The Atomic City (1952) User Reviews

Ahead of its time but lacks necessary bite.

[Space_Mafune · 6/10 · 13 July 2006]

The young son of nuclear physicist Dr. Frank Addison (Gene Barry) is kidnapped by enemy agents. They offer up his life and well-being in trade for the H-bomb secret knowledge Dr. Addison possesses of America's atomic program.

This cold war paranoia thriller is in some ways ahead of its time as many such themed films would get made in the years to come. While it has its moments, maintaining an high level of suspense with regards to the continued safety of Dr. Addison's son Tommy (well played by Lee Aaker) and creating an exciting climax at the end, this disappoints in that it never delves into the negative possibilities associated with the H-bomb secrets falling into enemy hands, an exploration of which I feel would have given this the bite it lacks. Also the villains remain much too colorless and forgettable aside from a chilling sequence where they try and lure the child Tommy out of a cave hideaway. All in all though, it's better than I expected thanks in no small part to a good cast and tight-paced direction.

Was nominated for an Academy Award - Best Writing, Story and Screenplay

[captainapache · 7/10 · 27 December 2006]

Here is a much lesser known 50's sci-fi with a little different twist. An atomic researchers son is kidnapped and held for a ransom of the the Father's atomic secrets.

This is a tightly knit atomic sci-fi thriller with great production values and above average acting, even from the kid. The Atomic City actually has a movie feel to it unlike a lot of other 50's sci-fi of this time which which came off more like an episode of a TV show.

The Atomic City was also actually nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay - how many other 50's sci-fi can tout an Academy Award Nomination?

Great pacing, tight direction and some superb location filming in the 'real' Atomic City of Los Alamos, New Mexico make this one worth hunting down. The collectors print in circulation is an above average transfer and makes for a great double feature with the Atomic Man!!

Recommended.

Starts Nicely, But Then...

[TanakaK · 5/10 · 23 December 2009]

I found "The Atomic CIty" somewhat disappointing after two viewings. It starts from an interesting platform; young son of big-shot post-war nuke scientist bottled-up in New Mexican middle-of-nowhere research base is kidnapped and held for intelligence ransom. But after 30 minutes it descends straight down to a very mediocre, run-of-the-mill kidnapped kid story complete with all cliché trimmings (hysterical mother, overwrought macho dad).

The film drifts between styles. The lead-in sets up a documentary-style narrative. But then the early family scenes present a more dramatic style. Scenes where the cops are tracking down the kidnappers slide back into documentary. It's a goofy stew with uneven pacing.

To make matters worse none of the characters are well developed and by the end you'll probably find that you just don't care what happens very much any more.

A very effective and interesting cold war era thriller.

[youroldpaljim · 15 December 2001]

In this cold war thriller, Gene Barry plays Frank Addison, an atomic scientist at Los Almos (aka The Atomic City) whose son Tommy is kidnapped by communist agents. The kidnappers demand from Addison that he hand over atomic secrets in exchange for Tommy's safe return.

This very effective cold war era espionage thriller used turn up often on late night television in late sixties and early seventies. I missed it then, but got a chance to see it very recently when I found a video copy tucked away in a remote corner of my favorite video store. I found THE ATOMIC CITY to be a tense, exciting thriller of the type they made so well back in the late forties and early fifties. The film moves at a quick pace, most of the cast is good, the black and white photography excellent, and very good use of real locations.

One interesting thing I discovered while watching this film is how Los Almos was actually a self contained city, hence the title. The scientists who worked at Los Almos lived in houses inside the secure confines of Los Almos. Los Almos even had its own schools. It is interesting that Tommy is kidnapped when he leaves the secure isolated confines of "The Atomic City" when goes on a school trip.

Only the nastiest of spies kidnap a child!

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 24 May 2018]

A bit of scientific education opens this entertaining thriller up with a lesson on the pro's and con's of the use of atomic power. That leads us to the introduction of atomic scientist Gene Barry who lives a happy life with his wife Lydia Clarke and son Lee Aaker who is utilized in a kidnapping scheme from foreign agents to force him to hand over secrets that can be used for evil. The spies hold Aaker in an old mountain settlement, and the fed's express their concern over losing important secrets as being in conflict with risking the life of the scared but courageous Aaker. Told in step by step detail from showing what Barry does to the spies interest in his studies to the sudden disappearance of Aaker (at a cute puppet show where a fake ostrich pulls out the winning raffle ticket for a bike, announcing Aaker's name), to the location shoot at the man-carved mountain residence where Aaker is hidden. The use of real locations as the set is intriguing, as the dangers are numerous, from the sinister intentions of the kidnappers to the risk of falling off of the mountainside, and this will keep you riveted to your seat. It reminded me of the Barbara Stanwyck thriller "Jeopardy" which used natural settings as a key to danger as well, and featured Aaker as Stanwyck's son, as much in "Jeopardy" there as he was here.

