A strange but enjoyable sci-fi thriller.
Dr Stewart (Richard Carlson) is called to a mysterious case of magnetism at a home appliance store, even lawn mowers moving about on their own. He and his team discover a deadly radioactive substance was in a lab above the shop (was that a thing in the 1950s? Science labs above shops?!) Another scientist called Denker (Leonard Mudie) has accidentally created a terrible new radioactive substance which requires huge amounts of energy every few hours and will reach out with magnetic claws to get it...
Dr Stewart and team decamp to Canada where a huge dynamo exists underground, the plan is to overfeed the substance before it grows powerful enough to destroy the world...
The underground dynamo footage comes from the 1934 film Gold, a decent job is made of integrating the footage though it is pretty obvious. This is a good sci-fi horror, the "creature" is a faceless unthinking substance, this film reminds me of Quatermass to some extent. The film tries to keep a degree of scientific realism, including a narrator going into detail about various scientific and computational activities. Maybe this kills the film of a bit of drama though it does add to the historic interest.
