[3] The film, shot in Imst, Austria, was distributed by Columbia Pictures and evolved from a script treatment originally written in the early 1950s by Robert Aldrich.

[5] A railroad passenger car carrying a reporter and his photographer mysteriously breaks away from its locomotive, accidentally ending up on a remote sidetrack in Gudavia, an isolated Ruritanian-style, one-village dictatorship.

The newsmen discover a mad scientist using gamma rays to turn the country's youth into either geniuses or subhumans.

In June 1951, Irving Allen announced he would make The Gamma People in Austria with Brian Donlevy and Virginia Grey.

[10] In December 1951 Allen announced he had formed Warwick Productions with Albert Broccoli, but that he still intended to make The Gamma People with Robert Aldrich.