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Nelson's Charly makes a useful point of departure, properly revised for a snapshot of the life of the mind and technological advances like "mere paper over the cracks." The scientist (George Segal) is paranoid about machines, experiences fits of murderous wrath that dissipate in his memory afterward, is watched in the dark by a disembodied Redon eyeball. Tinkering with his brain to curb psychosis is the solution, the experimental process is depicted at length. ("You know, this is the only work I know that's boring and nerve-wrecking at the same time," quips the surgeon moments prior caught retching in the lavatory.) The psychiatrist (Joan Hackett) worries about the side effects, the girlfriend (Jill Clayburgh) helps him escape. "Did you get your tonsils out?" "No, I had electrodes planted in my pleasure cells." Mike Hodges' Frankenstein, stark and touching as can be, a suite of tremors in a clinical universe. Sensation and existence, the bewildered protagonist fed doses of giddiness and lust and the taste of ham on rye in an observation room while orderlies jape in the hallway. A painstaking black and white motif throughout, down to the ebony stripper doffing her nurse costume at the soiree celebrating the successful operation. T.S. Eliot echoing in the medical chamber, Bach by way of Glenn Gould. "Beneath it all frightened and concerned," the monster emerges out of the schnook during a startling set piece: Slumbering eyes rolled open, crunched roses, cockatoo in a birdcage and Douglas' Them! on the telly, a motel mattress stabbed bloody. The sole verdant patch surrounds the open grave at the end of the drift. "Do I scare the pants off you? No? Pity." Bookending images of helicopters reveal Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly was the basis all along. With Richard Dysart, Donald Moffat, Matt Clark, Michael C. Gwynne, Norman Burton, William Hansen, Jason Wingreen, James B. Sikking, and Ian Wolfe.
--- Fernando F. Croce |