star Trek reference: the grotesque masks worn at the carnival brought to mind the horrible video visage seen in The Man Trap. Since this film predates the original Trek, I can only assume that the costumes were mothballed after the movie was released and later resurrected to be used as props in other productions.
All the comparison was just for fun; we were confused from the beginning, in the collision of farce with mad scientist, zombies and packs of feral children, rounded out by a gruff American journalist, and his slick, somewhat swishy British colleague who stumble into this circus of a country.
And for all of it, it’s not badly acted. In particular, Michael Caridia as Hugo, the obnoxious, Nietzsche-like boy who undergoes conversion to, well, humanity, actually pulls off the entire ridiculous role rather well. And the British journalist was played by Leslie Phillips, who went on to provide the voice for the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter series. So we can see there is some talent here.
Unfortunately for this film, in the end the actors’ talent was eclipsed by the unfocused randomness of the plot. All in all, a merry little romp that I can’t quite recommend.
