80,000 Suspects (1963) User Reviews

Not great

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 2 September 2009]

Officials in the City of Bath have to find "80,000 Suspects" in this 1963 film starring Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Yolande Donlan, and Cyril Cusack. Johnson is Steven Monks, an overworked doctor, and Bloom is his wife, Julie, an ex-nurse, who delay their vacation to fight a pending epidemic of smallpox. There is tension between the two; Monks had an affair with another doctor's wife, Ruth (Donlan), who becomes the subject of a search when it's learned that she was with someone infected with smallpox.

A very uninvolving movie that concentrates more on the relationship of the husband and wife than it does the tracking down of people who may have been infected with smallpox. That doesn't necessarily make it less interesting, but in this case, it's hard to warm up to the main characters. The lesser characters are actually far more likable and interesting - Michael Goodlife as Ruth's devastated husband and Basil Dignam as the worried chief medical officer.

There's not much in the way of raw emotion from either Johnson nor Bloom, both excellent actors but neither one particularly warm. The script calls for them to be very stoic.

Could have been compelling - isn't.

Disappointing thriller

[bru-5 · 5/10 · 16 January 2005]

Director Val Guest's DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE ranks among the great British science fiction films that doubles as one of the best newspaper films as well. A cautionary tale which expertly tapped into the A-bomb jitters of the early sixties, the film centers on the aftermath of a nuclear upheaval which sends the world on a crash course towards the sun. The hook of the film is that the action is seen through the eyes of journalists who chart the story and eventually arrive at the truth despite the web of official government lies and deceit.

80,000 SUSPECTS, released only two years later, is something of a companion piece, once again centering on a group of professional people struggling to balance their personal lives as the world is falling apart around them, in this case it's a smaller-scale disaster in the form of an outbreak of smallpox. Guest uses the exact same technique: gritty black and white photography and ample use of authentic locations and hand-held camera conveying a newsreel look. With everything in place for a sizzling apocalyptic thriller, it's a pity 800,000 SUSPECTS wastes it all on the director's own turgid and profoundly tedious script. The cast of lovable cynics spouting razor-sharp dialog in DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE is sorely missed. Instead, the characters are so akin to a Hollywood hospital soap opera a la THE INTERNS, I half-expected to see Michael Callan lurching around in his white scrubs.

As the married doctor-and-nurse team who tackle the epidemic head-on, Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom are never less than professional but never more than marginally interesting (the pair would shortly reunite as the leads in Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING). More disappointingly is that Mr. Guest uses the opportunity to give a plum role to his wife, the talented Yolande Donlan who several years earlier became the toast of London's West End recreating Judy Holliday's role in BORN YESTERDAY. Unfortunately, her big scene playing drunken wife of a staff physician is overlong, over-written and serves to slow the film down even before it has a chance to begin. It's not surprising that this film has dropped into obscurity.

A watchable, if slow film.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 5/10 · 14 June 2019]

Watching the advert I thought the film was going to be a quite dramatic thriller, focused on a deadly outbreak of smallpox. Instead, the film is 70 percent melodrama, 30 percent thriller, it's actually pretty slow, if you're expecting an energetic thriller, you'll be disappointed.

It was made back in 1963, so gore and terror aren't expected naturally, but the main issue is the pacing, a deadly outbreak and everyone is meandering about.

It is watchable enough, the characters themselves are quite interesting, it's well acted, and looks pretty good.

Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom and Cyril Cusack are all decent, but it's the actress behind Ruth that steals it, Yolande Donlan, she adds some much needed energy and enthusiasm into a pretty slow film.

It's ok. 5/10

A very British relationship drama crossed with a medical thriller – rather stiff but watchable

[bob the moo · 19 July 2004]

Leaving a New Years party, Steven Monks leaves his wife to drop a friend home while he pops into the hospital to pick up a camera. When he arrives he is asked to consult on a patient upstairs only to find that she has a case of smallpox. When a second case comes in the next day, a outbreak is feared and the doctors and police begin to try and trace the original case's movements. While Steven tries to help fight the disease, he cannot manage to hold together his crumbling marriage and the race to contain the outbreak proves to be a personal one.

