1971: THX 1138

What’s it about?

Robert Duvall plays THX 1138, a citizen of a sterile indoor city of the future. He has a dangerous job in the factory that produces the robotic policemen who patrol the city, a “mate” whom he is forbidden from having sex with, a holographic television, and a cocktail of drugs to keep him sedated and contented. But he has recently found himself losing his focus and experiencing strange emotions -- and ultimately it’s revealed that his mate has been making substitutions in his drug regimen to flush the sedatives from his system.

The un-sedated Duvall wastes no time in discovering sex, but he is observed by the all-seeing authorities who begin to monitor him closely. Meanwhile, a twitchy surveillance technician (played by Donald Pleasance) starts illegally modifying system software to get himself assigned as Duvall's roommate. The robotic police soon arrest them both and take them to a featureless white prison with no walls. Duvall and Pleasance soon escape with the help of a holographic television star. Once back in the city, more chases ensue until Duvall manages to make it to the world outside.




Is it any good?

THX 1138 is famously George Lucas’s first feature, adapted from a short student film he produced in 1967. The version I watched is a re-edited one with some new scenes and special effects that Lucas added for the DVD release in 2004. (As far as I know, no other version is available on DVD.) Besides being Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138 is also one of only six that he has directed -- the others being AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973), STAR WARS (1977), and the three recent STAR WARS prequels. That being the case, it’s surprising to me how little attention this movie seems to get -- there are millions of fans of STAR WARS who apparently have no interest at all in THX 1138.

I can’t say that I had a whole lot of interest myself until I started watching it. Despite knowing that it existed for many years, I never bothered to seek it out. That’s partly because (like most people) I have mixed feelings about STAR WARS and its sequels. But it’s more likely because I had just never heard very much about THX 1138 before -- nobody seemed to be talking about it, so I didn’t feel any urgency to go out and see it.

I’m not even going to try and compare THX 1138 to any of George Lucas’s other movies. I’ve never seen AMERICAN GRAFFITI, and STAR WARS and its sequels have such cultural ubiquity that it’s almost absurd to even think of them simply as movies. I will say that it was kind of amazing to see a George Lucas movie for which I had absolutely no expectations. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know who Darth Vader was or what storm troopers looked like, but I knew practically nothing about THX 1138 before I sat down to watch it.




Well, that’s not exactly true. The story and setting are pretty familiar, after all. The oppressive society in THX 1138 is a variation on the one found in George Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD. It’s not exactly the same as either, but there are dystopian elements that are very familiar -- the constant surveillance, the compulsory consumerism, the faceless enforcement figures, the manipulation of sexuality, the elimination of emotion and love, the state-mandated pharmaceuticals, and so on. Some of these elements crop up in earlier movies as well. Besides the 1956 version of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, similar extreme visions of oppressive societies show up in ALPHAVILLE (1965) and FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966). And the paranoid obsession with constant surveillance and control is a big part of movies like THE 1,000 EYES OF DR MABUSE (1960), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1961), SECONDS (1966), and COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970).

This is not to say that THX 1138 is derivative or unoriginal. I think it’s more a case of the movie being “of its time”. Orwell and Huxley wrote their novels in response to the totalitarian surveillance societies that coalesced during the rise of Fascism and Communism in Europe. But those regimes hunted down dissidents the old-fashioned way -- by accusations gathered through infiltration, entrapment, coercion, or fabrication. These kinds of things show up in the dystopian sci-fi flicks of the 1960s as well -- for instance, Robert Duvall informs on Donald Pleasance’s deviancy in THX 1138, which leads directly to his arrest. But these movies also resonate differently since ubiquitous video cameras and tape recorders were (and are) no longer the science-fiction trappings that they were for Orwell and Huxley. These themes became even more urgent after the abuses of the Nixon administration were exposed in the Watergate scandal, and they’ve never really gone away since then.

As far as the story goes, it’s a variation on the standard dystopian theme. There are a few neat twists though -- I really liked how Duvall’s mate needed to alter his drug mix before she could turn him into a co-conspirator. And since the story is told entirely from Duvall’s point of view, he starts to feel disoriented and confused long before he (or the audience) knows what’s happening to him or why. Another nice bit is that Duvall actually needs his drugs to safely do his job -- without the sedatives, he runs the risk of dropping radioactive and explosive materials during some delicate assembly operations. It’s not clear whether his need is physical or psychological, but either way it adds a much more serious element of danger to his decision to stay off the pills.




Donald Pleasance’s character is also a bit of an enigma. Like Duvall’s mate, his job is to watch a bank of monitors and coordinate security responses to deviant behavior. Apparently he takes a shine to Duvall while observing him during his hours on the job, but it’s not exactly clear what form his interest takes. The “mate” relationship in the world of THX 1138 is completely asexual, so it could simply be that the fussy Pleasance wants a roommate who will annoy him less than his current one. But watching the monitors means that Pleasance isn’t ignorant of sex -- and probably isn’t even ignorant of Duvall’s own sexual activity. So it seems at least reasonable that there might be some element of desire to his motives. Pleasance also seems more in touch with his emotions, though it’s not clear whether he’s off his drugs or not.

