THE TERMINAL MAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Neglected 70s SciFi Classic by Mike Hodges

The Terminal Man (1974) ****
dir. Mike Hodges

Starring: George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard A. Dysart, Jill Clayburgh,
Donald Moffat, Matt Clark, Michael C. Gwynne, James B. Sikking, William Hansen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Forces increasingly dominate us beyond our control.

In this respect, Mike Hodges’s brilliant 1974 science fiction thriller The Terminal Man, adapted from Michael Crichton’s chilling novel of the same name, seems more scary and necessary than ever. A few nitpicking details from when the film was made over 35-years-ago – outmoded robots and doctors puffing away on cigarettes in a hospital – are not enough to seriously date it. This is a picture that displays a keen ahead-of-its-time sophistication in both execution and subject matter.

Harry Benson (George Segal) is a brilliant young computer scientist. He suffers from epileptic blackouts wherein aberrant behaviour, including vicious uncontrollable acts of violence lead to criminal incarceration. Adding to this mix is Harry’s paranoia-fuelled mistrust of computers themselves – an especially queer fear for someone considered above the curve in terms of his research. In seeming desperation, Harry agrees to become a human guinea pig for a group of surgeons who believe behaviour can be controlled by implanting chips and electrodes in the brain, which, in turn, are connected to a mini-computer within the body.

Like any great Frankenstein tale, shit goes wrong - horribly wrong.

Screenwriter-director Mike Hodges is working at the peak of his powers here. Having just rendered Get Carter, the extraordinary and deliciously nasty British crime thriller with Michael Caine), Hodges infuses this sci-fi nerve-jangler with an ultra-creepy mise-en-scene that, for its first half, keeps you super-glued to your seat, eyeballs locked firmly on the screen.

What gets to you is how quiet the movie is. The hollow, late evening reverberations permeating the hospital wherein much of the movie is set, slither deeply into your guts so that every sound you DO hear is fraught with urgency so that the hushed tones of doctors and nurses infuse everything with paranoia.

One of the stranger cutaways in the picture is when Hodges occasionally directs us to a group of proletarian orderlies guffawing away as they disparage their charges. It’s an odd visual and aural juxtaposition between opposite ends of the hospital hierarchy. Those on the “bottom” are upfront about their contempt while those on “top” hold their proverbial cards close to their chests. On one hand, this seems like an obvious directorial touch. And yes, it is obvious. Importantly it doesn’t take you out of the drama, but forces you at the proper juncture in the story to come to this juxtapositional conclusion and, in fact, adds to the overall feeling of manipulation that is directed at Harry. It also suggests that the world is increasingly fraught with a lack of caring and where self-preservation and contempt are perfectly comfortable bedfellows.

There is also no traditional musical score save for the occasional use of Glenn Gould tinkling his creepy ivories with one of the Goldberg Variations and a brief moment when hospital Muzak filters onto the soundtrack and into Harry’s brain as he is wheeled into the operating theatre. Lack of a full-bodied orchestral score for a thriller was – even in the 70s – a brave, unconventional move. These days – when every thriller is replete with herky-jerky cutting and bombast – such a touch is virtually unheard of (much, I think to the detriment of the genre, audiences and cinema on the whole). Val Lewton’s thrillers for RKO in the 40s were a perfect example of how true horror could be found in the dark and by what you didn’t see. With The Terminal Man, it’s what you don’t HEAR that adds to the terror.

One of the more grotesque elements of Hodges’s terrific picture is how so much of the film is set in a hospital, but even more intense is the inclusion of a brilliant sequence when the operation itself is performed upon Harry. He keeps his lens trained on virtually every pre-op, post-op and during-op moment – the sweat, the rubber gloves, the clamps, the needles, the scalpels, the blinding lights, the fluorescent glare and the ever-present view of white-coated officials viewing the proceedings from above behind glass.