I wasn't sure what this film was about when I sat down to watch it, and I'm not too confident now of being able to pigeonhole it into a genre. The plot is a mix of two different threads. The first thread is the outbreak of smallpox; this is delivered reasonably well, with some vague tension early on. However as the film progresses it just becomes a bit flat and there is no urgency and the plot gradually becomes more about the second thread. The second thread is a personal one of marriages, adultery and pain and it is interesting even if the setting of an outbreak seems to be out of place. Steven and Julie are having major problems – not helped by his secret affair with the wife of another doctor. At times this is interesting but for most of the time it is all very stiff and kitchen sink – only once (Steven with the priest) do raw nerves get exposed and challenges made, but then even this is a fleeting moment. This is a shame because it could have been a tense relationship moment set against a tense background of disease, but it didn't manage to do either that well.

This is not to suggest that it is rubbish, because it isn't. The writing is good and the film as a whole is enough to keep you watching but I didn't ever feel really involved or gripped in either storyline. Writer/director/producer Val Guest must take some of the blame for this, even if he has quite a few famous films under his belt, he can't quite do it here. His words are stiff and his direction matches it – it's all very, well, English, but I didn't think that that fitted with the reality of the story that was being told. I could forgive some of it for being dated and perhaps told at a different pace; but then on the other hand the film also seemed to be pushing the boundaries of the period with rather frank tale at times, the adultery theme running through and a bit of slight nudity.

The cast are reasonably good but none of them really get panicked about the disease or deeply emotional over their marriages; the most we really get is a bit of sobbing here and there. Johnson is solid as Steven and he isn't afraid to let his characters weaknesses come out even if I think he let him off a bit lightly at times. Bloom is better but the material doesn't let her go as far as her performance indicated that she was trying to. Support is all solid enough – like the lead two, they all do well with what they have but none really stand out.

Overall this is not a bad film but I wouldn't describe it more that interesting or watchable. The two threads make for an interesting mix and potentially a dual interest story but they don't mix that well (one gradually taking over the other) and neither is really engaging or emotionally involving as they should have been given their tense and/or emotive themes. An interesting watch but not one I could imagine sitting down to again for a long time.

Let's play doctors and nurses.

[brogmiller · 7/10 · 25 September 2020]

People required to isolate themselves, asked to keep their distance and resources stretched to breaking point..... All this sounds horribly familiar! On New Year's Eve Dr. Steven Monks is asked to examine a patient with unusual symptoms. We know there's something distinctly unpleasant ahead when he asks her the ominous question: "Have you been in contact recently with anyone from the Far East?" It turns out to be smallpox which even if it doesn't kill can wreak havoc with the complexion. As luck would have it there are sufficient stocks of vaccine to immunise what appears to be the entire population of Bath but of course one has slipped under the radar.......... Director Val Guest who has adapted this from the novel of Elleston Trevor, keeps the tension and momentum going and has the services of some fine actors. Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom are excellent as indeed they are in 'The Haunting', released the same year. Great support from Michael Goodliffe, Mervyn Johns and inveterate scene-stealer Cyril Cusack. The character played by Yolande Donlan seems rather silly and shallow at the outset but certainly shows another aspect of her character towards the end! It is Basil Dignam as the health officer who is gifted the best line. When reading out the varied professions of those who have succumbed he remarks: "The earth's all the same shape." We hardly need reminding that the Grim Reaper is no respecter of persons.

Another good Val Guest production

[EdgarST · 7/10 · 28 January 2023]

There are filmmaker who deserve further analysis, but who are forgotten for being artisans dedicated to genre films made with small budgets. However, some made a handful of films exceeding their limitations, and are better than overrated directors. Val Guest is one of them. Judging by his statements, he was a man of no pretensions who wanted to do his job well.

Born in London, Guest worked for many years with Gainsborough Pictures and Hammer Film, but he made movies through his production company. He put Hammer on the international map with «The Quatermass Experiment» (1955) and in 1961 his name was cemented with the sci-fi classic «The Day the Earth Caught Fire.»

Apart from works for Hammer, as the remarkable «The Abominable Snowman» (1957), or his participation in big productions as "Casino Royale" (1967), Guest remained in low-budget films, in which we sometimes discover his ability to enhance them and give the public good entertainment, often in black and white and wide-screen.

