If you tuned in after it started you'd think it was a cheap TV movie because it stars George Hamilton, it was shot in LA, the direction is the work of a hack, and the photography is so glossy and flat.
But the truth is that this is one weird and unsettling movie. It's a story about Hamilton, an egghead in charge of some task force at one of those think tanks, who unknowingly possesses psychokinetic powers and is pursued by another such psychokinetic Ubermensch who wants to kill him and get him out of the way. That's Michael Rennie, gone gray since "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and more menacing though no less wooden.
You see, Hamilton has never discovered his superhuman powers. He reveals them only accidentally during a test that is being observed by Rennie. Rennie wants to take over the world or something and when he sees this group of eggheads -- a geneticist, a biologist, an anthropologist, a physicist, etc. -- sitting around a table concentrating on a piece of paper trying to move it, and the paper actually DOES begin spinning around, Rennie realizes that one member of this group is, like Rennie himself, an ESP Superman. Now Rennie doesn't know which one it is, so to make sure he doesn't miss the mark he tries to kill them all. Oh, and one of the eggheads is Susanne Pleshette, Hamilton's love interest.
That's the plot engine. What follows from it is a little confused but boils down to Hamilton's suspecting the others for various reasons until they are all but one knocked off. (I will leave you to guess whether Pleshette is the one survivor so that we can be handed a happy ending. No power on earth could get me to squeal.) Meanwhile Hamilton himself is pursued by Rennie and accomplices. A nice scene in the Mojave Desert. Hamilton is thrown out of a jeep in the middle of nowhere and winds up staggering to a nearby copse with nothing more than a slightly deeper tan than the Hamilton norm. Aldo Ray is the brutish jeep driver who abandons him. Come to think of it, the cast is loaded with familiar names and faces, some with hardly any screen time. The cast list is a bit misleading because no acting demands are made on any of them.
What makes it a weird movie is George Pal's haphazard use of special effects that now seem cheesy. Many of them are non sequiturs. They come out of noplace, unexpectedly, and chillingly. Okay, we know that Rennie is following Hamilton somewhere, spying on him from the shadows, although Hamilton doesn't know it, and we know that psychokinesis makes strange things happen. But what is the point of this scene? Hamilton is wandering dazed along a busy street at night and pauses to look down at the bird in one of those perpetual motion machines in the window of a toy store. The little plastic bird cocks its head, winks at Hamilton, and then spits a mouthful of water at him. WHAT? Rennie wants to kill him, not amuse him! There are similar unexpected events that induce a sense of disquiet in the viewer. Their unpredictable quality may be the result of George Pal's self indulgence but they work. If we knew they were coming they wouldn't have the same frisson.
Another thing. This movie is some kind of goulash or chicken paprikash. George Pal was Hungarian, wasn't he? And Rosza, the composer, was Hungarian too. And they really collaborated on this one. Rosza's score features a phantasmic gypsy theme played on a hammer dulcimer or something. It never really SOUNDS like a typical Rosza score, when he's not quoting from his earlier work or stealing from Borodin. You'd never know he was responsible for so many of the themes from films noir. Hungarians are the odd men out of Mitteleuropa. Their language is related to no other European language except, distantly, Finnish. And they have this thing about horses. Half their curses have to do with horses. And we get our word "ogre" from "Hungarian." I won't even get into werewolves and things.
I don't think Byron Haskin, the director, was a Hungarian. It might have helped if he had been because this is pretty loosely constructed and slapdash. Elementary lapses are apparent. For instance, the actors sometimes anticipate their cues. At the first committee meeting, Hamilton is giving a skeptical speech and stops in mid sentence to look at Arthur O'Connel, waiting for the interruption that is scripted. The writers too don't bother going out of their way to plug up plot holes, leaving implausibilities all over the floor. (How did Hamilton manage to reach the age of 30 without discovering he had psychokinetic powers?) Maybe the novel made more sense.
Yet I keep coming back to this one and I watch it when it's on, not very often. The score is like a magnet, and the general plot fascinates me. Perhaps by accident, it all adds up to something that's quietly scary.