The look of the film also adds to the creep factor. The movie is drained of primary colour – white rules, as does the darkness, the black shroud of evil. The only colours to ever punch out are (appropriately enough) red (during several shocking punctuations of blood-letting) and a typically sad 70s climax/conclusion set amidst the grey tombstones in a lush, green cemetery. Hodges's compositions are straight forward and many of the shots play long - allowing for maximum dramatic impact. One of the more chilling shots that recurs throughout the film is an eye through a peephole, surrounded only by pitch black and framed so that our eyes are drawn immediately to the exposed image and stay there - almost as if we were one the other side being examined.

The cast is first-rate. The gorgeous Joan Hackett provides a bit of offbeat warmth as a psychiatrist who doesn’t trust the operation being performed on Harry. She is surrounded by stalwart 70s character actors like Richard A. Dysart, Matt Clark, Michael C. Gwynne, James B. Sikking and Donald Moffat all delivering their cold, calculating best as the raft of bureaucrats, doctors and scientists. There’s a terrific cameo from the great William Hansen as a doctor from the “old school” who delivers a stirring condemnation of the use of surgery for mental illness and a very young and hot Jill Clayburgh briefly lights up the screen as Harry’s sex kitten girlfriend.

As the title character, George Segal is the true revelation. He was the go-to guy for 70s romantic comedies – in fact, a whole whack of great comedies, my favourite being the thoroughly insane black comedy Where’s Poppa where Ruth Gordon pulls down his pants to kiss his “tuschy”. Segal was, and still is, a great actor and certainly, as he proves in this picture, no mere lightweight. He always had an edge that many comic actors lacked. His performance as Nick in the Mike Nichols film version of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf proved that in spades. Here, he blends his edgier qualities with his lighter leading man qualities to present a character we’re with from beginning to end.

The Terminal Man suffers slightly from inevitabilities inherent in both the genre and narrative itself. The movie is a Frankenstein story, after all, and it's only a matter of time before Harry runs amuck and must be hunted down. The journey to get there, however, is tremendously compelling.

Mike Hodges is a ludicrously underrated director. Not only is it worth seeing The Terminal Man, but I highly recommend the aforementioned Get Carter, his strange crime comedy Pulp, the wonderful Flash Gordon, a joyous 80s celebration of sci-fi cheese with a score (no-less) by Queen and one of the best British films of the past couple of decades, Croupier.

The Terminal Man is available via on-demand special order from Warner Home Entertainment via the Warner Archives collection. You’ll also find it for sale or rent in specialty video stores. In Toronto, Canada the only retail outlet that carries a wide selection of these titles is the flagship store of Sunrise Records at Yonge and Dundas. As per usual with the archives, the item a simple on-demand package. The DVD-R features the movie and the trailer. The transfer is from best available materials. One can see the reel change markers every so often, so it has obviously been taken from a solid archival print. The colours – when Hodges allows them – are vivid and the whites are suitably stark. I was especially impressed, as I have been with many of the Warner Archives transfers, with the grain. It’s there!!! And it’s doing its magical dance as only grain can. I’m thankful no over-zealous control room hack has taken the time to mute it.

I’m disturbed, however, that Warner Bros. has chosen not to release this film properly. It’s a sci-fi picture that the core audience – especially of a certain age – absolutely love. Those who missed it the first time (I was a 15-year-old genre geek when I saw it first-run in the 70s on a big screen), will love it. As well, a whole new generation of geeks deserves to experience it. Given that director Mike Hodges, stars George Segal, Richard A. Dysart, Michael C. Gwynne, Donald Moffat and Matt Clark are all still alive and also given the film’s many admirers (one of whom is Terrence Malick), I’m sure there would be a huge audience if the movie was properly transferred to Blu-Ray (where I think it would look magnificent) and featuring a solid Laurent Bouzereau-styled documentary and one or two commentary tracks.

Warner Home Entertainment: ARE YOU LISTENING?

