Penfold-13

If you expect an action-packed monster horror movie, don't watch this. You won't like it. It's terrible.

If, on the other hand, you are a connoisseur of really bad movies, this one is right up your street.

Imagine Jaws VIII, Godzilla VI, and E.T. IV mixed up together. The only thing wrong with this film is that it wasn't directed by Edward D Wood, Jr.

Gregory Peck is a scientist. He is sent on a mysterious mission to China, where it turns out a scientist has developed an amazingly beneficial enzyme, and thinks Peck is the only man who can work out how to duplicate it for mass production, cure all known diseases, etc. Peck and said scientist are idealists who want to share it with the world, while the US and Chinese governments just want it for themselves. And, to make the whole thing more credible, Peck is equipped with a micro-transmitter in his brain which monitors his physical status and bugs his every conversation, including the one he has after playing table tennis with Chairman Mao.

It sounds silly, and, frankly, it is, but the espionage and the attempts to detect it are fairly tense, and Gregory Peck indulges in a fair number of good old humanitarian rants which suggest that Chinese totalitarianism and US militarism aren't necessarily wonderful things either.

I rather enjoyed it.

That this film was a propaganda effort is not in doubt. As a morale-boosting call to the British people to do their bit uncomplainingly, with the whole country, high and low, all in it together, it was a remarkably well-made movie.

For an audience which did not have to suffer the Blitz or rationing, it is only a piece of history.

As a window on how the British were in the early part of WW2, it's an excellent document, but as cinema entertainment, it is simply a way of passing time harmlessly.