L'uomo terminale

This movie has a unique tone that's hard to define. "Bleak" comes to mind but is inadequate. It's as if Bleak came alive and made an even bleaker movie.

That's one thing you need to know going in. The other is not that it's slow, but that it spends a ridiculous amount of time on the fictitious surgery. For example, the doctor almost hits a vein in the patient's brain which would have killed him. However, a surgical mistake can happen in any sort of surgery and this lengthy bit doesn't address the far more interesting ethical issues.

This is in contrast to The Andromeda Strain. In that film, there are enormously detailed and lengthy scenes of the Wildfire lab. But the difference is that movie was more about the scientists and the lab than the germ itself. Here, that's just not the case.

There's other parts of the film that provide a weird atmosphere yet seem entirely irrelevant. The doctor goes to a strip club to find Segal and while I like the music played, it's hard to see why this is here considering it's mostly focused on the stripper stage.

The far more interesting issues are of course the ethical ones.

The treatment they give this man is directly compared to lobotomies, a very dark page of medical history. After they install the device, they start activating different electrodes to see what happens... this isn't that much different than the lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy where they kept cutting while talking to her to see the effects. It's incredibly chilling and plausible.

A curiosity here is that there is essentially an ad for Scientology on the radio in the background in one scene. This makes sense considering their disdain for psychiatry which was rather well founded at least at the time.

There's frustration here in that one huge theme seems to have been all but ignored-- that the patient was convinced computers would take over. I suppose the idea might have been that Segal was increasingly acting robotic... in several scenes when he's walking he does seem like a mindless drone. But I just saw him as a zonked out zombie and zombies are standard horror fare. It didn't occur to me that that might have been the idea until I was writing this review.

Anyway, it's a fascinating watch as long as you know what you're getting into. It's definitely NOT a thriller. There are many striking visuals, like a long curious zoom on a parrot.

Based on the Michael Crichton novel, this adaptation(directed by "Get Carter" Mike Hodges) tells the story of computer programmer Harry Benson, who, in an attempt to cure his brain seizures, agrees to an experiment where he has micro-computers implanted in his brain, in order to correct the faulty brain chemistry. Things don't go as planned when his new mind starts to get pleasure from the violent impulses he now feels, and so escapes from the hospital, starting a desperate manhunt to prevent him from murdering anyone, and of course to cover-up the scientific failure.

George Segal is believable as Harry, and the rest of the cast is fine, and though Mike Hodges tries, this film is simply too dreary and downbeat to succeed, and by the end, there doesn't seem to have been any discernible point to it all.

Although this movie is weak as a 'thriller', its real power is its evocative sense of place and the emotional texture of science as it was seen in the 1970s -- sombre and dystopian, yet strangely attractive.

The plot centres on a group of scientists and doctors who are pushing the frontiers of neuroscience by implanting a computerized chip in the brain of a man (George Segal) afflicted with terrible seizures. The chip is programmed to shock the patient's brain each time a seizure is about to happen. The effort is prestigious, the technology flawless, and the doctors, scientists and technicians react to the initial success of the project with a certain conceited arrogance. Only when the the chip malfunctions, and the patient breaks out of the hospital and starts killing people, does the veneer of omnipotence and professionalism fall away, revealing in the scientists ambition, uncertainty, and humanity.

Segal does a good job of portraying the wildly changing emotions of a man who's mind is under the control of a computer. At the push of a button he can be made to laugh, cry, scream, babble like a child, or even become aroused, as the computer chip in his brain explores his mental map. It's a study that would be interesting to fans of Oliver Sacks.

The most interesting moments of the movie are the early ones, where the patient interacts with his dispassionate doctors in the sterile, streamlined chromium world of the hospital. The doctors and scientists seem like mechanical, perfected reflections of the technologies that surround them. The messy humanity of the patient, demonstrated through humour, fear, weakness and anger, stands in contrast to his surroundings, and it is not surprising to the audience when he disappears from his hospital room.