MR. LUCKY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cary Grant's Dark Side Exposed in Crime Drama

Mr. Lucky (1943) dir. H.C. Potter
Starring: Cary Grant, Laraine Day, Charles Bickford, Paul Stewart, Gladys Cooper

***1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As a light romantic leading man, endowed as he was with infinite charm and that distinctive, mellifluously clipped delivery, nobody will ever really come close to the perfection that is Cary Grant. When we see his dark side - which is rare - there's no question he has had few equals as an actor. In spite of its cop-out conclusion, Grant presided over Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion with equal parts charm and malevolence. His brave work playing against type as a layabout Cockney in Clifford Odets's magnificent downer None But The Lonely Heart is, perhaps, the ultimate testament to his versatility.

Though he collaborated with Hitchcock four times, (Hitch loved him more than any other actor - including James Stewart), I think it's Grant's collaborations with the great George Stevens that yielded two of his finest performances: In Gunga Din, Grant proved he was equally at home in rock 'em sock 'em boys' adventure and in the exquisite, almost-criminally forgotten Penny Serenade, Grant not only wrenches tears from us, but delivers one key scene where he breaks down with such sadness, desperation and unflinching raw emotions, that one almost wishes he made more pictures like it - even if it were at the expense of forgoing some of his magnificent comedy.

Mr. Lucky is a picture I saw many times during those halcyon days of the seeming innocence of my childhood. From my first helping on a Sunday afternoon television broadcast to the numerous times I hunted down listings for it and watched the picture each and every time I could, it was a movie that - even then - obsessed me. I recall sensing just how odd it was - it felt, for much of its running time, like a breezy comedy, though with few laughs. When the laughs come, though, they're big, but for much of the picture, its wispy veneer needs only a few scratches to reveal a dark tale of deception and redemption.

I finally re-visited the picture for the first time in some 40-or-so years and was delighted to find its as strange, confounding and eminently compelling as it ever was.

Grant plays Joe Adams, a gambler, con man and owner of a gambling boat who fakes his death to avoid the draft (WWII) and assumes the identity of a lower-drawer dead thug called Joe Bascopolous. When he discovers that his new "identity" is a wanted three-time loser, he needs one major score so he can take it on the lam. He finds the perfect mark in the rich society gal Dorothy Bryant (Laraine Day) who is leading a major War Relief campaign. He charms her - of course - and convinces her to hold a major casino event that he will run for her. His goal, is to run the casino, steal the dough and hit the road - or in his case, the high seas.

It's a perfect sting.

The spanner in the works is that he genuinely falls in love with Dorothy. With the law on his tail, however, and Zepp (the deliciously smarmy Paul Stewart), his nasty, greedy partner putting the screws to him, Joe finds himself in a major pickle barrel.

Love or survival? These are his choices.

As directed by H.C. Potter, Mr. Lucky, is shrouded in portent. There's no doubt about it - the picture is strange. Some might say "flawed", but I think the movie's blend of doomed romance, redemption and desperation against the backdrops of both world war and the criminal underworld, is what makes it one of the most tantalizingly original films of this period and perhaps one of the best works to come out of RKO, the studio that gave us King Kong, Citizen Kane and the atmospheric Val Lewton horror pictures.

Potter was a brilliant Broadway stage director who made very few films. As a filmmaker, his output was erratic, but when he was good, he was great. His film version of the hit Olsen and Johnson Broadway show Hellzapoppin' was inspired insanity of the highest order and his helmsmanship of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (which also starred Grant), rendered one of the best film comedies of the 1940s. I also hold a special soft spot for his film adaptation of William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize winning play, The Time of Your Life which featured one of James Cagney's best performances ever.

Mr. Lucky is a film that grapples with issues of shirking duty, responsibility and love. It's an incredibly complex and sophisticated work and even more surprisingly, was a huge hit for RKO. Perhaps the truly hilarious comedy set pieces were enough to inspire audiences of the day - God knows the sight of Cary Grant learning to knit is a mega-knee-slapper. But for all of the mirth, it's an extremely dark movie and is, in fact, rather daring in terms of blending light comedy with big themes that surely must have resonated with wartime audiences. They had to accept - even if the role WAS played by Cary Grant - that the protagonist was a liar, cheat, criminal, unrepentant womanizer and draft dodger.