The futuristic world is very white, very sterile, and very inhuman. The vision of the future has a lot in common with the one in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) -- but with one important exception. I said that I got the feeling from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that the movie took place the night before opening day in space -- that is, that the pristine spaceships and whatnot were being prepared for an onslaught of people who hadn’t arrived yet. In THX 1138, everything is still clean and pristine, but there’s also a sense that a lot of things are broken just below the surface. There are a lot of little throwaway scenes that show various bits of technology failing -- an elevator refusing to work, a robotic policeman running into a shut door over and over, and so on. The future isn’t dirty yet in this movie (we have to wait for STAR WARS for that), but it certainly has a lot of bugs. This isn’t the night before opening day -- it’s just another day in the peak season where the Hall of Presidents is closed for repairs.

The world is very minimalist as well. The starkest example of this is the prison where Duvall and Pleasance are incarcerated in the middle of the movie. It’s literally nothing more than a white space with a couple of couches. There are no walls -- instead, the whiteness stretches infinitely in all directions, making it impossible to see the way out and very easy to get lost. But Duvall’s apartment and the shows on the holographic television are minimalist as well. For a society that supposedly values mindless consumerism, there are really very few things to buy or desire. Instead, people simply take home useless geometric shapes (“dendrites”, according to the film commentary) which they then destroy and buy again the next day. But the consumerist angle is the least convincing and least interesting part of the movie -- whatever point they were trying to make gets wiped out by the production design and the lack of real attention to it in the script.




The robotic policemen, however, are one of the coolest and most interesting parts of the movie. The combination of police uniforms with expressionless silver faces is very creepy and compelling. There are some other scattered images here and there that are not so well integrated into the story -- a lot of the beginning of the movie is devoted to very brief unconnected vignettes (some involving the main characters, others not) of life in the city. They each last maybe five seconds or so, but they give a real sense of what the world is like. It also gives the movie a higher density of information so that it’s not always obvious exactly what’s happening or if it relates to the story. After skimming through the movie a second time to get some screenshots, I’m pretty confident that it all makes sense and that there is a clear story to it. But the little bits of unconnected business make it more interesting to rewatch since there’s a good chance that some little bit slipped by unnoticed the first time.

I do think the movie starts to go downhill a bit after Duvall and Pleasance are sent to prison. It becomes a much more self-consciously artsy movie in the middle section, before abruptly switching to a long (but pretty ho-hum) chase sequence at the end by foot and car. But the movie is always interesting to look at, and small parts of the future world are pretty thoroughly realized. (Vast sections remain unexplored, obviously.) The plot and characters are extremely simple, and nobody does very much acting in the movie, but most of that fits pretty well with the dystopian, emotionless setting. As I said before, I am not even going to attempt to compare this to STAR WARS, but I can say that right now I would far rather watch THX 1138 again than any of the six movies that George Lucas is most famous for.



What else happened this year?

-- Peter Watkins delivers yet another sci-fi documentary with PUNISHMENT PARK, this one about a government detention center where political dissidents (i.e., hippies and draft dodgers) are hunted down in a law enforcement training program.
-- Michael Crichton's break-out novel THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN was adapted into a very effective "how done it" about a lethal alien disease.
-- Take Roddy MacDowell and Kim Hunter as Cornelius and Zira from THE PLANET OF THE APES; add in Ricardo Montalban, Sal Mineo, Eric Braeden, a funky score, and a time travel plot that brings talking chimps back in time to the 1970s; mix well and serve as ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES.
-- Charlton Heston, meanwhile, imports his cynical, world-weary persona practically wholesale into THE OMEGA MAN -- the second adaptation of Richard Matheson's novella I AM LEGEND.
-- Stanley Kubrick directed A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, about which I assume everybody has already formed their own opinion. (I don't like it much.)

If you only watch one movie from 1971...

THX 1138 is the one that I would recommend, but PUNISHMENT PARK is pretty interesting and unusual as well. THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and THE OMEGA MAN are both more typical (but still solid) choices too.

1966: FANTASTIC VOYAGE

What’s it about?

When an assassination attempt sends a Russian defector with important defense secrets into a coma, the American government decides to shrink a team of surgeons down to microbial size so they can repair the damage from the inside. The plan calls for injecting a submarine carrying five-person team (including Donald Pleasance and Raquel Welch) into the carotid artery for a relatively short jaunt to the affected area of the brain.

Things, however, immediately go wrong when the submarine is swept down a whirlpool of blood into the venous system and starts heading towards the heart. Still hoping to complete their mission, the team must now traverse the perils of the heart, the lungs, the lymphatic system, and the inner ear before arriving at the brain. And the probable presence of a saboteur on board only adds to the danger.




