Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
I have a penchant for 1950s science fiction and horror movies. There’s something pure about them that I love. Don’t get me wrong—I love the later stuff and the current stuff, too, but there is a particular vibe to the science fiction in the Cold War/Space Race years that I love. Hammer Studios was a big part of that, and so I’m always interested when one of these comes in over the transom. In this case, that’s X: The Unknown, a film that deals with the idea of nuclear power and radiation in a world that was steal dealing with the literal and figurative fallout from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Like a lot of the science fiction movies from this era, the emphasis is going to be less on the science and far more on the fiction. Soldiers on a routine training assignment in Scotland are learning to use a Geiger counter when a new source of deadly radiation appears, killing one of the soldiers and burning another one badly. Two scientists, Dr. Royston (Dean Jagger) and “Mac” McGill (Leo McKern), both of whom have atomic energy backgrounds, are called in to investigate.