Much as I'm going to sound like some old curmudgeon, I think the audiences of that time were, frankly, smarter. I find it hard to imagine a picture as strange and compelling as Mr. Lucky being a big hit in this day and age.

Mr. Lucky is available on DVD via the Warner Home Entertainment Archive Collection. This, of course means, a special order online of a DVD-R pulled from best available sources - at a premium price and including shipping costs. Of course, you'll find some retailers and rental houses do, indeed, carry it. In Toronto, Canada the best place is Sunrise Records' flagship store at Yonge and Dundas. Check your independent dealers. The transfer on this picture is pretty decent, but for the big bucks the studio is asking, you get the movie and a trailer in a keep case. I could care less about extras, however, as the movie is all I really want. $30 for a DVD-R is highway robbery. Alas, the studios know there are enough nutcases out there willing to pay it for movies they want.

RAGE - 70s paranoia at its best as Oscar-winning George C. Scott directs himself in this nasty political thriller about a simple Everyman who believes deeply in his country until his country screws him royally and all he has left is seething hatred. Needless to say, he does something to let off a bit of steam. It's the American Way!

RAGE (1972)
dir. George C. Scott
Starring: George C. Scott, Richard Basehart,
Martin Sheen, Barnard Hughes, Nicolas Beauvy, Ed Lauter

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

In the movies, things often begin innocently enough with clouds, but as we all know, those billowing masses of stratospheric cumuli can also deliver iniquity of the most malicious kind. To my way of thinking, pictures from the 1930s, 50s and 70s had some of the more vile cloud droppings. In 1935, Hitler descended through the visible vapour to preside over the Nuremberg rallies in Leni Riefenstahl's masterwork of Nazi propaganda The Triumph of the Will. During the Cold War in 1957, similar meteorological puff balls brought an incurable condition to the character of Scott Carey (Grant Williams) in Jack Arnold's classic sci-fi thriller The Incredible Shrinking Man. Philip Kaufman's stunning 1978 remake of Don Siegel's hysteria-infused 50s chiller Invasion of the Body Snatchers, alien spores bent on replicating themselves in mankind drifted into Earth's atmosphere from space. Through brumous wisps over San Francisco, the podlike spire of corporate homogeneity, the Trans-America building, stood like a seeming and appropriate beacon for a life form bereft of emotion and bent on destruction.

Those are a few of my favourites. The list of clouds that bring nastiness in the movies could, however, go on.

RAGE was made in 1972 - a decade where paranoia ran rampant in both life and the movies and when belief in conspiracy became commonplace - especially in the sort of urban backdrops as portrayed in Kaufman's picture and the numerous political thrillers of the era.

In RAGE, we are far from the bustle of a metropolis. The town and the country are - in most matters - two solitudes and so it is that the opening of actor George C. Scott's feature directorial debut cascades us - not over a city, but through the lush, heaven-like clouds hovering gently over a rural Nevada landscape. We're in sheep country and Scott plays Dan Logan, a rugged herdsman who lives a quiet life with his pre-teen son Chris (Nicolas Beauvy). The two have a mutual respect and admiration for each other and nature. They go about their laconic business on the open rugged plains - the outside world far, far away.

Or so they believe.

With the exception of a military helicopter blasting over them and Lalo Schifrin's odd score - seeming more at home in an episode of The Waltons than the usual throbbing dischords he generated for films like Bullitt and Dirty Harry et al - father and son eventually bed down for the night under the stars. Dan and loyal pooch nestle comfortably within a canvas tent, whilst sonny-boy sleeps outside, keeping the sheep, crickets and stars company.

