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Year: 1974 Production: Warner Bros. Director: Mike Hodges Starring: George Segal, Joan Hackett Screenwriter: Mike Hodges Based on The Terminal Man (1972) by Michael Crichton 107 minutes, cut to 104 minutes; Color
Segal plays a man who suffers from violent blackouts as a result of brain damage suffered in a car accident. Doctors use him as an experimental guinea pig: into his brain they insert eletrodes linked to a tiny computer implanted in his shoulder, so that when a convulsion starts the computer will automatically send soothing impulses to the brain. However, the brain enjoys the soothing effects so much that it induces the blackouts at an ever-increasing rate; the man is driven to commit further acts of violence and finally has to be shot down. Quotes from T.S. Elliot, music by Bach, color-coded visual symbolism (with lots of black) - all seem to aspire to a significance that does not, in the end, seem very profound. The mutually destructive relationship between man and machine is interesting; the stereotypes (monstrous doctors, etc.) are crude. |
| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |