80,000 Suspects

From the title of this 1963 Val Guest number you could be forgiven for thinking you are going to get something pretty exciting, though unfortunately the Quatermass Xperiment it ain’t. Guest also scripted and produced the film, taken from the story ‘Pillars of Midnight’ by Elleston Trevor.

Richard Johnson (fresh from his success with the RSC) is cast as relatively decent hospital doctor Steven Monks who has being playing away from home with Ruth (Yolande Donlan), the wife of Dr. Clifford Preston (Michael Goodliffe). You’d assume that Monks might pick a more discreet affair… forget it! His own marriage to ex-nurse Julie (Claire Bloom) is going through a bad patch. Dr. Monks discovers that a female patient at the hospital where he works has contracted smallpox (presumably from her son, an airline pilot). This shocking discovery leads to what could possibly be a national crisis. Just how many people has this pilot been in contact with? They must be found, and fast! An epidemic could be just around the corner and half the population could be wiped out. Of course everybody has to be vaccinated.

One can’t help feeling somewhat bewildered by the apparent naivety of the hospital staff when it comes to dealing with this highly dangerous virus: After touching the patients with bare hands (none of the chain smoking medical staff appear to wear gloves), Dr. Monks simply disinfects himself and puts his clothes in the incinerator! In addition, the infected patients show symptoms that resemble chickenpox rather than smallpox. Perhaps it was deemed just too horrific to show what a person suffering from smallpox really looks like.
As Monks and staff desperately try to bring the outbreak under control, wife Julie goes down with the disease, which is perhaps par for the course as far as the script is concerned. The eternal mumbling Irishman Cyril Cusack (in the role of Father Maguire) is on hand to give wise advice. Meanwhile, the final carrier of the smallpox virus is narrowed down to Ruth Preston and Monks has every reason to get nervous, especially as the unfaithful and constantly intoxicated Ruth has done a runner and a frantic race against time ensues to find out where she is.

The performances are on the whole quite adequate but with a film like this it isn’t performances that are of paramount interest. It was hardly a vehicle for Guest’s real life wife American actress Yolande Donlan to excel in. That said, her performance did instill a bit of initial humor into the proceedings.
The Bath locations are rather nice and make a pleasant change if you've never been there.
Perhaps the story is prophetic with Ebola just around the other corner – and when isn’t there some deadly virus threatening mankind as we know it?