In this format, he produced and directed the drama «80,000 suspects», which presents a group in crisis, as in «The Day the Earth Caught Fire», but here there is no global alert, rather the alarm is limited to the city of Bath. Based on the novel «The Pillars of Midnight» by Trevor Dudley Smith, Guest recounts the drama of a smallpox epidemic that suddenly breaks out, causing numerous deaths during the collective struggle to control it.

The situations of the operation with health personnel, police officers and journalists are handled at a good pace and efficiently, even with a couple of image transitions planned on set, with very good use of the CinemaScope format, as he did on other occasions. The theme of adultery between doctors and wives, plus the participation of a priest, do not obstruct the drama of the epidemic, but are revealed as key elements of the story, although the dialogues slow down the plot, by today's dramatic standards.

All in all, Val Guest's «80,000 suspects» is a good contribution to the British film industry of those years, in which he combined current issues (smallpox killed about 300 million people in the 20th century), the ethics of life in couple, and the good effect that religion can have on people's lives, instead of bothering them with old-fashioned and obscurantist notions.

(*) Now I realize that, with «The Day the Earth Caught Fire,» Guest and his collaborators anticipated the current alarming global warming; and «80,000 suspects» describes a situation similar to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Watchable if a little dated.

[Philby-2 · 6/10 · 11 March 2001]

Guest shows himself as a competent all rounder (Wrote, Produced and Directed) but needs Bloom and Johnson to cover over direction which lacks at times. Bloom is given too little material for a pedigree which was demonstrated better both before and after, Johnson is archetypically stoic, if a little wooden. It is fair to say that it is dated, but still watchable, and the formula is true to what still makes a reasonable movie today. Emphasis is rightly on the characters and there are sufficient character subplots to keep us interested, though a little more development wouldn't have gone astray.

Turgid relationship drama

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 20 February 2019]

80,000 SUSPECTS is a faltering effort from the usually reliable Val Guest, an 'outbreak'-style thriller that focuses more on a turgid relationship drama between the main characters than on the kind of thrills you'd expect from this genre. Sure, the smallpox stuff is interesting enough, and there's a well-selected cast to do more than justice to the material, but the second half in particular just gets bogged down in characters feeling things we don't really care about. Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom do do their best, but there's nothing here to write home about.

80,000 too many.

[lost-in-limbo · 5/10 · 3 April 2007]

After a New Year's party, Dr. Steven Monks plans to head away on holidays with his wife Julie to patch up their weary marriage, but when later that night he diagnoses a patient of smallpox. Soon enough the city of Bath is facing an epidemic and Julie (who's an ex-nurse) wants to stay back and help out. The medical team led by Dr. Monks slowly starts to contain the outbreak after some early deaths and Julie being infected, but this leaves one case involving his colleague Dr. Clifford's runaway wife Ruth, who could be carrying the virus. What makes it harder for Monk, is that he had an secret affair with the lady, and this stressful situation has brought up the issue.

What looks like a crisp BW medical thriller on the surface turns out to be much more a melodramatic story centred on human interactions on a personal level. Where marriage is tested, adultery is looming and the smallpox epidemic is an interesting backdrop tool. This one is inspired off Elleston Trevor's novel "The Pillars of Midnight" and Val Guest would go on to direct and write the feature (which has dated considerably). Guest achieves a nice sense of realism with its workable semi-documentary touch, authentic locations and glum atmospheric air, but underneath that it never raises any intensity or urgency within the spreading outbreak and the personal side of the story lacks emotion and ends up pretty square. This makes way for a plodding pace and in the long run being a tad overlong. Guest's sedated, but standard handling in direction is competent and careful, but never entirely gripping and his material, while admirable never really clicks or takes off, like it could have done. It settles on a familiar and safe tone for most part. The talkative script is thickly verbose and strikes up few interesting character developments, but more often falls into many deadpan exchanges. The performances are acceptably durable, but better then the material they're given. Richard Johnson is rigidly ice-cold as Dr. Steven Monks and the stunning Claire Bloom impresses as Julie, but her classy turn is simply pulled back by the material. In able support roles is Michael Goodliffe, Cyril Cusack and an eccentric Yolande Donlan.

"80,000 Suspects" is stuffy and predictable, but in it stays watchable because of a solid looking production and some captivating, if not spectacular factors.

"Another Victim of the Nightmare"!!!

