The Cube

Like so many others here, I too saw it, when it was first run, as a teenager - WOW. And yes, I too can't get it out of my head, and just today learned that it was Jim Henson!!! The man WAS a genius!!! And, like the rest of you - I want a copy!!! Just to prove to my friends that I'm not as crazy as you think I am.

I remember the band playing "You'll never get out.. You'll never get out... you'll never get out of the cube.."

Towards the ending, when he's shown the casket... and given the gun... oh man.. that scene is vivid in my mind right now, 30+ years later after having seen it that one time, in', as we used to say, living color.

But really.. isn't life all just strawberry jam?

Not to just repeat what others have said, but memories of this show have been floating around in my head for some 30 years now!! I must have been no more than 5 or 6 and I only remember tiny bits of it. I often started to wonder if I had just dreamed the whole thing! But this is most definitely it.

I remember the people telling the guy in the cube, "This is my door, you can't use it", so much so that when somebody does offer to let him escape he protests, "I can't, that's your door!". I also seem to remember that it was shot on videotape, not film. That's about all I can picture. I must have missed the ending.

It seems so appropriate to find out that this show was done by Jim Henson! Because I also have memories of watching 'Hey Cinderella' and 'The Musicians of Bremen' at about the same time (early 70s).

I have been searching for this for years. I remember seeing it as a kid as well on TV during the sixties. The only reference I had seen for it was in Vincenzo Natali's "Cube". I actually saw it a few times late at night and even ran across it as a cult movie in a theatre during the 80's. The previous summary is fairly accurate. Obviously, the cube is a metaphor for life in an existential sense. One can sense and test the boundaries of our Self, but can't actually get out. Which is obviously very frustrating for even a small amount of self-awareness. It brings into question such subjects as the metaphysical "Who am I?", free will and interactions between what we perceive to be our Self and others. This is a really cool little film. It had a lasting impression an me. To my knowledge it has never been put on video.

I haven't personally bought it, but there IS an internet company supposedly offering copies for sale at $11.99. The website is www.dvdmovie-finds.com As for myself, I also have memories of seeing this as a child and having it stuck in my head and wondering all this time if it was just a nagging old dream. Amazing! It's almost as if it was some bizarre cultural experiment by Henson to see if he could get some program in your brain that won't go away. There's something about the idea of being in a small "room" that allows visitors to enter and exit, but NOT the occupant, that is so oddly frightening, yet thought-provoking, that young minds (I was eight-years-old at the time) buying into the fantasy can never forget it. It's an early brush with the frustrating world of Kafka. I'm tempted to buy the DVD and watch it again, but maybe knowing it WASN'T a dream and could be simply a silly old TV program might ruin the sense memory. Then again, maybe that website is lying and the film truly ISN'T available, thus keeping 'The Cube' as fittingly out of reach as getting out of the cube was to the occupant!

On February 23,1969, a Sunday afternoon, the anthology show NBC EXPERIMENT IN TELEVISION aired a one-hour teleplay by Jim Henson, then best known for being the man behind "Ralph the Dog" on the JIMMY DEAN SHOW. This unique film, titled simply THE CUBE, starred Richard Schaal as a man trapped in a white cubical room. He had no idea how he got there or where it was. And although anyone could enter, he couldn't leave....

In 2002 I posted the original IMDb comment on THE CUBE and started the long struggle to expand the credits on this long-lost, long-forgotten classic. Soon other IMDb users were regaining their memories of this odd but invasive show. After a few months of this it seemed a good idea to create a common place to share thoughts, memories, and discoveries about THE CUBE.

And another place online where you can show people and go AH-HAH! SEE! I TOLD YOU IT EXISTED!!!!

Location: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JImHensonTheCube/

In the three years of existence, we've gone from the barest of information online to full cast lists and a reconstructed script. Next, actual screen images from THE CUBE. Come join us! Feel free to add anything you want, anything you can find, from personal thoughts to actual files and images!

-------Postscript, 29July2008------- Six years later and we've accomplished much of our goals. The biggest success was bringing out of hiding both BW and COLOR copies of this lost masterpiece. Those copies are now available online, both for free and in the form of pirate copies others have made. We're still hoping that Henson's kids will bring out a legit, newly-remastered edition.... In the mean time, we've reconstructed the original script, collected a mass of screen caps, and seen the creation of TWO stage versions (one in US, one in Germany).

--David