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‘Seconds': Film ChillerWith Arty Pretensions(Continued From Page IE.)especially if the melodrama sometimes calls for moreviewer cansummon.Here we have a stodgyhanker in his 50s, a man in a personal rut, who lets himself be drawn into a most peculiar scheme. It seems there's a secret corporation that gives dissatisfied, middle-aged men new lives by faking their deaths (even to supplyingcorpses), altering pear an ce s. toning up their muscles and sending them into the world with brand new, youthful identities.Our friend comes out of ilastic surgery looking just Rock Hudson. Now free of...s family and past, he is given the credentials of an artist, moved into a fancy seaside pad and exposed to all sorts of new opportunities for fun and amour. Only he has trouble shaking old feelings andattitudes. His dissatisfactionuilds; he behaves rashlymd with that, I’ll leave it to^ M ** -.Aguesswork to figure out happensAnyway, the film does generate a measure of suspense, subtle creepiness and outright horror, for both scenarist anddirector have a nice sense bizarre and the grotesque.Many scenes in the headquarters of the diaoolical corporation, for instance, are given a deceptively pleasant, even homey atmosphere that lends by contrast to their essential sinisterness. Also, some of the most harmless and amiable-looking characters turntionship with a beautiful young woman or later on with his ‘ widow.” Here the dialogue is at its sententious and self-conscious worst. Here thedirector paces and composes certain scenes with a reverence they simply don’t deserve. And there’s one settleshocking. And at the peaks of nightmare, the strange camera techniques, often twisting images into Dali-like distortions, tend to sharpen the horrific effect.YET CABLING and Frank-enhetmer blunder elsewherethequence* in which a bunch ofbeatnicks turn a wine harvestinto a nudie bacchanalia, thatis plain embarrassing in its effort to appear deliciouslysinful.1IHudson at least makes a good try at defining the inner struggles of the reborn hero, and he is in fact convincing at times—in his old-fuddy timidness because he can’t act hisnew age, in his constant comfortnot his own, in his animal ter-» moment of hideousdiscovery.Salome Jens is sincerethe womanH udson(watching her stagy emoting, vou’re not surprised to learn She’s from the unfortunateLincoln Center Repertory company). John Randolph does a good, brooding job as the herobefore his transformation.Frances Reid is enigmatically believable as the wife withwhom he has lost the powercommunicate.dealing►st striking performances are of minor characters observed inside the evilcorporation. There’s WillGeer, superb as the company’s founder—a withered, affable granddaddy who could put a condemned man at ease with his homely, colloquial manner. There’s Jeff Corey, equally good as another friendly menace. There are Richard Anderson and Khigh Dhiegh, in top form, respectively, as an efficient plastic surgeon and a terrifyingly jol-psychologist. And there’s Murray Hamilton, whose portrayal of a fellow “reborn” is perhaps more chilling than anything else in the picture.
Newspaper Details
Kansas City Star
Kansas City, Missouri, US
Sun, Oct 09, 1966
Page 111
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 22 Sep 2021
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