LMPC/LMPC/Getty Images“Nobody cared a damn. So it was just get it in the box and get home. A misfit from start to end.” Most Dangerous Man Alive director Allan Dwan was nothing if not honest about the film that brought his prolific career – a staggering 130 features and approximately 300 shorts – to a somewhat underwhelming conclusion. Indeed, celebrating its 65th anniversary, the sci-fi revenge flick’s troubled backstory is largely more interesting than the action that unfolds on screen. In short, this is a movie that is more fun to think about than it is to watch.Originally conceived by character actor-turned-screenwriter Leo Gordon — the story of an escaped convict who becomes a literal man of steel after wandering onto an atomic bomb testing site — was initially intended to be a three-part TV pilot. But when a film syndicate in its location shoot in Mexico determined the project was actually a movie, and therefore subject to higher labor rates, producer Benedict Bogeaus was forced to cut corners.According to Dwan, he was given just one week to make the whole thing when five had been planned while also having to contend with sets that weren’t ready and actors who spent their entire time wishing they were elsewhere. Stuck in a vault for three years, Most Dangerous Man Alive only saw the light of day when Columbia, reportedly desperate for new pictures, took a punt. “The studio thought they were buying a big bargain – they didn’t know how cheaply it had been made,” the refreshingly candid Dwan also admitted.Ron Randell’s atomic monster looking nothing like an atomic monster. | Columbia PicturesOne can only assume the men in suits didn’t watch any footage before handing over the cash. Otherwise, they’d have noticed the film was clearly shot on a shoestring, particularly for the laughably ordinary way it deals with its extraordinary set-up. Leading man Eddie (Aussie actor Ron Randell in his penultimate performance), for example, walks away from what should have been a face-melting radiation blast with barely a scratch. And other than withstanding a high voltage of electricity and a few gunshots, the superhuman abilities he’s acquired as a result are barely explored, either.Still, Dwan’s vast experience as a workmanlike filmmaker – which in one of those great Hollywood twists of fate began accidentally when he covered for an alcoholic too inebriated to take the director’s chair – ensures there’s at least an air of competency. Certainly more than 1961’s remarkably similar The Beast of Yucca Flats (defected Soviet scientist stumbles into a Nevada Test Site with monstrous results), which struggled with the basics of continuity, narrative structure, and dialogue that matched actors’ mouths.In fact, Dwan skillfully ratchets up the tension when a still-handcuffed Eddie discovers he’s about to get nuked and the team of boffins with a worryingly relaxed attitude to safety realize they’re unable to prevent the countdown hitting zero in time. And Tudor Owen’s kindly Dr. Meeker, who helpfully explains how this is the first case of human contact with the fictional chemical known as Cobalt Element X, relies on some neat visual aids (see the world’s hardest watermelon) to make all the scientific mumbo-jumbo that little bit more palatable.However, the Canadian-American, who’d never previously ventured into the realm of science fiction, is inevitably more at ease when the film grounds itself in pulpy film noir, from the double-crossing mobsters who framed Eddie for murder (and who are eventually picked off one by one) to the shadowy love triangle involving conniving moll Carla (Elaine Stewart) and loyal damsel-in-distress Linda (Debra Paget).It’s during a surprisingly existential conversation with the former where the film’s emotional weight comes close to matching its antihero’s. “Can you remake me? I want to be human,” Eddie tells Linda and Meeker as they try in vain to bring him over from the dark side (and work out exactly how he survived instant obliteration). “I feel nothing. I’m not flesh anymore ... I want to feel. I want to die. I don’t even know if I can die.” It’s a tragic realization from a man who’s discovered to his cost that invincibility can’t prevent every type of pain.Elaine Stewart as Carla is more dangerous and interesting than the leading man. | ColumbiaOf course, Eddie does eventually find out he can indeed die: once plans to electrocute him, shoot him and throw him from a building go awry, he finally meets his maker via the National Guard and their rather excessive arsenal of flamethrowers. “Nature has laws too. We can only break so many of them,” Meeker ponders as he watches over the ground where the medical marvel has been turned to dust.It’s a sobering end not only to the movie, which essentially foreshadowed The Incredible Hulk’s comic book debut the following year, but also to Dwan’s career. Most Dangerous Man Alive certainly isn’t the worst picture to emerge from the post-war boom of atomic disaster movies. But the pioneering, productive filmmaker, one who innovated several camera techniques that became part of the Hollywood handbook and worked with practically every major star of the silent era and studio system, ultimately still bowed out with a whimper rather than a bang.The Most Dangerous Man Alive is not easy to find streaming. Your best bet is to track it down on DVD.