Wonderful character development!

Excellent but underrated film

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Ken Hughes directed five feature films and two short films in 1955, and this is one of the features. It is a superior B picture with the female B star, Faith Domergue, she of the big soulful brown eyes. The story and screenplay are by Charles Eric Maine, and he has written a good yarn. Some of the ideas for the technical background are mentioned in passing, and they concern a scientist named Stephen Rayner who works for the Atomic Energy authorities. He has learned how to achieve the alchemical transmutation of elements in order to produce tungsten in the laboratory from cheap materials. This threatens the interests of the United Tungsten Corporation of Argentina, which controls two thirds of the world's tungsten supply, so they have another scientist's face transformed by plastic surgery to replace Rayner, and the film starts with Rayner being shot one night and falling into the Thames. He miraculously survives but is in a coma for some time while everyone is trying to figure out what happened. After he is identified, the police are puzzled because his employers say he is at work in his lab. Something strange has also happened to him because he has undergone a slight forward time-shift of 7.5 seconds due to exposure to radiation, so he answers questions put to him before they are asked. When the police and others finally figure out why his interviews don't make any sense, because the answer to each question is really to one that will be asked next, they then begin to piece together his story. The film is very intriguing and entertaining, despite being low budget. The hints of escaped corrupt Nazis in Argentina who will kill anyone who gets in their way were well understood in 1955, only ten years after the War. The film's original release title was TIMESLIP, and it is under that title that the DVD is now once again available. As another reviewer says, this is not really a sci fi film but is an industrial espionage thriller with some intriguing sci fi background elements which are significantly under-developed. Both the timeslip angle and the tungsten angle could have been much better developed and turned into a much stronger film. As it is, the film is rather mediocre.

With a title like "The Atomic Man" and it being in the public domain, I sure had my doubts about this one. You'd think, being made in the 1950s that it was some sort of space monster film or perhaps a film about communism--but it isn't. It's actually a very well written and taut sc-fi mystery--with a strong emphasis on mystery. And, it's very much worth your time.The film begins with a guy being left for dead--and thrown in the river. He's rescued and on the brink of death--and the doctors expect to lose him...which they do TEMPORARILY. While they are operating on him, his heart stops and they give up the surgery--and suddenly, he spontaneously begins breathing and begins a slow recovery! When he awakens, he's an oddity. He looks like a famous scientist--but the scientist is accounted for and is certainly NOT near death. And, he talks strangely...very strangely. How does all this fit into the total picture--that's the mystery. To try to sort all this out is a pushy reporter--the sort of guy who was almost a cliché in the 1930s in films. Yet, somehow Gene Nelson manages to make it work--along with his girlfriend (Faith Domergue).Now that I mentioned Nelson and Domergue, that brings up the production itself. Despite these two American actors in the major roles, the rest of the film is very British--made by Brits, filmed in Britain and with British extras. The reason was that in the 1950s and 60, many European film companies brought in Americans to star in their films--figuring it would help box office appeal (especially in the States). Well, in this case it sure worked well because the plot was intelligent, well written and a nice production all around--so nice, I was very tempted to give this little film a 9! My advice is to download (for free and perfectly legal) the film from archive.org--a site often linked to film listings on IMDb or from Amazon (which IS linked to IMDb). Well worth your time and full of wonderful suspense--especially at the end.

*Spoiler/plot- Atomic Man, 1955. An atomic scientist makes isotopes(new elements). He gets so radioactive contaminated that he can make jumps into the future only in seconds. A international company substitutes their scientist to sabotage the isotope experiments with a look-a-like. The industrial espionage plot over the making the element tungsten in a atomic reactor produces the drama. *Special Stars- Gene Nelson, Faith Domergue, Peter Arne.*Theme- Some times atomic power is man's solution to his problems. *Trivia/location/goofs- B & W. British. Film Noir. Gene Nelson is recognizable dancer and singer. Faith Domergue is recognizable as being in several famous cult 50's science fiction films. Film's first title was 'Timeslip'. Faith Domergue was promoted to be the next Jane Russel, a brunette sex bomb. *Emotion- This film was a disappointment. It was not a science fiction piece, only an industrial espionage & murder drama. The plot gimmick of time travel is extremely underplayed and is visually crude & confusing to the film viewer. So because of that and since I'm a time travel gimmick aficionado, I would give this film very low marks. It was boring, slow, and pedestrian. Forget it.

I had read the reviews for The Atomic Man and to be honest didn't make me want to see this movie. I always had this movie very low on my want list and recently purchased a copy from Sinister Cinema. Wow! What a mistake I had made over the years. I really enjoyed this movie.Plot concerns a nuclear scientist, Dr. Raynor, (Peter Arne) who is shot at the opening of the film and dumped in the river. He is found without identification and taken to the hospital. He is not expected to make it, but miraculously pulls through surgery even after "dying" for 7.5 seconds. A newspaper man (Gene Nelson) suspects the recovering man to be Dr. Raynor from a glow in a photograph. When he investigates another man (also Arne) is at the Research Center. Movie goes on a while while the characters try to determine who the man in the hospital is. We find out that a man named Vasquo (Vic Perry) is behind the whole matter. He had Raynor shot and had a plastic surgeon prepare the fake Raynor for the purpose of blowing up Raynor's experiment. While the real Raynor is recovering, we discover he is 7.5 seconds into the future (a really POOR reason is given to how this would happen and an even worse antidote. Okay, we can't always have good scientific reason in our Sci Fi movies.). In the end Vasquo and his incompetent gang are thwarted by Gene Nelson and Faith Domergue. Plot is a little thin on science fiction, but pretty fun throughout.