Is it any good?

There’s a part of me that wants to hail FANTASTIC VOYAGE as something like a culmination of the ambitions of sci-fi movies from the previous two decades. I don’t think the case for that kind of claim is foolproof -- there’s another part of me, after all, that recognizes it is a movie with a lot of flaws. But even though FANTASTIC VOYAGE is perhaps not exactly pioneering, it does feel to me like a big incremental step forward for the genre.

It would be nice if I could point to some particular element as the obvious keystone to what I’m talking about, but I don’t think there really is one. Instead, I think the difference with FANTASTIC VOYAGE is really more about the shortcomings of the movies that came before it. Take DESTINATION MOON (1950), for instance. That movie stood out at the time because it combined a dramatic speculative vision with the budget needed to achieve it and a willingness to take the material seriously. But the science and special effects upstaged the plot and characters, and the story itself is just never satisfying. THE SILENT STAR (1960), by contrast, had the vision and spectacle, the willingness to treat sci-fi seriously, and a pretty good story -- but it lacked the budget and talent to really bring them to life. Again and again, most sci-fi movies from the 1950s and 1960s seem to fall short in one category or another. ON THE BEACH (1959) lacks a clear or compelling vision, THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955) and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961) don’t take their science or their audiences seriously, and a whole host of movies fall prey to low budgets, short production times, or inexperienced cast and crew.




One part of my argument is that FANTASTIC VOYAGE succeeds (more or less) on every meaningful metric that I would use to rate a sci-fi movie. It has an compelling speculative vision that is really pretty unique. It has the budget to convincingly create a weird and alien world full of imaginative spectacle. It has an exciting story and a talented cast that makes it believable enough. And it has a real interest in science, a respect for accuracy, and a curiosity about what might exist beyond the bounds of the knowable world.

If I took half an hour to think about it, I could probably come up with a short list of six or seven sci-fi movies from 1966 and earlier that arguably meet all of those criteria just as well as FANTASTIC VOYAGE does. But I think the difference with FANTASTIC VOYAGE is that it succeeds while swinging for the fences -- it envisions a story on an epic scale, and mostly delivers what it promises without losing sight of the elements that make a good movie. This isn’t a black and white B-movie set mostly in an ordinary American town with a slow-building sci-fi premise. It’s an all out full color adventure that takes place largely in a world that none of us will ever see except on TV and movie screens. In saying this, I mean no disrespect to those quieter, less flashy movies like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) or I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958). The fact they are a less ambitious doesn’t make them any less enjoyable -- just less likely to create as big of a splash.




I also don’t want anybody to get the idea that I think FANTASTIC VOYAGE is a perfect movie. It’s got its share of flaws as well. The weakest link is probably the story, which exists entirely as a mechanism for first getting the surgical team from one bodily attraction to another. Even accepting that surgery via miniaturized submarine is the best option for this particular patient, there’s no reason that the operation in question should take the team through the heart, the lungs, and most of the other stops they make. So the story is mostly just a string of accidents that each justify the next stop on the journey. Yet, it’s all believable enough and certainly makes for a more exciting trip than there might otherwise have been.

I don’t want to spend too much time picking nits though. The acting is good, the submarine is neat, and the special effects are pretty effective. I had thought that at least some of the special effects were the result of miniature photography of real cells. But that’s not the case -- every special effect (from red blood cells to the chambers of the heart to alveoli to antibodies) are recreated at a giant size so they can be photographed with the models and actors. The fantastic voyage does eventually start to feel a bit like “the greatest hits of health class”, but even so there’s something undeniably interesting about a (seemingly fairly accurate) journey through the human body. And as far as cinematic images go, the sight of Donald Pleasance being eaten by a white corpuscle is one that sticks with you for decades.



What else happened this year?

-- John Frankenheimer directed SECONDS, in which an old man is given a chance for rejuvenation in the body of a relatively young (but still incredibly square) Rock Hudson. But when it turns out that he has just as little control over his new life as his old one, he starts trying to break out.
-- Francois Truffaut’s directed a surprisingly good adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451. The movie improves a bit on the novel as far as pacing and character interest goes, but it’s probably still all too allegorical for its own good. Julie Christie co-stars in Truffaut’s only English-language movie.
-- A man gets an experimental lifelike mask to cover up his disfigured face in THE FACE OF ANOTHER. But when he uses his new identity to anonymously seduce his own wife, the experiment starts to go awry.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1966...

I was all ready to recommend FAHRENHEIT 451, but I think after writing this entry I talked myself into going with FANTASTIC VOYAGE as the best movie of the year. As I said earlier, it’s a big incremental jump for the genre -- and it seems like an important stepping stone on the way to some of the true classics that arrived a couple years later.