The next morning, Dan wakes up to find all his sheep splayed about the fields - barely alive. Chris is in the same condition. Dan attempts to wake his son, but to no avail and he bundles the boy into his pickup truck. Taking one last look at the carnage, Dan's POV reveals a sheep twitching in pain, its tongue hanging out and blood pouring from its nostrils. In bold, blazing red, the title treatment appears over the shuddering wooly ungulate. As the word RAGE smashes into our faces, so does the Lalo Schifrin score. We know for sure we're not in Kansas, Dorothy. Nor, for that matter are we in Waltons territory.

As the previous God-shots of the bucolic countryside return, cinematographer Fred (Patton, Billy Jack, Papillon, The Towering Inferno) Koenekamp captures the overhead fury of Dan's truck racing madly across the Nevada countryside. With Schifrin's trademark grating, grinding music pounding away and ace editor Michael (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Poltergeist, Fatal Attraction, Saving Private Ryan) Kahn's expert cutting, we know for sure we're in the region of full-blown 70s paranoia.

What follows was, and still is, everyone's worst nightmare - the death of a child - compounded by feelings of helplessness when the death has been caused by the idiotic, senseless actions of a government that should serve and protect at all costs and then refuses to own up to its actions and illegally colludes with as many agencies as possible to cover up its incompetence, its callous disregard of the innocent and its inherent evil.

In reality, many of the South Western United States have hosted all manner of nefarious activities and it's no surprise when it is revealed to us very quickly in RAGE that the government has been developing a nerve gas to use in battle and that an accident has released a small, but deadly amount of the poison.

Soon, all of Dan's sheep die and so does his son. He has also been exposed, but to a lesser extent.

Lesser, but still lethal.

All of this information is, of course, withheld from him. Governments - any governments - are not there to tell the truth. Their reason for being is to uphold the status-quo, the war machine and the New World Order. The film believes it to such an extent that it is infused with a calm, matter-of-fact acceptance of this notion and is relentless in hammering it home. (I love the moment when a military scientist calmly explains - between bites, chews and swallows of his lunch - the devastating effects of nerve gas upon all living things.)

One of the best aspects of the screenplay by Philip Friedman and Dan Kleinman is the clinical manner in which we are delivered all the information that is kept from Dan, the character Scott plays. For us, there are no surprises. We hear everything and see everything - what the tests were for, how they screwed up, the need to contain the disaster, the insidious manner in which all will be covered up and most horrendously of all - the knowledge that anything that has come into contact with the deadly nerve gas will die and so, in the name of "science", Dan will not be told about his impending demise so he can be poked and prodded by doctors and the military to study the effects of this weapon of warfare, or, if you will, of mass destruction.

We watch these Mephistophelian machinations with horror and frustration. We know what our central character does not - the truth.

And what a great character! Dan Logan is a true everyman of a generation that believed in the status quo. He honoured country, authority and put considerable trust in professionals - like doctors. After all, he is, by his own admission, a simple sheep farmer who loves solitude, nature and his son - especially his son. Since being widowed, he lives for his flesh and blood. He is the epitome of decency and, as the central character, he is our way IN to this story. Knowing everything while he knows nothing puts us in his shoes. Though knowing and not knowing are opposite sides of the fence, the end emotional result is the same: mounting frustration, sorrow and finally, anger.

This is fine writing and even finer direction. George C. Scott creates a mise-en-scene of astounding power. Even when he uses slow motion to accentuate emotion tied to action or an action to deflect while, at the same time foreshadow a dramatic beat, he successfully uses a potentially cliched technique (especially in first-time feature directors) that it works almost every single time. Yes, he does overuse it and the film has a few dollops of clunkiness, but nothing that detracts from the whole.

Scott especially makes fine use of cinematographer Fred Koenekamp. The lighting in virtually every scene is spot-on - everything from the antiseptic fluorescence of the institutional interiors to the deep blacks of night punctuated (often with a moving camera) with flashes of light. Yes, there are definitely elements of film noir used to great effect in this harrowing conspiracy thriller, but the picture is also infused with a heavy sense of Aristotelian tragedy. (This, no doubt, appealed greatly to Scott.)

