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YOU... WILL... OBEY!!! •THE TERMINAL MAN (1974), •OBEDIENCE (1965), •THE TERMINAL MAN (1974)
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SPLODGE! NOTES: 1st. Mon. in MARCH(06/03/06)
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Unusual films of discernment, still presented in convivial
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Unusual films of discernment, still presented in convivial
surroundings!
ALL PRESENTED ON GROOVY 16 MILLIMETRE FILM!
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1st. Quartile
1st. Quartile
MARCH
AD 2006
Monday 06th
Registration: 7.30 - 8.00 pm
Screening: >>>>> 8.00 (*EIGHT*!!!!) pm <<<<<
TONIGHT: STRICTLY MEMBERS-ONLY
MEMBERSHIPS STILL AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR ON THE NIGHT
MEMBERSHIPS STILL AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR ON THE NIGHT
DETAILS BELOW
TONIGHT! -
YOU... WILL... OBEY!!!
•OBEDIENCE (1965),
Documents probably one of the most important social psychological experiments ever designed, aside from that other one by Phillip Zimbardo, which was depicted in the feature film DAS EXPERIMENT (2001)!
This is the documentary film made of the infamous 1962 Yale University experiment conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram ( - possibly more famous for coining the term "6 degrees of separation" -); the basis of the feature film OBEDIENCE (2000), and the Rod Dickinson reenactment film, THE MILGRAM RE-ENACTMENT (2002) - in which male volunteers were required to administer (what appeared to be) increasingly painful jolts of electricity to other supposed-volunteers who had given wrong answers to test questions!
OBEDIENCE records DR STANLEY MILGRAM's experiments at Yale
University on obedience to authority: an attempt to determine how a person reacts when asked to carry out orders that conflict with their conscience!
SUBJECTS ARE SHOWN ADMINISTERING (BOGUS) ELECTRIC SHOCKS TO ANOTHER PERSON - AN ACTOR - AS PENALTIES FOR MISTAKES IN LEARNING! The punishments escalate to a degree which can only be described as... shocking! Prods: STANLEY MILGRAM. Dir. Chris Johnson. 44 mins. ALC
and featuring:
•THE TERMINAL MAN (1974),
WARNING! - Contains spoilers!
After surviving an automobile accident which killed his wife and children, computer scientist Harry Benson (GEORGE SEGAL) falls prone to a (fictional) illness - diagnosed as "para-epilepsy" (?!?) - where seizures trigger episodes of ultra-violence. He is admitted to hospital to undergo a radical experimental procedure, where electrodes are implanted in the brain so as to produce tiny electric shocks to neutralize the seizures whenever they occur.
But after Benson's girlfriend, Angela (JILL CLAYBURGH) [ - I'M DANCING AS FAST AS I CAN, 1982], helps him give the hospital the slip, it becomes clear that -
instead of forestalling the seizures - Harry's brain has learnt to enjoy the computer-chip stimulation, and is increasingly inducing the seizures in search of the stimulant-reward. Caught in this spiralling nightmare, the poor guy is driven to wreak a trail of mayhem, leaving violence and murder all over the streets of LA. Whoops!
He savagely murders Angela, then wanders into a church and kills a priest. His psychiatrist, Dr. Janet Ross (JOAN HACKETT), stabs him with a kitchen knife when he starts to attack her, and he continues to wander, wounded, bleeding, in a maze of confusion, until he reaches Forest Lawn cemetery. By then, totally at the end of his rope, he stumbles into an open grave, just as the scheduled funeral is approaching - and is shot from a patrolling helicopter.
JUST SHOOT ME
Novelist, and later filmmaker, Michael Crichton inhabited a thematic niche that was peculiar to the 1970s. The films made by, and adapted from Crichton's works during the 1970s and early 1980s - THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971), WESTWORLD (1973), COMA (1978), LOOKER (1981), RUNAWAY (1984), and tonight's offering, THE TERMINAL MAN (1974), all inhabit a place that belonged very much to the principal anxieties of the SF GENRE of the 1970s.
Crichton's star rose to ascendancy when SF cinema, very much in the shadow of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), was obsessed with the dehumanizing effects of rampant technolog-ism, and, here, Crichton's pessimistic and obsessive fears on this theme, found a peculiarly welcome place.
Crichton's career seemed to burn out somewhat in the mid-1980s, when STAR WARS (1977), and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), transformed SF's universe into one of childlike innocence, replacing the previous template of cold sterility. The likes of LOOKER and RUNAWAY died at the box-office, and Crichton returned to scribbling, until he was suddenly given a second shot at the
limelight with JURASSIC PARK (1993), whereupon a host of adaptations of his works - RISING SUN (1993), DISCLOSURE (1994), SPHERE (1998), further took up the themes of "science running amok", either that or the Hell-bent failings within complex business systems.
