This movie starts out in promising fashion. The first scene is nearly silent, with minimal use of a score, as the camera slowly pans across a woman lying in bed, a mirror, an open bottle of sleeping pills. The woman awakenings, her suicide unsuccessful. It could almost be the opening of a well-directed, stark 1950s melodrama.
Unfortunately, the best things about this movie are the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes (plus the fantastic poster art).
In between is a mishmash of C-grade romantic melodrama, crime melodrama, and military stock footage, blended with a few unimaginative scenes of a couple of government scientists working in a little low-budget brick room in a basement to find a way to defeat the enemy.
And of course the requisite sexism of the era. Our two main protagonists meet each other and bond over a man-on-woman slap, because, naturally, he perceives her as being hysterical. Fortunately, she apologizes, and they move on.
Regarding the latter, I don't blame this movie for being "a product of its time," but I nonetheless cannot understand why it has managed to stay in the consciousness of fans of 1950s American science fiction and Cold War pop culture. It is somewhat interesting as a post-apocalyptic Cold War melodrama, of which the movie Five is another example, and has obvious cultural relevance in that context. But there are so many other better, more interesting and entertaining examples. It might be worth one viewing for die-hard fans, but having seen it more than once now I can say it is certainly not worth repeated viewings.
