The Missing Scientists

A couple of atomic scientists go missing in London.

Steve Sekely was one of those directors who never seemed to catch a break, but seemed always to be associated with the cheapest and worst-written movies that might aspire to play as the third title on a triple bill once he got out of his native Hungary. Despite this, he directed about sixty movies -- albeit most of them in his first few years, and in Hungary -- and later, one decent scifi movie, THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS.

This one, however, has all the hallmarks of a poverty-stricken and uncaring production company, including vague, nonsensical dialogue, a narrator who talks about the responsibility of scientists who get to choose what projects they work on to bring the production up to an astonishing 50 minutes, idiotic continuity -- one airliner takes off as a jet, and lands as a propeller-driven plane -- and performers whose poor performances make clear why I've never heard of any of them.

Except Irene Pappas. What is she doing here?

It is 1945 an atomic scientist goes missing from a primitive lab. Looks like they are off to Munich for their own lab and "world peace." Can the good guys bamboozle them to return on their own volition? We will see as the plot thickens.

At first, this film looks a little dated until you see things like electric trains that are just now coming in vogue. Individuals can afford expensive Bakelite telephones with real landlines. Cars are made of steel. The use of manual switchboards that are impervious to EMP. The use of Morris Code that only old Boy Scouts can decipher. Propeller planes and even jet planes that sound like propeller planes. Another advantage is the archive film in the introduction.

See Irene Papas again, when she gains class, in the classics: Electra (1962).

Who knows the provenance of this left-over from the early 1950s? (I bet it was shot earlier than 1955. By 1954 Irene Papas, who has almost nothing to do here, was in big-budget movies in Italy). My guess is that the dreary "thriller" was an unsold TV pilot for a series in which minor Hollywood leading man Paul Campbell would have been some kind of investigator into Euro espionage. The US/West German (?) co-production may have seemed excitingly glamorous but the reality is people having dull, often post-synchronised conversations about things of no interest in locations of no visual appeal. (Stuff was also shot in London, but we'll come back to that). There's no action. Admittedly George and Gertrude Fass were just starting out as TV writers, but they were involved in some top shows. What went wrong? Everything points to producers trying to recoup by adding copious library footage (there really is a huge amount of it) in order to sell it to British cinemas as a featurette. This seems to have worked. The Renown re-master in 2009 (quality is still poor) comes complete with a BBFC certificate. The film was in fact released in 1956 by DUK, one of E. J. Fancey's companies. Is this the reason daughter Adrienne plays a receptionist and, if so, was the London footage also added later? As a matter of interest, Adrienne gives a much better performance than "Jacqueline" Collins. Yes, it's Jackie demonstrating why she was never going to make it as an actress like sister Joan. Can anyone be bothered to do more research? I can't.

THE MISSING SCIENTISTS is an odd little Cold War thriller that feels more like a Pathe newsreel more than anything else. Certainly the director of this piece is obsessed with including needless framing footage of shop fronts and street scenes, at one bizarre point shooting random footage in a car park as the camera pans around the buildings before shaking and cutting away.

The plot itself is a slight fluff piece of Cold War propaganda that sees a couple of top scientists defecting from the West to the East. They stop off in West Germany, - where this film was made, although it masquerades as as British or American production - which is where the local US commissioner tries to have them brought in before they can get across.

This is an odd, cheap, and stilted production, and thankfully it only runs for a very short time (45 minutes!) so it doesn't become too testing for the viewer. The performances are poor and the storyline makes little sense. The most notable thing about this film is that it features performances from a couple of actresses who would go on to become big names: Jackie Collins (sister of Joan and a popular author) has a cameo as the wife of one of the scientists, and Greek actress Irene Papas is the girlfriend of the other.