In most of the above-listed Crichton films, either he, or the director attached, adopted a singular look - of the white, clinical antisepsis that seems to wholly alienate the humans within the frame.
In THE TERMINAL MAN, British director, Mike Hodges (GET CARTER 1971) does so, similarly, with a deliberate effect that becomes quite chilling. The operation, where the surgeons are
decked out in what seem like space-suits and diving gear, could almost be taking place in a far-flung future. Hodges even stacks the dehumanization to the extent of having all the doctors in the film either played with a superciliousness, or a cool aloofness - while Harry Benson, their helpless pawn, is allowed to display the only warm and human character in the whole film ( - if you don't count - as you don't - the "good" psychiatrist, Dr. Ross, who, even so, still wields the knife, although just not a surgical one).
Shooting interior scenes for the first time in a studio, Hodges decided that science fiction demanded a stylized visual approach, and he filmed the unforgettably chilling, forty-five minute operation sequence in subtly desaturated colour. The directorial choices by Hodges nearly rival Kubrick's 2001 in the coldness department, but there is a power to the
picture, as we see an orderly, antiseptic world turned into a blood-spattered nightmare of science-gone-amok.
In a theatre of ghost-white walls and glistening, silver-white instruments, surgeon, assistants, nurses, and disapproving psychiatrist, Dr. Ross, all wear long white gowns. With the operating-team also wearing elaborate headgear and masks, like a group of aliens, and monitors recording progress like spaceship controls, the effect borders on the surreal. It is, almost, more of an art-film - again, think Kubrick, and, say, the influence of CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971), than a sci-fi thriller ( - right down to the ultra-weird choice of scoring the whole affair to BACH's GOLDBERG VARIATIONS).
There is one quite unnerving shot with power-drills and wires being inserted into Harry's head, where Hodges then pulls back and has one of the doctors address a question to the patient. One suddenly realizes Harry is still conscious while all this brain-pan invading is going on.
However, possibly the eeriest scene in the film is the one where Dr. Ross sits interviewing Harry, while behind a mirrored-window, technicians activate the various implant nodes, inducing tastes, bladder-relief signals, childhood memories, and triggering Harry to "come on" to Ross - a scene that is disturbing in its implication that all human behaviour can be reduced to a series of electrical impulses.
It's the most bitter of all of Hodges' ironic endings - as Benson had always feared the potential of science to manipulate human life, and, ultimately, extinguish it.
Today, with Western Medicine overly-dependent on technology - antibiotics, as well as surgery, not to mention the ball-busting, high-energy invasive imaging and diagnostic technology, THE TERMINAL MAN seems dismayingly topical. But, although powerful and disturbing in 1974, with SEGAL's subtly despairing portrait of a man descending to terminal loneliness, it was almost unanimously lynched by reviewers ("tedious", "dreary" etc), and died at the box-office, and it's reputation has never really recovered, even given the benefit of the longer-term view.
Hodges's other genre films are the script for DAMIEN: OMEN II (1978) - which he was originally set to direct; the FLASH GORDON (1980) remake; the genre-parody, MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE (1985); the superbly underrated clairvoyance thriller, BLACK RAINBOW (1989), and the recent cult hit CROUPIER (2000).
By the way, Michael Crichton did NOT write the screenplay for this film; Mike Hodges did. Maybe that’s why the ending of the movie is drastically different from the book. Check it out some time.
Prod Co: Warner Bros. Prod. Mike Hodges. Dir. Mike Hodges. Wr: Mike Hodges (scr), Michael Crichton (novel). Phot: Richard H. Kline. Mus: Goldberg Variation 25, Played by Glenn Gould, Art Direction - Fred Harpman. Cast: GEORGE SEGAL (Harry Benson), JOAN HACKETT (Dr Janet Ross), Richard A. Dysart (Dr John Ellis), Donald Moffatt (Dr Alfred McPherson), Michael C. Gwynne (Dr Robert Morris), JILL CLAYBURGH (Angela Black), and James B. Sikking "Hill Street Blues" (Ralph Friedman). 107 min. RM
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Minor programme changes may occur due to
unforseen
circumstances.
Feature runs last; shorts order may vary from listing.
circumstances.
Feature runs last; shorts order may vary from listing.
* Acknowledging ACMI Inc. & ScreenSound Australia ;) *
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