Who? (film)

Who? (Also known as The Man in the Steel Mask, Roboman, Robo Man and Prisoner of the Skull) is a 1974 British science fiction film directed by Jack Gold and starring Elliott Gould, Trevor Howard and Joseph Bova. It was based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Algis Budrys.

Plot
An enigmatic individual with a metal face is returned from East Germany and claims to be Lucas Martino, an American scientist who was working on a top-secret project but was severely injured and scarred in a car crash. American authorities hold him in custody while they try to establish whether the man is the real Martino or an impostor looking for secret information about the ultimate rocket project developed in the West.

Cast

 * Elliott Gould as Sean Rogers
 * Trevor Howard as Colonel Azarin
 * Joseph Bova as Lucas Martino
 * Ed Grover as Finchley
 * James Noble as genertal Deptford
 * John Lehne as Haller
 * Kay Tornborg as Edith
 * Lyndon Brook as Dr. Barrister
 * Joy Garrett as Barbara
 * Michael Lombard as Dr. Besser
 * John Stewart as Frank Heywood
 * Ivan Desny as general Stürmer
 * Alexander Allerson as Dr. Kothu
 * Bruce Boa as Miller
 * Fred Vincent as Douglas
 * Dan Sazarino as uncle Lucas
 * Craig McConnel as Tonino
 * Herb Andress as FBI agent
 * Del Negro as FBI agent
 * Frank Schuller as FBI agent

Release
Although one 1983 British source stated that the film was shelved for five years after its completion in 1974, contemporary sources indicate the film was screened theatrically in the U.S. in 1975, and broadcast on British television in 1976.

Critical reception
Where Gold has clearly found congenial material in Trevor Howard as the Russian spymaster, he is less successful with Elliott Gould, whose hectoring phrases and exaggerated scowls appear the more mannered beside the expressionless little victim of his aggression. Like Martino himself, Who? finally gives the impression of something quite out of the ordinary that has lost the struggle to make itself heard. And like Martino, it survives as a patchwork of disparate material for which nobody, sadly, could find much usable epilogue. While there are clear signs of haste and penny-pinching in its lapses of continuity, and sets that are more symbolic than sumptuous, it has a no-nonsense directness in telling its story which, in the form of Algis Budrys' original novel, had the distinction of being superbly constructed in the first place.

The Iowa Gazette described it as "distinctly average but better than mediocre". The Kentucky Courier-Journal dismissed it as a "clinker", calling it an "inane... funereal mess".