But the truth is that this is one weird and unsettling movie. It's a story about Hamilton, an egghead in charge of some task force at one of those think tanks, who unknowingly possesses psychokinetic powers and is pursued by another such psychokinetic Ubermensch who wants to kill him and get him out of the way. That's Michael Rennie, gone gray since "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and more menacing though no less wooden.
You see, Hamilton has never discovered his superhuman powers. He reveals them only accidentally during a test that is being observed by Rennie. Rennie wants to take over the world or something and when he sees this group of eggheads -- a geneticist, a biologist, an anthropologist, a physicist, etc. -- sitting around a table concentrating on a piece of paper trying to move it, and the paper actually DOES begin spinning around, Rennie realizes that one member of this group is, like Rennie himself, an ESP Superman. Now Rennie doesn't know which one it is, so to make sure he doesn't miss the mark he tries to kill them all. Oh, and one of the eggheads is Susanne Pleshette, Hamilton's love interest.
That's the plot engine. What follows from it is a little confused but boils down to Hamilton's suspecting the others for various reasons until they are all but one knocked off. (I will leave you to guess whether Pleshette is the one survivor so that we can be handed a happy ending. No power on earth could get me to squeal.) Meanwhile Hamilton himself is pursued by Rennie and accomplices. A nice scene in the Mojave Desert. Hamilton is thrown out of a jeep in the middle of nowhere and winds up staggering to a nearby copse with nothing more than a slightly deeper tan than the Hamilton norm. Aldo Ray is the brutish jeep driver who abandons him. Come to think of it, the cast is loaded with familiar names and faces, some with hardly any screen time. The cast list is a bit misleading because no acting demands are made on any of them.
What makes it a weird movie is George Pal's haphazard use of special effects that now seem cheesy. Many of them are non sequiturs. They come out of noplace, unexpectedly, and chillingly. Okay, we know that Rennie is following Hamilton somewhere, spying on him from the shadows, although Hamilton doesn't know it, and we know that psychokinesis makes strange things happen. But what is the point of this scene? Hamilton is wandering dazed along a busy street at night and pauses to look down at the bird in one of those perpetual motion machines in the window of a toy store. The little plastic bird cocks its head, winks at Hamilton, and then spits a mouthful of water at him. WHAT? Rennie wants to kill him, not amuse him! There are similar unexpected events that induce a sense of disquiet in the viewer. Their unpredictable quality may be the result of George Pal's self indulgence but they work. If we knew they were coming they wouldn't have the same frisson.
Another thing. This movie is some kind of goulash or chicken paprikash. George Pal was Hungarian, wasn't he? And Rosza, the composer, was Hungarian too. And they really collaborated on this one. Rosza's score features a phantasmic gypsy theme played on a hammer dulcimer or something. It never really SOUNDS like a typical Rosza score, when he's not quoting from his earlier work or stealing from Borodin. You'd never know he was responsible for so many of the themes from films noir. Hungarians are the odd men out of Mitteleuropa. Their language is related to no other European language except, distantly, Finnish. And they have this thing about horses. Half their curses have to do with horses. And we get our word "ogre" from "Hungarian." I won't even get into werewolves and things.
I don't think Byron Haskin, the director, was a Hungarian. It might have helped if he had been because this is pretty loosely constructed and slapdash. Elementary lapses are apparent. For instance, the actors sometimes anticipate their cues. At the first committee meeting, Hamilton is giving a skeptical speech and stops in mid sentence to look at Arthur O'Connel, waiting for the interruption that is scripted. The writers too don't bother going out of their way to plug up plot holes, leaving implausibilities all over the floor. (How did Hamilton manage to reach the age of 30 without discovering he had psychokinetic powers?) Maybe the novel made more sense.
Yet I keep coming back to this one and I watch it when it's on, not very often. The score is like a magnet, and the general plot fascinates me. Perhaps by accident, it all adds up to something that's quietly scary.