1963 British film by Val Guest
80,000 Suspects is a 1963 British drama film directed by Val Guest and starring Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Yolande Donlan, and Cyril Cusack. It is based on the 1957 novel Pillars of Midnight by Elleston Trevor.[1] An outbreak of smallpox in Bath, England, leads to a race to contain the virus.[2]
Plot
On New Year's Eve in the city of Bath, Dr. Steven Monks diagnoses a mystery patient as being infected with smallpox and sets in motion a citywide quarantine to contain the outbreak. His commitment to the task is affected by the deterioration of his marriage to ex-nurse Julie following his clandestine affair with a family friend.
Monks receives an unexpected blow when the disease strikes closer to home than anticipated and Julie is diagnosed as having contracted the virus. The medical team gradually contains the outbreak until only one unidentified case remains.
The search narrows the identity of final carrier down to Ruth Preston, the woman with whom Monks had been having an affair and the wife of his close colleague Clifford. She's eventually traced to a deserted hotel where she is sheltering, lonely and desperately ill.
Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A veneer of authenticity (Bath locations, queues for vaccination, hospital staff eternally hopping in and out of decontamination units) is effectively smothered by the collection of appallingly stock characters and situations. Richard Johnson and Claire Bloom mouth all those married-couple platitudes, about taking a long look at their marriage and being brought together by shared experiences as if they had only just been thought of; Yolande Donlan, as an unsatisfied wife given to drink and free love, oozes ittle girl charm and ends up, like Mrs. Danvers, in flames in Ye OId Dark House; Michael Goodliffe, as her hangdog husband, suffers expressionlessly; and Cyril Cusack, as the wryly humorous Catholic priest, nobly kisses a Protestant smallpox patient on the brow. Val Guest's (rather strained) fiair for story-telling, and the Bath locations keep things more or less ticking over."[3]
Variety wrote: "Val Guest is successfully following his method of making pix that combine a documentary flavor with a fictional, human interest. This time the combo doesnt quite jell yet 80,000 Suspects has a holding interest and is screened with a professional knowhow that rarely flags. It hasn't the impact of his flmThe Day The Earth Caught Fire [1961], but nevertheless emerges as a worthy boxoffice entrant."[4]
Sight and Sound wrote: "Guest does his best to give both narrative threads equal weight, which proves engrossing up to a point, but the film flags appreciably when the outbreak element peaks too early; and the characterisation on the domestic front never quite delineates the couple's marital malaise with enough insight to make it something special. Still, as in Jigsaw [1962], there's a definite sense that old moral certainties have become much more flexible – something Cyril Cusack's presence as a worldly priest makes clear – and Johnson, never the most nimble of performers, puts in a decent shift as the harassed medic realising that he's lost the ability to feel anything much at all."[5]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "This epidemic movie seems to have everything going for it a bit of cod science, millions being threatened by malevolent micro-organisms and a race against time involving the daredevil doctor and the unsuspecting carrier, but it doesn't come off. More emphasis is placed on repairing the hero's marriage than on preventing disaster, which should add a human dimension to the tale, but here deprives the picture of suspense."[6]
British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Predicatble melodrama which adequately passes the time."[7]