Interesting thriller

[martyccuk · 6/10 · 25 April 2020]

This was just shown today on British tv and I had never seen it before. The lead actress is Lydia Clarke, none other than Charlton Heston's wife in the first part of their life long marriage and at the time he was just starting his Hollywood career. It would have been interesting if he had taken the role of the husband in the film. It is a good, modest thriller with some interesting location work. I won't give too much away but when you think about it what the kidnappers plan to do to the boy at the very end of the movie is cold blooded and nasty. Lydia Clarke has some good scenes early in the film. Interesting too to see Milburn Stone just three years before Gunsmoke started. Worth watching.

The Atomic City - Hidden Gem with Misnomer Title

[arthur_tafero · 7/10 · 11 December 2021]

I sat down to watch this film for my Saturday morning ritual of watching a sci-film to start off the day. I was not disappointed, as it was a very good film. However, it has absolutely nothing to do with atomic energy or science fiction. It is basically about living and working in Los Alamos, the town that developed the Hydrogen bomb. The plot surrounds the kidnapping of a son of the leading atomic scientist by commie spies and the search for the boy. It is pretty engrossing, and well-directed. Catch it if you can.

Serviceable kidnap thriller

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 6 May 2020]

THE ATOMIC CITY is something of a misnomer of a title for an otherwise ordinary kidnap thriller with an interesting setting in the form of Los Alamos. Gene Barry, in his debut screen performance, plays a dedicated scientist who struggles with a real moral dilemma when his lad is kidnapped and he'll only facilitate his return by sharing top secret information. It's a nice premise for sure, and the film looks good for what is clearly a limited budget, but at the same time there's something lacking here: suspense. You can't fault the performances, but you never really care all too much about what's happening, and thus the extended chase climax never really draws you in as it should. Serviceable, but hardly great...

Standard-typical Thriller.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 7 February 2009]

A gang of Soviet hoods kidnap the young son of a nuclear physicist with the intention of blackmailing the father into handing over the nuclear farm. They do not succeed.

There is some nice location shooting at a reasonably well-preserved Indian community. Aside from that, the film's virtues are negligible. The direction by Jerry Hopper is clumsy and overstated, the performances routine, the musical score out of the suspense-movie library.

It isn't that the movie is insulting or offensive in any way. It's just that there's not much of substance there. Even the title, "Atomic City," is misleading. The city is Los Alamos, which was not much of a city, and it happens to be where the scientist, Gene Barry, and his indistinctive family live. The nuclear secrets are hardly touched upon, serving mostly as the engine behind the thriller plot. The MacGuffin could just as easily have been money or the world's largest diamond, except that the Soviet Union was the generic enemy during this period -- Korea being in full bloom at the time.

Gene Barry seems fatigued throughout. Millburn Stone as the FBI's chief mahoff is clipped and definitive. Bert Fried as one of the goons rolls around being bad. He does have a good scene, in which he sits in a dark Indian kiva with the kidnapped boy and chats with him, not unkindly. The various FBI agents and all of the women are only blurry characters.

One can see the influence, though, of the docudramas of the late 1940s and early 1950s. These were generally narrated by the stentorian Reed Hadley. Here, there is no narration but the movie does illustrate the care taken by the FBI in keeping its secrets carefully hidden. There is also a curious scene in which a Soviet agent is being interrogated. He knows where the boy is hidden but refuses to tell. Gene Barry wants to beat the guy up until he squeals but the FBI prevent him, telling him that physical punishment of a prisoner is forbidden by the rules. It sounds rather quaint in today's interrogation climate.

I was kind of looking forward to seeing this. The plot synopsis was attractive. But, alas, there isn't anything that lifts this generic film out of its cradle of mediocrity.

Worth viewing as an early 'cold war' movie

[colin-69 · 8/10 · 15 September 2000]

Just watched this movie and it's not bad; there are a few tense moments and not a lot of long dialog strings. Comes off as fairly intelligent; fastpaced almost like 'documentary style'. This movie will evoke some nostalgia and a bit of cold war paranoia with cars,street scenes,and life in the 50's. The acting is fairly solid and at 85 minutes run time it goes by at a good pace. An atomic era film buff shouldn't miss this one.

