I saw the gifted Jan Bannen in many good movies: "The Hill", "The Flight of the Phoenix", "The Sailor from Gibraltar", "Sweeney!", "Jesus of Nazareth", "The Inglorious Bastards"(the original, directed by Enzo G. Castellari), "Gandhi", "Gorky Park", "Braveheart". I saw the beautiful Judy Geeson in "To Sir, with Love", "Brannigan", "The Eagle Has Landed", "Poldark"(TV Series). "Doomwatch" I've seen 2 times when I was a kid, at the Capitol cinema in Bucharest, that much I liked. I reviewed and 3rd time, with interest. It is still good after so long time. Well done, all the actors persuasive, precise direction of Peter Sasdy (neighbor of mine, he's Hungarian). Beautiful music too.

This one feels a lot like the beginning of Wickerman, with out all the singing.An investigator from Doomwatch, goes to an island to investigate strange occurrences and come up against a wall of close mouthed villagers. He picks up hints that all is not well.Monsters. Monsters!Now this movie was made in 1972, and follows a British TV show of the same. (Which of course desperately needs a US DVD release.) Oddly, the Environmental cause for some of the things, is Genetically Engineered Food. A current Hot Potato Political Topic that has Industry Giants spending Millions of Dollars to quash any Ballot Initiatives for Food Labeling. On the other side, Nuclear Waste is briefly used as a red herring, but Nobody, and I mean Nobody, seems worried about Nuclear Waste.A Cool and Fun movie, just slightly on the weak side.

Doomwatch – the movie – comes forth as a spin-off from a TV-series with the same name. I only saw 3 episodes of that series and then they took it off the cable here in my country. Too few viewers, apparently… That always happens to decent series. So I was pretty enthusiast about catching the long feature film when the BBC programmed it recently. Yet, after two viewings, I must say I liked the 3 episodes a lot better. The plot offers too few aspects to fill a complete film with and tends to get boring quite easily. In fact, it would have been perfectly accurate if this were a 50 minutes episode as well. No offense to the people on this site here but the plot synopsis, as described on the film's main page, is rather misleading. It says: `The waters surrounding an island become contaminated by chemical dumping, and people who eat fish caught in those waters become cannibalistic mutants'. Judging by this two-line summary, horror fans might prepare themselves to see a good old-fashioned 70's shlock-and-sleaze film, with adorably cheap make-up effects and awful production values. Fans of this type of cinema will feel cheated because `Doomwatch' is more of a theoretical intelligent film, loaded with environmental messages and criticism towards society. This isn't necessarily a negative aspect, but it could have used a bit more action and entertainment value, if you ask me. I like story-driven horror, but there should have been at least a bit of excitement. The film has more than enough horror potential, though. The substance is perfect for it, while cast and crew are experienced in the field as well. Directed by Peter Sasdy, who previously made some of Hammer's best vampire films like `Countess Dracula' and `Taste the Blood of Dracula', and starring George Sanders, who's one of my personal favorite actors since `Village of the Damned' and `Psychomania'. Altogether, Doomwatch is worth a look if you're in a semi-clever mood…but don't think about seeing it when you're having a few friends over with beer and pizza.

Why is this movie regarded an horror movie anyway? It doesn't have any real monsters in it and there aren't any scares.The movie relies on the mystery and the atmosphere with as a result that some things are not always happening fast enough. The atmosphere itself is actually quite good and for some reason it reminded me of "Sleepy Hollow". The way the villagers behave towards the main character are almost identical at times.At times the movie gets a very realistic feeling but there are too many dumb and uninteresting things in the movie to be regarded as a completely realistic one (especially towards the ending of the movie).Not a bad movie but too uninteresting and it has too many missed opportunities.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/