[kidboots · 9/10 · 6 April 2012]

"80,000 Suspects" was often a staple on late night TV in Australia - about an outbreak of smallpox and it's effects on the doctors who treated it and their wives. Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom had scored a success in "The Haunting" and were now given the parts of Dr. Steve Monks and Julie, his wife. Beautiful Claire Bloom had been in films since the late 1940s. She was touted as an "English Rose" and caught the attention of the Rank film group who signed her up at $25 a week. But she was not just a pretty face, she also had talent and soon caught the attention of Charlie Chaplin, who was looking for a new face for his film "Limelight". You would have thought she would have been on her way but the 1950s didn't fulfill her promise and it was only in the early 60s with "The Haunting", "The Chapman Report" and "80,000 Suspects" that her film career took an upswing.

Claire gave a beautiful and terribly British restrained performance and was one of the highlights of the film. I think though with tighter editing, especially with Yolande Donlan, it could have been a more memorable film. There was not much about her that seemed alluring or fascinating. Even though she was only featured at the beginning, her character, Ruth, was pivotal to the film and some of her scenes were a bit hard to believe.

The movie starts with a New Year's Eve staff party at a Bath hospital. Relations between Steve and Julie are strained - a while before he had had an affair with Ruth, neglected wife of driven, dedicated Dr. Preston. Julie doesn't know but soon has suspicions when she drives a drunken Ruth home. Steve, who pops into the hospital to pickup a camera, is asked to look at a patient who is showing all the symptoms of smallpox.

So begins a pretty good movie, showing how cool, calm and collected Britons are in a major crisis, with all the undercurrents and emotions kept in check under the surface. Julie, an ex nurse, is one of the first to volunteer. The initial patient is a mother whose son has returned from a posting in the Far East. As they discover where he has been in Bath - a pub, a cinema, a pantomime - they realise they may have an epidemic. Ray Barrett, an Australian actor we think a lot of over here, plays a young health inspector. The movie is particularly good at showing a city under siege, nervous neighbours, the Town Hall being set up as a vaccination centre. Things get complicated when Ruth flees to London and meets up with an old flame who later turns up as a smallpox victim. After that the cry is out "Find Ruth" and emotions and feelings bubble to the surface when Julie is struck down with the fever.

Again, it seemed to be a bit overlong. There was just too much self analysis and discussion in the disinfection room!!! Mervyn Johns (from the landmark movie "Dead of Night") was excellent as a health official who realised everything was slipping out of control. His key scene by the car when his emotions took over was memorable. Kay Walsh, a glamour girl from the 1940s turned up as a Matron.

The Life Of Bath.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 10 January 2012]

Curiously dull, the story of a smallpox outbreak in the city of Bath. It has a lot of potential. All these epidemiological studies have potential. But this one isn't as good as "The Killer Who Stalked New York", which is in turn not nearly as good as "Panic In The Streets." The cast is fine. No problem there. Richard Johnson is his usual, stable, doctorial self. (He was the anthropologist in "The Haunting.") Claire Bloom can hardly go wrong. She was a great Lady Anne to Olivier's Richard III. Also, she gets to take a shower here.

The rest of the supporting cast has an abundance of familiar faces who give reliable performances. There are even a few minutes of Arthur Christianson as the frazzled editor, who was the editor in "The Day The Earth Caught Fire," and who is, in fact, not an actor at all but a real-life newspaper editor. Cyril Cusack gives a sterling performance as the empathic, perceptive, phlegmatic Father McGuire. Only Judy Donlan can't seem to conquer her lines, but what do you expect from Jersey City? The location shooting is evocative too. It's Bath at Christmas time. The snow is heaped in piles within shady corners. The skies are the color of dishwater. The rural roads are cloaked in fog. Everyone's breath is expressed in steam. It's the kind of weather in which you don't want to run around nude.

So why is it dull? The smallpox epidemic comes and goes but is used mainly as a peg on which to hang a routine soap opera. Johnson has had an affair with Donlan. Should he tell his wife, Bloom? Does Bloom already know? Donlan's husband is a fellow doctor. Does he know? If he doesn't know, should Johnson tell him? Did Donlan tell Bloom? Did Bloom believe Donlan? Did Blomlan believe that Doom believed Broom and/or Drumlin? Was the Kremlin in on it somehow?

People get sick in the background and then they get well or they die, while these marital problems of monumental proportions are puzzled over. That damned smallpox epidemic keeps getting in the way of the broody soap opera.

