Although the film is taking place in contemporary 1953, vintage stock footage of San Francisco is of an earlier era, about fifteen years previous, revealing pre-WWII automobiles and streetcars all of which had long since disappeared by the time the film was made.
A road sign at the beginning of the film indicates the proximity to Lordsburg, New Mexico, but the sign is misspelled "Lordsburgh.
None of the other reviewers seem to realize that this movie was "remade", using a somewhat different premise, but very similar in many aspects of the plot, including the last minute, down-to-the-wire ending. It was called "The Fourth Protocol", released in 1987, starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan.
THE 49th MAN 1953 This Cold War thriller was put out by the B unit at Columbia Pictures. The film stars, John Ireland, Richard Denning, Suzanne Dalbert, Mike Connors, Robert Foulk, Richard Avonde and Peter Marshall.
Cold War paranoia reaches its heights in The 49th Man, an obvious bow to the British film, The 49th Parallel in title. Would that this film be half as good.
Despite a muddled script, the movie manages to generate some suspense. It's really an exploitation flick aimed at America's Cold War fears of the growing spread of nuclear weaponry.
Nowadays, it's easy for folks to make fun of the Cold War era--and in particular the paranoid 1950s. However, given the proliferation of atomic weapons and a vow from Stalin to destroy the West, it's understandable why so many films of the time were about Communist plots or giant mutant creatures created through atomic fission.
This is a diverting, entertaining, interesting, tense, and ultimately still-relevant story of agents of the Soviet Union smuggling parts of an atomic bomb into the US of A and planning to explode it in San Francisco, the swine.John Ireland is part of a counter espionage federal agency and is given the assignment of finding out who is smuggling all these A-bomb parts into the country.
The hysteria and paranoia are palpable in this well made and quite enjoyable suspenser about a plot to smuggle atomic bombs into the United States. John Ireland stars as an FBI man on the trail of the conspirators, who, fittingly enough, seem to be based in France and San Francisco.
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