“No human being could survive a time transition of that kind - not without fearful consequences!”

We’ve been here before, but not exactly HERE. Scientists are experimenting with turning things into energy and then projecting them over long distances. Well, short distances. Well, the other side of the room. But this isn’t America, it’s an industrial unit somewhere in the south of England.

Dr Patricia Hill (Mary Peach) has been drafted in to help (a woman, for goodness sake!). Her new boss, Dr Paul Steiner (Bryant Haliday), explains he’s working on “Light in a new form which I have modified to transmit matter itself”. The team, third part of which is potential love interest Dr Chris Mitchell (Ronald “Crossroads” Allen), has recently tried to transmit an animal, but things didn’t go well.

It’s a breathless start – almost like the cast are explaining things because it’s cheaper to do it that way (hmmm). People are walking into rooms and immediately know what’s going on. Which let’s face it, is a great way to speed up exposition in a film - if a tad unrealistic.

Steiner gives a demonstration to Hill of what he’s trying to do and only succeeds in ruining her watch, prompting the observation: “No human being could survive a time transition of that kind - not without fearful consequences!”

This aspect of the process is not mentioned again.

Meanwhile, Steiner’s boss, Dr Blanchard (Norman Wooland), who is a bit of a prick, it has to be said, is being blackmailed by a shady figure to make sure Steiner’s experiments aren’t a success. Why will forever remain a mystery. One assumes the motivation is somewhere on the cutting room floor.

But Steiner has put a spanner in the works of THAT particular scheme, because thanks to help from Hill and her superior female brain, they’ve managed to successfully project a monkey (not a euphemism).

However, when the giddy group try to replicate the success for eminent European scientist Prof Lembach (Gerard Heinz), it seems that the nefarious sabotage plans are back on track. Everything in the laboratory explodes, including various tempers, as everyone gets VERY ANGRY INDEED. Steiner, the angriest of the lot (of course, this is Bryant Haliday we’re talking about here) is convinced he can sort it and present Lembach with a successful projection (also not a euphemism).

The problem is that now the entire team is riven with paranoia, and no-one feels they can trust their former friends. So with no-one willing to help, Steiner goes it alone. Well, not exactly alone – he has his trusty secretary, Sheila (Tracey Crisp), to help him. Sheila is definitely the sort to enjoy a successful projection, and that’s what she gets, Steiner telling her: “Don’t be frightened Sheila, When I raise my hand, press this.”

And adding a comforting: “When all this is over, you can tell all your boyfriends that you help trigger an experiment that made scientific history.”

This may sound like it, but isn’t actually grounds for any kind of unwanted sexual advances in the workplace suit. But “All your boyfriends”? What kind of girl do you think Sheila is, Steiner? Surely not the kind who’d end up trapped in an office in her underwear for some spurious reason?

Sheila’s fingering works, and Steiner disappears (don’t they all, Sheila?) – as does the audience, into what appears to be a completely different film.

There’s a bank robbery going on, in what looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland but is only, one assumes, the product of some over-zealous mid 1960s town planning. Steiner appears, now horribly disfigured, and proceeds to lay waste to the criminal gang with some newly-acquired electrical zapping powers. He’s now The Projected Man (finally!) and this means he’s an unstoppable killing machine. Why? Absolutely no idea.

The police are showing an interest (a gang of criminals zapped to death in the middle of a robbery will do that), and Steiner’s team surmise that rather than acting in the interests of scientific advancement, he was actually trying to project himself into Blanchard’s home so he could kill the man he (rightly) thinks has been sabotaging his work.

Things now speed up (even more), with quite a lot happening in a seemingly unconnected manner. Most importantly, Sheila is told “You just run to your office and get those clothes off. I’ll see that you’re driven home” by Blanchard, which means she spends the rest of the film running around in her undies. Steiner keeps popping up and murdering people with his deadly touch, he’s now impervious to bullets, and needs to re-charge himself at the local power station. But the film makers have decided we don’t need any explanation for any of this – or, in fact, why anyone was trying to sabotage Steiner’s work in the first place. Mitchell tips off the police as to Steiner’s intentions (prompting an outburst of “You can’t, Chris!”, which seems a bit harsh, he’s only doing what he thinks is right), and we’re all set up for an ending which explains nothing.

But did we need any explanation? Not really. Sometimes all you need from a film is a load of stuff happening, using whatever happens to be on-set at that moment (a ceiling-mounted laser, a bank heist, a big leather chair, Sheila). Et voila, you have nonsense like The Projected Man.