A good British film with a screenplay by SF author Charles Eric Maine based on his novel “The Isotope Man”, one of four stories about Mike Delaney. It’s worth seeing and all worth reading.
A man is pulled out of the water with a bullet in him. He dies on the operating table….but not for long. Science reporter Mike Delaney (Gene Nelson) recognizes him from the photos taken at the scene and in the paper’s files. He’s American nuclear physicist Dr. Stepehn Rayner (Peter Arne).
When questioned there’s a seven and a half second delay in his answers. That’s just how long he’d been dead. Delaney smells a rat and goes to the lab where Rayner is working on creating artificial tungsten. Guess who’s there? That’s right. Dr. Rayner. He’s got a couple bandages on his face he says are from a car accident. Delaney smells another rat.
He takes his girlfriend, photographer Jill Rabowski (Faith Domergue) to the hospital and outside Delaney’s room. The cops are talking to him. Delaney opens the door and Rabowski takes a picture. When developed, Rayner has a light around him. He’s radioactive.
The fake Rayner and his boss Vasquo want to destroy the experiment. With them is Dr. Bressler. He’s a plastic surgeon. The fake Rayner planted an isotope in the lab’s reactor. It’s set to blow up and take half of London with it.
It comes to a well done ending. It’s more crime than SF but in those days anything in a lab was put into the SF catagory.
Gene Nelson was in a couple Elvis movies and appeared in many TV shows including “The Mod Squad” and “Fantasy Island.”
Gene Nelson
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