jcplanells3

This films reminds much the sf story "The Body Builders", by Keith Laumer (Galaxy, august 1966, reprint in collections and anthologies in 1968, 1976, 1977 and 2001). The plot is the same: in the future everybody lives in robotic bodies with human appearance (models are like Spencer Tracy, Mary Pickford, John Wayne...) while their bodies lay in the Vault. But their brains can feel everything that the body does, and can change of body in the same way that in the film. The principal character is worried because a extraordinary damage made to the brain of the robot he uses can produce the death of his brain in the Vault. In mid of the story, the character has to go and fight the traitor of the story without his body, and like Willis in the film, is disturbed by the sensations he feels. And, like in the film, the traitor is the less suspected person. I'm sure they have read this story: is so much similar to the movie.

This movie is not only a very bad movie, with awful actors --or presumed actors--, a bored direction and a story unattractive, it also copies exactly an scene from the excellent "giallio" "Torso", directed by Sergio Martino in 1973 (two years before), one of the most celebrated psycho-thrillers of Italian cinema and a cult-movie around the world. In "La Sanguinusa conduce la danza", the director replays the bed scene between the black girl and the white girl, with an peeping-tom watching from a window of the bedroom. Naturally, the scene in Rizzo's movie is ridiculous and inferior to the softness and charming in Martino's film. To put another black girl, another white girl and another peeping-tom replaying the scene is simply the most appropriate way of prove that Rizzo's movie has no ideas, no originality, no taste, and nothing at all. I think that such things are an offense to spectator.

I remember well this movie, that I saw in 1969 in my country. From then, not another exhibit, not in TV or VHS. Fortunately, there is a DVD edition --sadly, no subtitles in any language-- for to appreciate this very curious movie. Perkins plays a role as usual in him --our favorite psycho...--, and Tuesday Weld, that brilliant actress, is sensational, as usual in her. A couple very good. Not least, John Randolph, saw in Seconds, by John Frankenheimer, a very good an rare actor. The remarkable in this film is how the fantasies Perkins accepts at last that "out there" --like says John Randolph-- one can not live or survive in fantasies. So, when he discovers the truth about Tuesday Weld, he accepts his fate.