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Since childhood, Bill (Stephen Murray), Robin (John Van Eyssen) &
Lena (Barbara Payton) are the best of friends, but while the 2 boys grow
up to be ingenious scientists, Lena shows little potential & even
thinks about suicide ... this is when their mutual friend Doc Harvey
(James Hayter) gets her a (sort of) job as Bill's & Robin's aide,
cook, nurse, mechanic & whatever else there is ... The boys' work
gets along greatly, & soon they have created the Reproducer, a
little gadget that does exactly what the name suggests ... it reproduces,
& pretty much everything too. As soon as they have presented their
invention, Robin proposes to Lena, & she agrees to marry him ... buch
to Bill's dismay, who wanted her (not him, these were the 1950's) for
himself. So, while Robin & Lena are on their honeymoon, he adjuts the Reproducer
to reproduce living matter too, with the goal to - you guessed it -
eventually reproduce Lena for himself ... absurd as this is, it's even
mroe absued that Lena, hearing abut his plans, gives in to his wishes ... The
new Lena is called Helen (but is also played by Barbara Payton), &
Bill takes her on one romantic vacation after the other to successfully
make her his ... but what the brillian scientist failed to notice (but
what everybody with half a braincell would have guessed) is that the
reproduced Lina is of course reproduced down to the point that she is in
love with Robin as well (it is the same woman after all), & as she
cannot have Robin, she shows suicidal tendencies. In the end, Bill has
the grand idea to brainwash Helen, & what's even more surprising, the
woman agrees whole-heartedly (if you ask what ? now ... well, then
you are in your right mind, it still happens in the film though). However,
during the experiment, the lab catches fire & both Bill /& Helen
die, Lena, who has also somehow taken part in the brainwashing, survives,
but loses her memory ... Now I don't know wht you might think,
but in my book, hard edged science fiction & a tragic lovestory in
rural scenery don't go well together (& you can call me a cynic for
thinking so), still the movie tries, & spoils its love story with
pseudo-scientific Gobbledegook, its sci-fi-elements with pseudo-deep
emotions, while managing to create zero tension throughout. But what's
worst, the story of the film is downright silly (no buts about it), &
the dead-serious treatment of the story doesn't help one bit either. Many
film-historians see this film as both Hammer's & director Terence
Fisher's first foray into the fantastic - a realm that Hammer &
Fisher would soon conquer with Curse
of Frankenstein (1957) & Dracula
(1958) -, which is right from a purely statistical point of view ... but I
think it's safe to say that, if later Hammer classics would have been like
Four-Sided Triangle, nobody (including me) would know them
nowadays.
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