Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

O2D This movie is very deceiving.It seems to have a good story that makes sense but it's actually just an anti-Hitler movie full of plot holes.For once someone actually tried to make a good movie,they just failed. It starts with a train car taking several minutes to gently break away from the train.The car only has 2 people(reporters) in it because that's completely normal. One guy pushes the buzzer for the waitress(I have never been on a train but I doubt those buttons ever existed) and he immediately gets up to check on why she hasn't shown up.Nevermind that there were NO wires going from their car to the rest of the train.It was 1956, I guess they had wireless buttons. As their car drifts away from the train,we see two Hitler youth looking kids run out and throw the track switch so the car goes to their town.How did they know the car had broken free? The car stops and there's 10 minutes of time killing confusion before we learn that they are in an imaginary country that is exactly like Nazi Germany(except for the French-style military uniforms),they even use some German words. From this point on the majority of the movie is too dark to see anything,so you won't realize how stupid it is. The whole time there are hints about the reporters never being able to leave but there is nothing in the story to actually support that. There is also some stuff about weird masks that never makes any sense. One reporter gets beat up by a kid on a swing.The other one(who is fat & old and wears his pants around his neck) easily outruns a group of "goons". They get a car and drive into the country.It gets a flat and they all get out immediately and run to the front of the car,which immediately blows up. Then the fat guy tells the skinny guy to run back to the city to get help!!!While he and the girl they found run to Hitler's castle. Everything that happens in the castle is stupid and I won't waste any more time on this movie. Although I have nothing good to say about this movie,I am going to say you might want to give it a chance just to see how silly it is.

Michael_Elliott Gamme People, The (1956) ** (out of 4) Extremely bizarre science-fiction film from Columbia has Paul Douglas and Leslie Phillips playing American and British journalists who accidentally wind up in a small European town, which seems to be ran by a strange scientist. After a slow start the journalist soon learn that the scientist is doing experiments with a gamma ray, which he's using to try and create geniuses. Of course, whenever the experiments fail he ends up with ghouls who will do all his evil deeds. I don't think anyone in their right mind would put THE GAMMA PEOPLE on any sort of "Best of.." list but you could possibly find it on several "WTF" lists. This is without question one of the strangest films to come from the 1950s because not only does it try to capture the horror/sci-fi genre but it also mixes in some very strange comedy as well as some political undertones. All of this stuff thrown into one screenplay just leaves the viewer scratching his head because it's impossible to really figure out what's going on or what the filmmakers were trying to do. The screenplay itself is a mess as it's all over the map and what's worse is the horrid bits of comedy that are thrown in. At times it almost seems like you're watching a spoof of a horror movie but then you get more ghoulish activity that reminds you that this is supposed to be a horror film. Speaking of ghouls, the monsters here are downright silly and it's doubtful the youngest viewers in the world would be remotely scared of them. Not for a single second are any of them scary and that silly walk they do makes one want to laugh more than anything else. With this strange blend of genres you're almost looking at a horrid movie but what saves it from the "so bad it's horrible" file are the strong performances and the fact that it's rather well-made. When I say well-made I do mean on a technical level because the direction holds the material about as well as one could hope and the cinematography is also quite nice. I'm not sure how much they had to pay Douglas to appear in this film but he does a very good job in the lead and plays it straight throughout. Phillips is also very good in his role as is Eva Bartok who plays an assistant who finally gets some courage to fight back. THE GAMMA PEOPLE has pretty much been forgotten over the years but it's certainly an interesting little experiment. It certainly doesn't work but fans of the genre will want to check it out just to see how strange it actually is.

SamHardy It is pretty evident that this one was made pretty quickly to cash in on the drive-in horror flixs popular at the time. So many of these types of films made during the 50s had very small budgets but took themselves VERY seriously. That is why many of them turned out as high camp.I am guessing the producers of this film must have taken a look at the budget and the script and the actors and decided that it was gonna be a hard sell to audiences as just another mid 50s low-budget "horror" pic. The basic outline of the plot has so many European stereotyped characters and so many plot clichés that no one would ever go to see it.So I bet they did some minor changes to the dialog, replaced some of the standard scary background music with a lighter score and told the actors to play it for laughs with tongue in check. If you judge it as a sort of send-up of it's genre it fares a lot better then if you try to take it seriously. A lot of the jokes fall flat and the actors seem to do their best with it but as a "scary" movie it fails miserably. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and five stars for the effort.

dfarhie-1 The Gamma People is a classic mix of post WWII aimlessness sprinkled nicely with a generous dose of Hitlerian medical experimentation by a quasi dictator named Boronski. Unnoticed by the outside world save a chance happenstance of an uncoupled railroad passenger car with 2 reporters, American and British sliding down a side rail and ending up engine-less in the rail yard of the Dutchy of Gudavia, the whole town is in an uproar about the arrival of uninvited foreign guests.A postage stamp country if there ever was one, in fact, it's smaller than a postage stamp. With a pompous Hoenzollern-like police chief, a quaint hotel, and other assorted hovels leered at by a castle on the hill (that's where Boronski lives), Gudavia holds a hideous secret. The youth of the town are being zapped by Boronski with a huge gamma-ray projector causing two types of effects, geniuses like Hugo, a Teutonic dictatorial little snit and Hedda, a musical genius, able to whip out complex Beethoven or Bach at the drop of a piece of strudel, and morons, goon-like guys who run around with their arms at their sides and mouths wide open, catching flies, and moaning their compliance to the will of Boronski and his broken pitch pipe. The Brit Lothario goes wench hunting and ends up running into one of the goonies..The two reporters decide to visit the schloss and see what's happening in Good Old Gudavia's seat of government. The castle is ostensibly a school, with a lot of secret doors that make the coolest sound when opening and closing.. much neater than the doors on the original TOS Enterprise. There, they meet Dr. Boronski's assistant Frau Wendt, who tours the guys around the school ending up with a sculpture class where they meet Hugo and his huge goon mask, that still scares me. Here and there mysterious deaths, screams and crumpled bodies in the bottom of ravines spoil the peaceful tranquility of Gudavia,maybe you were expecting all edelweiss and shtollen ? A totally trippy festival with an awesome musical piece is used quite effectively to flesh out a who's hunting who scene in the city streets. Finally, Hedda is kidnapped and conveyed to the castle where she, Paula Wendt and the American reporter Wilson are subjected to the gamma rays, while Hugo watches, becoming more and more upset until he finally turns on the doctor pushing him off a balcony as the building begins to crumple in the intense explosion caused by the falling Boronski. Hugo and Hedda and Wilson and Paula are safe, staggering away from the castle Boronski which is now erupting like a big volcano, fade to a happy scene another festival, Hugo and Heda are happy-go-lucky young children again, free of the shackles of artificially induced genius, now just a couple of crazy kids. I think I liked them the other way.You can read into the movie whatever you want. I look at it as a classic that fascinated me as a child, and now still does as an adult. Safe, escapist, preachy but in a nice way, and entertaining. It may be corny and cheesy but hey, I like corn and cheese.