A Matter of WHO (UK, 1961)

I thought it would be something for the pandemic. A flight makes an emergency landing in London. An American oil company executive on board is gravely ill with smallpox, it turns out. Terry-Thomas plays an investigator for the World Health Organization who tracks down the infection. 

The movie has a crooked oil deal subplot. Terry-Thomas is an eccentric who speeds through London traffic in a then-30-year-old Austin 7. I watched it with my mother who had a neighbor in the 1930's who drove one, but she didn't recognize it.

This may show my ignorance, but the only actors I recognized were Terry-Thomas and Honor Blackman who went on to play Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.

You know who the villain is the instant they say his name. They stole a thing from The Third Man except it was in a cable car in Switzerland rather than a giant Ferris wheel in Vienna.  It has a scene where they put on masks before going into an infected house which seems perfectly natural now. Early on, Terry-Thomas demonstrates how close you have to stand to someone to spread the disease through casual conversation.

It wasn't great. A comedy that wasn't funny with at least a couple of deaths from a horrible disease.  Available on Pub-D-Hub.