There are a couple of dramatic or comic moments -- a fat man faints during his vaccination -- that bring momentary sparks to a flat script, but this thing needs not a vaccination but CPR. Wait -- we've got a bleeder here. We're losing him. Yes, it's too late. Let's call it.

Bath

[SueBee55 · 20 March 2001]

Nice to see the city of Bath used for location filming, and in the one of the coldest winters the UK had seen in 1963! The snow was definitely authentic. The Abbey and Pump Rooms used to good effect but wasn't parking easier then?! Otherwise, a bit of a pot boiler with a stilted script and over dramatic storyline but Claire Bloom and Richard Johnson looked lovely and sexy in the snow.

80,000 Suspects review

[JoeytheBrit · 5/10 · 12 May 2020]

Dreary saga in which doctor Richard Johnson and nurse Claire Bloom drone on endlessly about their troubled marriage while also trying to contain an outbreak of smallpox in the town of Bath. Johnson's character has dallied with the possibly alcoholic wife of a colleague, and the film's moral stance means she must succumb to the epidemic while he emerges unscathed with his marriage intact. A strong cast of British character actors provides stoic support.

The germ carrier

[Prismark10 · 3/10 · 15 April 2019]

Set in Bath. Dr Steven Monks (Richard Johnson) has a rocky marriage with ex-nurse Julie (Claire Bloom) due to his infidelity.

Monks had an affair with Ruth Preston (Yolande Donlan) the wife of his hospital colleague. Although the affair is over, Julie now suspects.

Before she can confront her husband, Dr Monks is called in to see a patient with a mysterious ailment. It is smallpox and the carrier might had been in Bath for several weeks.

This film should had been about a contagion going rife through a wintry Bath with people in panic. This film grinds to a halt as doctors, nurses and a priest talk about adultery.

You can easily guess that Ruth Preston who disappears for a large part of the film will get her just desserts as the wanton woman.

It is well acted by Johnson, Bloom and Cyril Cusack as the priest. Shame about the lack of urgency.

What Film Were the Other Reviewers Watching?

[richardchatten · 9/10 · 23 September 2020]

A terrific - and now unfortunately timely - drama that like most films made in the early sixties looks better than anything made today (including the women's clothes & hairstyles).

I'm just old enough to remember all that snow from the winter of 1963, and this already seemed an old film when I first saw it in 1972 (the principal cast are all long dead except the eternally elegant Claire Bloom, now in her ninetieth year). But epidemics sadly are still with us, and it's the present queen's portrait we see adorning the medical officer's wall (along with Henry VIII)!

(I originally saw this film when I was aged just 13 only hours after seeing the same director's 'Inn for Trouble' (1960) on Anglia TV one Sunday afternoon. It had featured Graham Moffat - Albert the fat boy from Will Hay's Gainsborough films - as a character called 'Jumbo Gudge', and there he was again passing out while waiting to be vaccinated! By amazing fluke I'd just consecutively seen the only two films in which Moffat appeared in the last ten years of his life!!)

Filmed in my home city - some trivia

[k_j_pass · 1 January 2005]

This film was shot in my home city of Bath, when I was ten, and watching it reminded me how much of the city has changed and how much local history has been lost. It was made during the big freeze of 1963 and whilst being filmed the thaw set in! to ensure continuity the production company had bring in "Artificial Snow" to replace the melted snow, also the only resident to appear in the film is the newspaper seller in the Abbey Church Yard - it was his "normal pitch". The premier was held at the Local Odean Cinema - the smallest in the city. The title 80,000 suspects was taken from an estimate of the city's population.

Well made account of how to deal with a pandemic

[D-C-S-Turner · 8/10 · 2 March 2021]

This film is way better than most reviewers seem to think.

Clearly it is topical now, and suggests pretty starkly how local authorities and the health service should respond to a pandemic: isolation, track and trace, vaccination, clear information.

Beyond that it is a good story about a marriage, with Claire Bloom beautiful and in top form

snowy

[jeremysmith-91302 · 23 September 2020]

Seeing the amount of snow one might think it was filmed in January but the vase of flowers in one scene gives the game away. I would guess filming took place in March or April and the reason for the lingering snow is that 1962/63 was the harshest winter of the century in some places. Another film showing this, is Murder at the gallop.