Scenes of the doctors in tuxedos and evening gowns at a dinner party while a shiny computer console monitors their ailing patient lend the robotic professionals a strange, formal humanity, at the same moment in the movie when their own fallibility begins to be revealed. Both technology and technologists promise perfection, and in the end both are revealed as imperfect and unable to overcome the challenges of the human condition - sickness, insanity, violence and death.

Once the patient leaves the hospital, the movie shifts to a more conventional 'crazed murderer' theme, and things become less interesting. It is this shift that cripples Terminal Man and prevents it from being the science fiction classic it might have been. The movie closes with a disappointing, clichéd 'Big Brother' riff on mind control and the future.

This is still a movie worth watching, however, if only to get a glimpse of how the 1970s saw the near future. There are endless details for the technophile, from absurdly technological architecture to atomic batteries to ancient video terminals to mainframe computers to futuristic touchtone telephones. The technological landscape is presented with a glistening newness that evokes movies like The Anderson Tapes, Coma, Westworld, and The Andromeda Strain (the last three of which, like Terminal Man, were written by Michael Crichton). The set design and the soundtrack (mostly Bach, No. 25 in the Goldberg Variations) create an inviting, peaceful sense of space that stands at odds with the tension of the plot. The clean, elegant world of Terminal Man is one in which you would want to live.

Watch Terminal Man for the sets, for the music, and for its nostalgic sense of a forgotten future. Back in the 70s, this was the future everyone was expecting, if not hoping to find right around the corner. Like Andromeda Strain, Coma and the Anderson Tapes, Terminal Man is less a thriller and more a cultural time capsule. Get comfortable in your beanbag chair, turn on the lava lamp, and enjoy.

... and I am not saying slow, which is different from dull. "Babbette's Feast" is confined in cast and setting and although I guess you could call it slow, it is not at all dull. George Segal plays Harry Benson, a man with a form of epilepsy in which he becomes violent during his seizures and then awakens remembering nothing. He also is paranoid about machines controlling humans ten years before "The Terminator" was released.

His wife leaves him, and it looks like his outbursts will have him traveling through the criminal justice system which can do nothing for this situation or maybe he will wind up shot dead by some would be victim.

So some scientists think that Benson could be a beneficiary of an experimental procedure in which a small computer is implanted in his brain and his epilepsy is controlled by impulses the computer transmits. Post operation, things seem to be a success, but Dr. Janet Ross (Joan Hackett) discovers that Benson's brain is becoming addicted to the impulses, and in time - and she actually can calculate the time - he will have more frequent and severe violent outbursts.

But before she can do any kind of medical intervention, Benson leaves. Apparently he has prearranged an escape with some woman he barely knows, sporting a blond wig so you can't tell he just had surgery.

So the last half of the film is just Benson having those predicted seizures and becoming horrifically violent during each one. It doesn't have the pathos or irony of the Frankenstein monster's trek through the German countryside. Segal just begins to shake, his eyes roll up in his head, and he does violence to whomever and with whatever is at hand. That's it. That's essentially all that the last half is.

George Segal never really got the credit he deserved for some of the really good roles he had in the 70s. This is not one of those good roles, and I really don't see how he or anybody else but the writer could have saved a film that is really only half there. I'd give the pre-escape part of the film a 7 or 8. I'd give the last half a three. This is where I come up with my 5/10 rating.

Sadly, I first saw this movie as I was chopping time from it so that the Sci-Fi channel could run an 88 minute movie in a 2 hour slot. I hadn't seen it or heard of it before that, and I was completely blown away. It was menacing, threatening and extremely sad. I found the 'slow' pacing quite beautiful, and I loved the way that the colour within each scene slowly built as the movie progressed. Compare the monochromatic open to the closing cemetery scene. Colour comes as his life slips away. Beautiful. Favourite scenes: the helicopter taking off at the very beginning; Dr. Ross lying asleep on her bed, in her amazing 70's house, in that fabulous dress; Harry standing in the tunnel waiting for his ride from Angela. Do not judge this movie by today's standards. Open your mind, be patient, and pray that electrodes 31 & 32 may one day run your life! If, like me, you have seen and liked Andreas Gursky's photographs, you'll like this film.