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FRANKENSTEIN'S FANTASIES BECOME REALITIES IN THE MIND SNATCHERS (Press Release)
What was once fantasy-horror is now a
reality. Baron von
Scientific probing of the mind started as a noble endeavor with a goal of helping the troubled and confused by going directly to the center of the problem -- the brain. Neurosurgeons have implanted machines and sensations which will cure the epileptic, ease sexual problems or reduce depression. But like atomic energy, the problem of who will control this enormous and powerful responsibility is a fascinating one. As presented in the New York stage play, The Happiness Cage offered a harrowing story of brain research designed to remove all violent and ant-social tendencies from a young GI who would not conform to military discipline. In director Bernard Girard's The Mind Snatchers audiences have been spellbound by a contemporary chiller -- goings-on that Frankenstein could never conceive for his creation. "The Mind Snatchers is a very different picture from Clockwork Orange which dealt with another aspect of mind control," says director Girard. "There the anti-social young man had a very real problem but he also had a certain charm. In The Mind Snatchers young Reese (Walken) is much more undesirable, but only to the military. Controlling his hostility in such a case is very questionable." In reviewing the film in its New York premiere, Judith Crist called The Mind Snatchers "an astonishing and powerful film" and she agreed with the audiences that the picture was a provocative nightmare of a story. The young GI finds himself shipped off to a strange mansion in Germany, a place where terrible mind experiments are done. The goal of the military doctors is to find a technique by implanting electrodes in the brain for making human beings into docile and "well-behaved" robots.
Although Clockwork Orange is interesting in its own
fantastical vision,
The Mind Snatchers is much more jarring because
it is what is happening now and tomorrow. In a hundred years or so science will be able to create the superman (or super-being) with complete control over the bits of humanness which make for war and greed and poverty. "But I wonder," says Girard, "if we won't also be robbed completely of individuality. How far are we willing to go or how far do we really have to go to create a so-called 'perfect' society?" Girard continued: "Doctors have learned that they can control violence in a mental patient with a frontal lobotomy. As science refines its techniques what is to prevent them from making us walking vegetables? Quiet and polite, but zombies nonetheless." The Mind Snatchers does not and cannot answer such a question. But in an entertaining and terrifying film it asks some chilling questions. The ads for The Mind Snatchers say: "It is the day after tomorrow and everything is under control." Move over, Baron von Frankenstein! Your scientific fantasies are on the verge of reality. Richard Lewis and George Goodman produced The Mind Snatchers, which features Joss Ackland and Ronny Cox, currently starring with Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds in the hit film version of Deliverance.
(on to page 3)
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