An enjoyable Atomic Age thriller

[chris_gaskin123 · 5 March 2003]

I have just watched The Atomic City for the first time and was very impressed by it.

A nuclear scientist's son is kidnapped when he goes out of the confines of Los Almos on a school trip. The kidnappers want to know the secrets of the H bomb, but it isn't long before the FBI are on the case and the kidnappers eventually track down the boy and the kidnappers in some old cliff dwellings. The boy is rescued at the end, but not before he nearly falls from a cliff trying to escape the kidnappers.

This movie was filmed on location in Los Almos and San Francisco and good use is made of these locations. It gives you an idea on what life was like in this period.

The movie's cast includes Gene Barry (War Of The Worlds), Nancy Gates (World Without End) and the boy is played well by Lee Aaker (The Challenge of Rin Tin Tin).

I enjoyed this movie and is worth watching if you get the chance.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

The Lives of Others

[richardchatten · 8/10 · 25 April 2020]

A slick, good-looking thriller with excellent location work, which uses the backdrop of Los Alamos to bring it's story bang up to date. It acknowledges that despite the comforts of postwar affluence the world was never the same again after the development of the atom bomb; the kid in this film giving voice to the existential trauma wrought on every succeeding generation when he says "if" rather than "when" he grows up...

The title suggests sci-fi, but kidnapping children for a ransom had been an ever-present nightmare since the abduction of Charles Lindbergh's son twenty earlier. This time the kidnappers are dastardly commies whose price for the return of the kid is atomic secrets; and choosing between the life of a cute kid and countless others remains a perennial nightmare, as Col. Helen Mirren was recently reminded in 'Eye in the Sky'.

Hiding in the Ruins

[dougdoepke · 9 February 2009]

Check out the first 20 minutes even though the suspense hasn't yet kicked in. We get a pretty good look at super-secret Los Alamos just a few years after the big bomb test that helped end WWII. Except for the tight security, it looks unthreatening enough. Note how it's a TV repairman, an obvious regular guy, who takes us through security. Once through, it's like any-town-USA, nice homes, quiet streets, kids going to school, and a family TV on the blink. Later on we see little Tommy and little Peggy frolicking along streets lined with impressive looking facilities separated by locked gates. The movie appears to be saying, "Okay, we're tough, only because we have to be. But, basically, we're still just folks."

Now, I expect that was a comforting message to Cold War audiences still not used to government's "dooms-day" research. It's a clear effort at popular reassurance. The one darker note is when Tommy's mother (Clarke) worries about her son's mental state. He doesn't say, "When I grow up"; instead, it's, "If I grow up". That note of doubt not only reflects a Los Alamos reality, but also a national one that in 1952 had just seen footage of the apocalyptic H-bomb. Note too, how professionally FBI agents are portrayed, a standard feature of McCarthy era fare. When brute force is needed, it's not they, but private citizen Gene Barry who thrashes out the information—an early version, I suppose, of modern era "rendition".

Once the kidnapping occurs, the suspense doesn't let up. The intrigue is nicely handled with colorful LA locations that keep us guessing. The climactic scenes around the cliff dwellings may not be plausible as a hiding place, but the view of northern New Mexico is great. Then too, the ancient stone apartments amount to one of the more exotic backdrops of the decade. Note also the extensive use of the police helicopter just coming into use as a law enforcement tool. Among an otherwise subdued cast, Nancy Gates remains a sparkling presence as teacher Ellen Haskell. Never Hollywood glamorous, she was still a fine unsung actress and winning personality. I also expect this was one of director Hopper's more successful movie efforts, and though people have since gotten used to the nuclear threat, the movie remains a revealing and riveting document of its time.

CUT SCENE

[mlink-36-9815 · 8/10 · 27 January 2018]

I had it on tape from a tv showing. The DVD by Olive Films is missing a portion of a scene. The wife Mrs. Addison talks to Tommy on the phone to prove he is alive. However it was a tape recording she heard. They told her it might be a tape. Then later on around min. 57 police break into an apartment where the kidnappers held the boy. they find a tape recorder with the boys voice on it. this scene is cut. police go into the next room and find a blackboard with nuclear info on it.

