A 1950’s ‘creature feature’ for you all this week. Experiment X Earth Threat concerns a nuclear scientist who whilst surveying the aftermath of a nuclear weapon test goes missing after his military plane crashes during the survey. The pilot is killed but the scientist disappears. He turns up some time later at his home but is behaving bizarrely and suffering from hallucinations.
He suffers a nervous breakdown, runs off, punching an FBI agent on the way, but is eventually captured and brought back. Whilst under hypnosis the scientist accounts for his missing time but his story is a fantastical tale of being captured and experimented on by aliens with bulging eyes who want to exploit Earth’s nuclear energy resources.
This movie has been described as a mixture of Cold War anxiety and the fear of an extraterrestrial invasion. I find that I agree with that description and the movie probably played well with American audiences who were both fearful of attack from the Soviet Union and of a destructive nuclear war.
This is probably not the best print of this movie that’s out there but it’s the one I could find. Bear with the film print quality, it probably looked better in the cinema with a better, fresher, print. This copy has been chopped at the end, the conclusion and denoumont of the film is still there but the end titles and the big swirl of orchestral music that this sort of film had at the end, is missing.
For those who like old communication equipment this film will be a treat. There’s the lot here. Old two way radio transceivers, manual telephone switchboards with plugboards, telex and image facsimile machines and even Lamson Tubes (which are still being manufactured). There’s also old TV’s, telephones, a slide rule and even a cigarette machine in a hospital.
Hope you like this one. You may have to click through and watch it on YouTube due to copyright reasons.
Here it is:
Link
Lamson Tubes