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1954 American film starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, and directed by Herbert L. Strock.

This particular cold war era film takes place in a secret government underground research facility. While working on developments for the planned American space platform there are a series of deaths through laboratory accidents. Are these mishaps unfortunate accidents or the work of a saboteur?

Our main character is flown to the facility to investigate via a remote controlled helicopter keeping even the pilot from knowing the exact location of the base. (Remember, this place is top, top, secret.) Once there, he is issued a mandatory radiation badge and security clearance id so he has access to the various underground levels (sort of sounds like a cross between Man from Uncle and Andromeda Strain.) During a briefing with the facilitie's director he is informed that various strange transmitters have been discovered here and there through the site. This of course points to a saboteur hiding in their midst. He is "introduced" to a female researcher who is assigned to be his escort and guide. As soon as they are alone we are shown that they not only already know each other but she is an undercover security agent working for the same branch as the main character.

Together they investigate some strange going-ons as more people are found dead in mysterious laboratory accidents. One of the things I found interesting about this film is it seemed to have an even balance between the genders for various roles. Something surprising in films of this period where woman were usually shown in more downgraded roles. However, this even handed gender treatment also extended to the deaths as well where just about as many females were killed as are male researchers.

During the tour of the facility we see various experiments such as cryogenics, solar mirrors, radioactive materials, anti-gravity, and a robot named Gog. There is also a "super computer" that partially runs the facility and is managed by a researcher that has little interest in humans and their affairs and would rather spend his time trying to understand his electronic super machine. (Of course by today's standards their secret underground super computer was probably less powerful than a contemporary laptop. Especially as they have to use punched paper tape to communicate with it. No challenge to HAL, whatsoever.)

Well, I will let you see the rest of the story for yourself and won't even tell you that the title of the film reveals a lot of it. But I think one of the more fun things about watching old hard science, science fiction films is to be amused at the development in technology. Even to see how the nature of what people once thought would be has changed to be something different instead. As Arthur C. Clarke put it so well, "The future is not what it used to be."

Don't get me wrong. There are actually a few modern ideas in the film. Such as when they discover a foreign aircraft flying over the base at a high altitude, made of fiberglass and other non-metallic materials so that it is not detectable by radar. (Whoa! Is that composite stealth materials? What year is this?)

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