Review of The Terminal Man (1974) by Jamess — 08 Oct 2021

This adaptation of the early Michael Crichton novel arrived at a time when the late author's work was just starting to gain serious attention, be it from his novels and/or his directing. The Andromeda Strain and Westworld being the prime examples.

This is Crichton's take on the Frankenstein story. Science creating a monster. And similar themes that he'll explore time and time again appear from the medical communities God complex to the dangers of artificial intelligence.

By today's standards it's pretty tame for a thriller, but taken as an art film disguised as a thriller, it's very interesting. I could easily imagine this as an A24 release if made nowadays. The director Mike Hodges, films everything in shades of black, white, and grey.

Even the comic book the officer guarding the room is reading is black and white. The only color that stands out is the blood that flows from a victims body. And the score, as brief as the segments are, are friggin Glenn Gould playing a classical piece.

Plotwise, it's a team of doctors trying an experimental procedure to cure a patient of violent blackout seizures. They implaint electrodes in their brain to counteract the seizures. Of course, things go wrong.

Like a lab rat hitting the same lever over and over to receive a treat, the patient involuntarily induces seizures to receive stimulation, only to overload and induce a trance like violent seizure. The cast includes George Segal as Harry Benson, who is introduced, by a series of photos, as a loving family man reduced to a ghost of his former self.

The casting of jovial Segal as a man seemingly barely hanging on makes us care for him. He is matched by Joan Hackett, a much underrated actress from the 70's, as his psychiatrist. And almost a decade before John Carpenter's The Thing, Donald Moffat and Richard Dysart are part of the medical team, with Dysart representing the arrogance and hubris of the medical community.

And Hodges does not think highly of the police. The movie opens with a police helicopter taking off, and ends with the apparent same helicopter landing that acts as bookends to what has happened. The police are portrayed as morons (there's a nice moment when an officer checks a hospital room and stops to fix himself in the mirror admiring just a moment too long) who shoot first and you know the rest.

There's also the shots of the eye looking through a peephole towards the audience with the disembodied voice saying "you'll be good now" and "you're next". So a lot going on in a seemingly little movie that deserves a second, or very likely a first look.