80,000 Suspects

Despite a title that indicates a mystery thriller, 80,000 Suspects (1963) is actually a genre collision of soap opera and medical drama set against the backdrop of Bath, England, on New Year's Eve. The central focus is Dr. Stephen Monks (Richard Johnson), an overworked doctor looking forward to a long overdue vacation with his wife, Julie (Claire Bloom), a former nurse whose life as Mrs. Monks has been largely unfulfilled and empty. They appear headed toward a marital breakup, complicated by the doctor's previous affair with a colleague's wife, when the outbreak of smallpox in their community takes priority over everything else. Against her husband's wishes, Julie volunteers to help contain the disease while her husband races against time to isolate the unidentified smallpox carrier. Directed in a semi-documentary style similar to Jigsaw (1962), a police manhunt thriller Val Guest directed the previous year, 80,000 Suspects spends an equal amount of time mining drama from the procedure and execution of a massive quarantine plan geared to keep public panic to a minimum. By this point in his career, Guest was an expert at turning out this sort of taut, fast-paced B-movie and here he has the advantage of a top notch cast and crew. Claire Bloom, looking exceptionally radiant and alluring, and Richard Johnson as the couple in jeopardy are ably supported by a fine cast of British film industry character actors such as Cyril Cusack as a proactive minister and Kay Walsh as a feisty head nurse. American-born actress Yolande Donlan, wife of director Guest, has a showy, flamboyant role as a dipsomaniac doctor's wife who becomes a major health hazard. Both Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom would go on to star together in The Haunting, made the same year, and graduate from the sort of B movie represented by 80,000 Suspects. Guest is best known today for several memorable genre efforts, particularly in the science fiction field, such as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955, aka The Creeping Unknown), Quatermass 2 (1957, aka Enemy from Space), and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). His status as a cult movie director was further enhanced by his beatnik coffeehouse satire Expresso Bongo (1959) and the noir influenced crime thriller Hell Is a City (1960). Based on the novel The Pillars of Midnight by Elleston Trevor, 80,000 Suspects benefits greatly from its Bath, England setting, strikingly photographed in the widescreen process by Arthur Grant, with musical accompaniment by Stanley Black, one of Great Britain's most famous bandleaders and a prolific composer of movie scores. While little more than a handsomely mounted potboiler, the movie proved to be an agreeable entertainment which Variety reviewed favorably, stating, "the film has a vital authenticity...The documentary and the fictional elements do not entirely jell. But Guest juggles adroitly enough with the problems to keep interest alert." Producer: Val Guest Director: Val Guest Screenplay: Val Guest; Trevor Dudley Smith (novel "The Pillars of Midnight") Cinematography: Arthur Grant Art Direction: Geoffrey Tozer Music: Stanley Black Film Editing: Bill Lenny Cast: Claire Bloom (Julie Monks), Richard Johnson (Dr. Steven Monks), Yolande Donlan (Ruth Preston), Cyril Cusack (Father Maguire), Michael Goodliffe (Clifford Preston), Mervyn Johns (Buckridge), Kay Walsh (Matron), Norman Bird (Harold Davis), Basil Dignam (Medical Officer Boswell), Arthur Christiansen (Editor, Bath Evening Chronicle, Mr. Graney), Ray Barrett (Health Inspector Bennett), Andrew Crawford (Dr. Ruddling), Jill Curzon (Nurse Jill), Vanda Godsell (Mrs. Agnes Davis), Ursula Howells (Joanna Duten). BW-113m. Letterboxed. by Jeff Stafford