As an actor, he delivers - under his own esteemed direction - one of his best performances. Any movie called RAGE and starring George C. Scott is a flashing billboard of what to expect. And yes, rage comes - Oh Boy, does it come!

But it's a slow burn.

Scott the director wisely uses Scott the actor so we believe every turn of his character through the myriad of emotions he expresses (or holds back). Scott, of course, looks great with a stylish down home burr-cut and bushy eyebrows - in addition to his grizzled mug. He's also in terrific physical condition. He might be a tad paunchier than the days he slapped his rock-hard belly as General Buck in Dr. Strangelove, but he looks every bit the MAN who works with his hands. And Damn! As comfortable as Scott seems behind the wheel of a pickup truck, he also looks great on a motorcycle - cooler than cool.

Earlier, I made mention of Michael's Kahn's editing. Many of the cuts are seamless and "silent", but on occasion we are slammed with a cut that rips the breath out of us. One of the most stunning edits occurs on a closeup of George C. Scott's face as he looks - almost without emotion - upon the post-autopsy body of his child and then, in the sweetest spot imaginable we get a smash cut to black. The black holds silently until we hear Scott's off-camera sobs and we realize we are in an exterior black as the camera is moving until a square of light reveals Scott moving with psychotic determination in his gait and pain growling from his throat. This is an incredible sequence and a stunning marriage of every major craft discipline achieving a level of convergence that is exactly the sort of cinematic effect that evokes gooseflesh.

As a director, Scott wisely surrounded himself with a terrific cast. It's great seeing Richard Basehart of the long-running sci-fi TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (in addition to some great film noir pictures and very cool eclectic roles in the work of directors like Federico Fellini and John Huston) playing Scott's longtime family doctor - a country general practitioner of the old school who, like Scott's character, places his faith in authority and briefly, in the younger men of science. Martin Sheen, as one of those youthful medicine men, is positively chilling as the career bureaucrat wearing the Hippocratic Oath as if it were the same chain attached to the ghost of greedy old Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.

The deliciously evil Ed Lauter makes a great appearance as a hospital orderly who'd be more at home as a strong-arm thug to Richard Conte in The Big Combo, while many of the smaller and bit roles feel like they're either played by non-actors or some amazing character actors who are so good they exude the odious whiffs of reality needed to contribute additional colour to the proceedings. In particular, the actresses playing nurses in the hospital laden with conspiracy are such foul cucumbers they give Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a definite run for her money. Playing military officials, creepy scientists and department of public health officials, the likes of Barnard Hughes, Stephen Young, Paul Stevens, Kenneth Tobey and William Jordan are not only a who's who of 60s/70s character actors, but acquit themselves brilliantly - especially in a horrific boardroom scene where the conspiracy is hatched.

RAGE is one of the best conspiracy thrillers of the 70s and definitely one of the earliest on the scene. Other pictures are better known and revered, but George C. Scott set the stage and the bar very high for all of them. It's a movie that seems to have fallen through the cracks and anyone who enjoys this genre will no doubt enjoy the picture thoroughly. More importantly, though, it's a movie that resonates with our contemporary world and does its job with equal doses of subtlety and sledgehammers. It's perhaps that very dichotomy that makes it an important work in the canon of American cinema of the 70s.

And the rage? Oh yes, there's plenty of that. The carnage Scott inflicts is vicious. Each blow against "The Man" gives us immense pleasure, but the screenplay and by extension, Scott the director, won't give us the Smores in the McFlurry. The film delivers a devastating conclusion, like many of the great 70s classics. The end is on par with the final moments of Dirty Harry, Night Moves and, among many others, The Parallax View.

RAGE gives us the goods we so seldom get in contemporary cinema.

We can win an occasional battle with "The Man", but we'll never win the war.

Sadly, "RAGE" is only available through the Warners Archives label wherein it must be special ordered online. Thankfully, it IS available, but it deserved better than this (as do many of the titles in this particular library).