... and in a good way! The direction is rather wooden, but the acting surprised me with pretty good and authentic performances from an almost anonymous cast.
The story has to do with some prisoners from Alcatraz volunteering for a medical experiment that involves receiving large doses of radiation. If the volunteers survive, then they are promised their freedom. Question unanswered - yeah, but what good does it do to radiate these guys since they don't have the blood disease for which this treatment is a cure? Well, don't expect every loophole to be closed in these old programmers.
Then unexpected tragedy as a pair of scissors slips out of the apron of one of the military nurses who is making rounds in the ward and on to the bed of convict Barry Morgan who seizes the scissors and stabs convict Eddie Ganz through the heart, killing him. Morgan and Ganz were friends, and Morgan does not remember doing what he did. Well, a deal is a deal and Morgan is set free along with the other convicts. But since the radiation is the culprit in the killing the experiment is terminated immediately. Also, the careers of the doctor whose idea this was (John Howard as Dr. Ross Williams) and the nurse who dropped the scissors (Joan Dixon as Lt. Joan McKenna) are over. McKenna has a brother with the fatal blood disease and was hoping the experiment would be a first step toward a cure.
So Dr. Williams and Lt. Joan McKenna decide to do some investigating into Ganz' and Morgan's friendship and see if they can find out if this was truly the fault of the experiment, or was it something else? This leads them into mob filled night spots, Italian restaurants where the waiter is insulted if you don't finish the calimari, an old dark house, and to a convict who is just nutty about post cards.
This film picks up a trick from other B noirs/crime dramas/mysteries of the time. If your plot is thin and has some holes, just keep moving from scene to scene and fill your film with interesting off-beat characters. Even if you do have the doctor doing silly things like continually ducking into a phone booth to ask "Have they scheduled the destruction of the isotope yet??" like he is checking on the execution of a death row inmate.
This one is an original and not a bad way to spend an hour. I'd recommend it.
The story has to do with some prisoners from Alcatraz volunteering for a medical experiment that involves receiving large doses of radiation. If the volunteers survive, then they are promised their freedom. Question unanswered - yeah, but what good does it do to radiate these guys since they don't have the blood disease for which this treatment is a cure? Well, don't expect every loophole to be closed in these old programmers.
Then unexpected tragedy as a pair of scissors slips out of the apron of one of the military nurses who is making rounds in the ward and on to the bed of convict Barry Morgan who seizes the scissors and stabs convict Eddie Ganz through the heart, killing him. Morgan and Ganz were friends, and Morgan does not remember doing what he did. Well, a deal is a deal and Morgan is set free along with the other convicts. But since the radiation is the culprit in the killing the experiment is terminated immediately. Also, the careers of the doctor whose idea this was (John Howard as Dr. Ross Williams) and the nurse who dropped the scissors (Joan Dixon as Lt. Joan McKenna) are over. McKenna has a brother with the fatal blood disease and was hoping the experiment would be a first step toward a cure.
So Dr. Williams and Lt. Joan McKenna decide to do some investigating into Ganz' and Morgan's friendship and see if they can find out if this was truly the fault of the experiment, or was it something else? This leads them into mob filled night spots, Italian restaurants where the waiter is insulted if you don't finish the calimari, an old dark house, and to a convict who is just nutty about post cards.
This film picks up a trick from other B noirs/crime dramas/mysteries of the time. If your plot is thin and has some holes, just keep moving from scene to scene and fill your film with interesting off-beat characters. Even if you do have the doctor doing silly things like continually ducking into a phone booth to ask "Have they scheduled the destruction of the isotope yet??" like he is checking on the execution of a death row inmate.
This one is an original and not a bad way to spend an hour. I'd recommend it.