The Terminal Man (1974)

Probably best known to younger audiences as 'Pops' in the wonderful life-in-the-80s sitcom, The Goldbergs, for decades George Segal was a major film and TV actor. By 1974 he had played titular agent Quiller in The Quiller Memorandum (1966), held his own alongside Taylor and Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (also 1966), played opposite Barbra in The Owl and the Pussycat (1970). His characters may have had a serious side, but his persona was generally that of a likeable, slightly goofy, slightly hangdog, nice guy. In this 1974 adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel he gets the chance to undermine that image good and proper, to play a kind of modern Frankenstein. As usual with Crichton stories, The Terminal Man concerns science gone wrong. I've only read a couple of Crichton novels over the years, but I can't think of a movie adapted from one of this books that doesn't portray scientists as the bad guys. Whether it's germ warfare, cloned dinosaurs, robots, or in this case, automated manipulation of the brain, those well-meaning boffins (who usually turn out to be callous, self-serving and dangerously reckless) are usually the ones making things worse rather than better.

Harry Benson (Segal) is a much-liked family man as well as a highly-paid computer scientist. After suffering a head injury he starts to suffer violent seizures that leave him in a state of frenzy in which his only thought is to harm others. He is released from prison to undergo a ground-breaking brain surgery that will leave him with a small computer in his head and a battery in his shoulder. The computer is supposed to stimulate a part of the brain which will distract Benson's violent nature when he has a seizure, leading him to avoid lashing out. The 20-minute long surgery scene, in which the surgical team are dressed as if they're going into space, is very slow and deliberate giving the impression that it is taking place in real time. The style of the movie (directed by Mike Hodges, best known for Get Carter (1971), Flash Gordon (1980) and Morons from Outer Space (1985)) proves divisive, with many wondering why everything has to take so long. I found it quite poetic and fascinating, but I can see how the pace could lose people. It's a very muted film, and there's a lot of glass and steel, and many of the hospital scenes are almost Expressionist in their cold austerity.

Apart from the operation scene, the real standout sequence is the interview between Benson and Dr Janet Ross, the one doctor who doesn't think all this is such a good idea. Played by the fragile-seeming yet steely Joan Hackett, who sadly died before she reached 50, Dr Ross questions Benson about his reactions while various parts of his brain are stimulated by the electrodes that have been planted there. The scene is equal parts amusing, horrifying and deeply uncomfortable as Benson goes through the gamut of emotions without any apparent reason; one moment laughing uncontrollably, then tasting a non-existent ham sandwich, then acting like a child, craving his mother's forgiveness. Unfortunately, the doctors settle on a sexual stimulation to counter the violent seizures. Dr Ross' elegant and stand-offish nature are interpreted as cold by many of the other characters, but Ross is the emotional heart of the film, attempting to help Benson at every opportunity, and courageously doing all can to save him. Also worth noting is Joan Hackett's hairstyle, which seems to have wandered in from the 1930s.

Another thing that interested me is that the two doctors who mastermind the experiment and perform the operation are played by Richard Dysart and Donald Moffat, who appeared together again in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), one of my favourite movies.

Donald Moffat & Richard Dysart in The Thing

The Terminal Man is a slow-moving movie, which perhaps takes too long to make its rather simple point. The sporadic moments of violence are shocking when they happen, but the weight placed on these events are too much for the story to bear, and the whole thing doesn't really deliver on the promise of the premise. It's watchable for many of the performances, and I enjoyed the cinematography (by Richard H Kline), but it's clear why this isn't a very well-known movie.

 The Terminal Man - trailer