The Atomic Kid not a particularly good film – after getting started the story is at a loss what to do with its premise and runs around vague subplots involving Russian spies and foxy love interests and various slapstick pratfoolery with Rooney glowing in the dark and causing explosions with his sneezes. For one who personally finds the burlesque antics of the likes of Abbott and Costello and their even less successful imitators akin to watching decapitated hens running about, the prattlings of Rooney and Robert Strauss weary very quickly. The film has a certain notoriety in the fact that it was the only sf film of the 1950s wherein a atomic bomb actually made somebody radioactive. Of course on the other hand this is equally a film that can have someone survive at the epicentre of an atomic bomb explosion and emerge unscathed.

The idea for the film was conceived by Blake Edwards, later to becomea well-known director, principally of Pink Panther movie fame. Director Leslie H. Martinson would become a prolific tv director in a career that has spanned five decades. His most notable other genre outing was to direct the theatrical Batman (1996) film, spun off from the 1960s tv series.