"Matter transmission": Transportation of a person or object using a matter transmitter.
A scientist, Dr. Paul Steiner (Bryant Haliday), with the help of Dr. Christopher Mitchell (Ronald Allan) is working on a machine that can transmit matter from one place to another. Matter transmission. He’s been able to get the devise to work with inanimate objects and transfer them within a few miles of the devise; however, living things are another story. Living things just end up dead. Dr. Patricia Hill (Mary Peach) arrives to assist in finding out what is wrong. With her help he believes that the devise is now functioning the way it should.
Steiner’s boss, Dr. Blanchard (Norman Wooland) is not only a dick, he is being blackmailed by Mr. Latham (Derrick De Marney). Latham wants credit for Steiner’s discovery. He forces Blanchard to insist on a demonstration of the transporter to Professor Lembach (Gerald Heinz). Blanchard sabotages the machine. The result is that Steiner loses funding for the project.
Later Mitchell finds the sabotage. Steiner, enraged, goes to Blanchard’s house with evidence of tampering and asks for another chance to prove his invention. Lembach allows Steiner to do another demonstration. Steiner decides to use the devise on himself, and with the help of his secretary Sheila, to project or transport to Lembach’s house. During the experiment Hill and Mitchell return to the lab and try, to late, to stop it. When Sheila tries to end the experiment she mistakenly sends Steiner to a different location.
Steiner ends up at a construction site where a band of thieves are attempting a heist. A problem with the projection has given Steiner the ability to kill people just by touching them. He can electrocute them. In addition the projection has left one side of his body mutilated. Steiner kills the crooks, and a cat, breaks into a store, and steals rubber gloves and an overcoat. Then he kills Latham. By now this guy is pretty much toast. His madness drives him to settle debts both real and imagined.
“The Projected Man” is a 1966 British film. It was directed by Ian Curteis. The movie has gotten a lot of flack for being a rip off of “The Fly”. Granted there aren’t many teleportation movies out there but to dismiss “The Projected Man” so off handedly is not fair. Does that mean that “Jurassic Park” is a rip off of “The Lost World”? After all, they both have dinosaurs. Some even compared it to “The 4D Man” which is even more far fetched.
There are however, questions unanswered that make the story seem incomplete. Who was the stranger that was in alliance with Mr. Latham and what did they have over Blanchard’s head. Otherwise the movie is decent for what it is. A low budget science fiction story that moves along at a decent pace. Well acted with good special effects and make-up. I liked it.