Am I one of the only idiots ...
... who bought this on VHS when Columbia released it years ago? I guess that's why it was never offered on DVD. It's actually a pretty interesting movie.
shareHi j-quirk,
Well, I never bought the VHS (don't really know why not, looking back), but The Gamma People is available on DVD from Sinister Cinema, albeit in a so-so print. I finally got it and watched this film, which I hadn't seen since late night TV in the 60s. I found it less good than I remembered (and I never thought it any great shakes even as a kid), though the end is pretty good. But the two journalists are as obtuse and annoying a pair as I've ever seen in a movie. This film really needed a better script, among other things. The combo of sci-fi and Ruritanian comic opera really doesn't work, though it does mark this as probably the most unique science fiction film of the 50s.
Columbia is suddenly releasing a lot of their stuff these days, so maybe TGP will get a mainstream studio disc sometime.
Thought I'd add a post after seeing the movie again last night -- sort of surprised yours was the only one here until now. But at least I'm in good company.
I saw it in a theatre in Europe and the tape broke at the half of the moovie (no DVD needed nor VHS ;-) ).
Your posts are recent. It sounds like The Gamma People is having a kind of come back.
The two journalists, 2 unified and caricatured sides of the pound, one so British the other one so American, were funny. The film set, especially the laboratory, was wonderful! The walls looked as if there were made with eggs boxes!
(and I'm almost sure there were)
Finally the opposition East VS West was so cliché. Well, a kind of enjoyable testimony!
I'm not a film expert, as you can read, and, of course, this film is not among the bests. But a lot of people in the theater laught and enjoyed their time, even if the script was effectively very boring.
Well, lousy and laughable as it is, at least a few of us remember it...which is kind of a tribute to the people who created it, I guess.
The presence of an actor as distinguished as Paul Douglas in such a small and bizarre film always mystified me.
May I ask, where and when in Europe did you see this movie?
[deleted]
Paris. Cinémathèque Française.
shareAh. Et, c'etais en francais ou en anglais?
And that is the extent of my borrowed French!
Well, hobnob, it took you about two years to respond to my posting, and now it's taken me about two years to respond to yours. I'm glad to see it's now on DVD. You know, the thing with some movies for me has something to do purely with nostalgia. I saw this movie at least twice, probably three times, when I was growing up in the 70s. When I was a kid, I never really understood everything that was happening in it, but I did find the goons appealing. I also always remembered that Mardi Gras-like mask the kid put on at one point.
Is the movie lousy? Yeah, pretty much. But it offers this nostalgic quality that always brings me back to my careless youth. And you're right about Paul Douglas in something like this. It really is odd.
Hey, jquirk, it's only been one year!
I saw this film in the 60s, when it was frequently broadcast on The Late Late Show on channel 2 (WCBS-TV) in NYC. Even then I thought it was pretty cheap, and very bizarre. I got it for nostalgia's sake too, but was somewhat surprised to discover I liked it better than I remembered it, in contrast to the usual reversal of ancient memories. I'm kind of hoping the film may come out as one of Sony's Columbia Classics series of MODs. They've already released The 27th Day and the dreadful 12 to the Moon, previously released on DVD-R by Sinister Cinema, so there's precedent.
Besides the Mardi-Gras [!!] mask, for some reason the scene that always stuck in my mind is the train rolling to a stop at the derelict railroad station, with the Ruritanian brigade greeting it. Maybe it was the framing of the shot. Talk about odd memories!
Yeah, the train car getting separated from the train and rolling into the derelict railroad staion - along with the British guy's first encounter with the goons and the kid's ugly Mardi Gras mask - are the things that always stuck in my mind.
I remember watching this on WOR 9 out of New York during their Chiller Thriller Saturday morning/afternoon double features in the '70s. It was usually paired up with other films that had "people" in their titles like "The Mole People" or "The Slime People." I actually think WOR aired a triple feature one time of all three of those titles. I also remember seeing it at least once on Philadelphia CBS affiliate Channel 10 back then. (Now 10 is NBC). I grew up in Pennsylvania, but luckily cable television was available back then. Got all the good New York channels like 5, 9 and 11. They were the ones that showed all the monster movies. I watched everything back then for the monsters. If "The Gamma People" was the only thing on, the goons would have to do.
Anyway, I recently broke out the VHS of this one to refresh my memory. I guess some of us are required to continue carrying the torch for "The Gamma People." Why? I really don't know.
Ah, so you and I grew up in adjacent states. Yep, channels 5, 9 and 11 did have most of the great sci-fi movies. I got introduced to them in the 60s. That's when channel 2 (I assume you didn't get the NYC network channels) had the Columbia library that channel 9 got a decade later. Channel 7, WABC, also had a lot of sci-fi stuff on in the 60s.
I don't know why I never got the VHS -- probably because I didn't have especially great memories of the film. But increasingly I've picked up DVDs of films I initially thought I wouldn't bother with. That's why I was glad to see Sinister's DVD-R of TGP, and why, as I said, I hope one day Columbia Classics may issue their own MOD of the film.
But you're onto something important: it seems most people don't know this film exists. It does seem to have fallen through the cracks. So it's good the few, the proud, the gammaphiles still congregate here to keep the radioactive beam burning proudly.
By the way, this thread title, about idiots...I don't think it was intentional on your part, but you did hit upon a word describing one of the unfortunate after-effects of all those unsuccessful gamma experiments. Idiots, goons, whatever. Now back to my piano....