Ancient atomic thriller noir

[bkoganbing · 13 July 2005]

The Atomic City refers to the community of Los Alamos in New Mexico where nuclear scientists live and work. It's a self contained private community with right security as tight as when it began during World War II. But on a school trip, Lee Aaker son of atomic scientist Gene Barry, is kidnapped and held for ransom for the secret of the newly developed hydrogen bomb.

This film was made in 1952 at the time when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's case was on appeal and front page headlines. So it was a timely film back during the McCarthy era.

It's a tightly edited little noir thriller. I recommend it highly as an antique of bygone days.

What was amusing to me is the way the FBI is portrayed. In this day and age I'm not sure too many people really care other than for political posturing as to how terrorists are treated. Back then though the FBI had this all American image. They don't do things like torture prisoners.

When Leonard Strong one of the kidnappers is nabbed, he laughingly flings the Bill of Rights and the FBI's code of conduct in their faces and won't divulge anything. Then Milburn Stone, the FBI agent takes a break and father Gene Barry goes in with the prisoner alone. Needless to say, Strong coughs up what they need but quick.

J.Edgar Hoover was most concerned about the image of his bureau and his agents, so the third degree for the FBI couldn't be shown. Kind of laughable today.

Top-notch Cold War thriller

[spartanbuff · 10/10 · 18 December 2022]

Oh, MY.

This tense, Cold War thriller is uncommonly excellent - I'd say it is a "dark horse" classic.

The story and screenplay, by one Sidney Boehm, was (deservedly) nominated for an Academy Award; the script is literate, intelligent, and absolutely believable. There's not a line that has any falseness about it whatsoever.

Shot on location in Los Alamos, New Mexico, it tells of a nuclear physicist and his wife whose son is kidnapped by Russian agents. Ransom: the H-bomb formula documents.

Complications - big time - ensue.

It starts out in documentary style, with a strong police and Feds procedural element. We're told how the atomic factors were at the time, and of its dangers and risks.

The entire cast takes this assignment with the utmost seriousness and they're all remarkably skilled and again, entirely believable. There's not a trace of dated, campy aspects to be found anywhere. The only name I have familiarity with is Gene Barry, of which this is his first movie. Every single character is played out with unusual competence; no one seems out of place or anachronistic.

But it just goes to show, especially as demonstrated here, that there was a busy roster of fine actors doing stellar work in the low-budget film industry. The advantage to these sterling players is that they have no image-personas as the big stars did to interfere with the credibility of these dramas; Gable for example was always pretty much Gable, and vehicles were largely built around his star appeal. A big name in the kind of movie this is would have just glaringly bogged it down.

Besides the terrific suspense here, almost unbearable at times, is how effectively the script, direction, and acting makes you feel the plight of the parents. As compellingly I would say as in the 1956 movies The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Ransom. You feel their angst and desperation.

Special mention must be made of child actor Lee Aaker, who plays the young boy with astonishing naturalness, and is notably convincing in his dialogues and responses.

Nice surprise, this, and it deserves much wider recognition and attention.

B-movie Oppenheimer

[lor_ · 20 December 2023]

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Jerry Hopper for Paramount release, "The Atomic City" stars Gene Barry (in his movie debut), Milburn Stone, Lydia Clarke and Nancy Gates.

A straight science fiction-espionage thriller that emphasizes suspense rather than gadgetry, as physicist Gene's son is kidnapped by enemy agents. The Los Alamos setting was topical at the time, and proves to be still relevant.

Gene Barry's magnetism on screen served him in good stead, not as a movie star but as the lead in successful series I enjoyed like "Bat Masterson" and "Burke's Law", quite different genres but both made his own as a smooth performer -the sort of easy, comfortable personality as an actor that Perry Como exuded as a singer/host.

Atomic city

[searchanddestroy-1 · 2 February 2024]

I don't know why - I have an idea though - but in my mind, I always confound this film wih another one, made one year later, SPLIT SECOND, and starring Stephen McNally, with something, two elements, not so far from this movie. In Dick Powell's film, three gangsters on the loose hid in a house which was in the middle of the nuclear tests in Nevada. Here, a small group of gangters take a nuclear scientist in hostage. So, ou see? Gangsters, hostage and a more or less nuclear element into the plot. Both are quite good, taut, effective, exciting for rare gem thrillers. Here, Gene Barry could remind Frederic March in DESPERATE HOURS, made several years after this one. Yes, a good early Jerry Hopper's flick. Jerry Hopper, a director which filmography should be more known from the movie buffs. Some Andrew Stone's films looked like this one: typical American family facing hoodlums with home invasion scheme.