The Man of Tomorrow
I had no fond memories whatsoever of George Pal and Byron Haskin’s THE POWER, but having enjoyed THE SEVEN FACES OF DR LAO so much on revisiting it, I thought I’d give it a try. Pal’s cinema seems to swing from the rather dry spectacle of WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE or DESTINATION MOON to something mixing the poetic and strange in with its pulpier elements, as in THE TIME MACHINE.
In fact, THE POWER is a good bit more interesting than I remembered — I’d probably never watched the whole thing, and had probably been put off by a certain surface blandness: late sixties studio espionage thriller + George Hamilton… it’s the kind of film where computers are all whirring tapes and blinking lights and everything is clean and colourful. But in fact I enjoyed it so much I might give DOC SAVAGE, MAN OF BRONZE a try next — now that was a film I couldn’t get along with as a kid at all.
So, there’s this top secret agency devoted to torturing people in order to test human endurance for NASA, but one day some intelligence tests reveal that one member of the team there has an abnormally advanced brain — so intellectually powerful that s/he can be assumed to have weird telekinetic abilities. This makes no sense, but everybody accepts the dubious logic even as they doubt the premise. And soon, somebody is causing the scientists to die, starting with LAO’s Arthur O’Connell, who falls into a trance and accelerates himself to death in a human centrifuge — cue a grisly makeup effect by William Tuttle —
George Hamilton goes on the run with Suzanne Pleshette (I’d like to team her with Diane Baker in something I’d call Hitchcock’s More Interesting Brunettes) and tries to trace a single name that could explain what’s going on. Along the way he meets — guest stars! Lots of guest stars! Yvonne De Carlo, Aldo Ray, Michael Rennie, Nehemiah Persoff and “Miss Beverly Hills.” It all ends in a spectacularly weird psychic face-off which should remind us of SCANNERS but actually gets into peculiar ALTERED STATES imagery — even including a shot of the hammer dulcimer that’s playing Miklos Rosza’s theme music, a shot that’s as non-diegetic as the music itself. That vaguely Eastern European sound always has the effect of making you see Reds under the beds in a film like this, which is ironic as this is one Cold War thriller in which neither the Russians not the Chinese play any role at all. Probably, when Homo Superior gets through with us, there will be no nations at all…
Miss Beverly Hills actually has some pretty interesting credits, but screenwriter John Gay (adapting a sci-fi thriller by Frank M. Robinson, who was Harvey Milk’s speechwriter and plays himself in MILK) takes the cake — Minnelli’s FOUR HORSEMEN, NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY, SOLDIER BLUE, A MATTER OF TIME… crazy stuff.
When I first saw this big old bag of mismatched elements, which feels like what you might get if you blended Gay’s entire CV in a human centrifuge, I wondered who the hell it was for, and I suspect 1968 audiences did too. But now I have the answer — it’s for me.
shadowplay 
January 21, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Miklos Rozsa! This film, as I remember, has a long title sequence right?
January 21, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Yes, and again, the shot of the dulcimer breaks into it. Quite odd.
January 21, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Interesting comment re Doc Savage – I recall seeing it on its cinema release when I was quite young and being struck by its sheer weirdness, a sense that it wasn’t at all of its time, and a certain pulpy comic-book energy mixed up with an attempt to be ‘modern’ – a totally failed attempt, as you might imagine. I haven’t re-watched it but I think I have to now.
January 21, 2012 at 6:13 pm
It has some fun things, but isn’t serious enough to be serious or funny enough to be funny. And there’s a scene where a man is killed by phantom snakes — basically cartoons — and they’ve tried to soften it by adding comedy music and that just UPSET THE HELL OUT OF ME as a kid. The emotional disconnect was terrifying.
January 21, 2012 at 10:15 pm
I saw this in the theater on a double-bill with THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN (He Said, Instantly Dating Himself). And I remember, on the occasion of one television viewing, my sister’s saying how the ad breaks fit in unusually well. Perhaps we should think of THE POWER as, essentially, a glorified television movie, with Special Guest Stars.
I also happen to have read the original novel. Its title comes from THE BACHELOR AND THE BOBBY SOXER, that double-talk routine about “You remind me of a man” “What man?” “The man with a power” “What power?” The power of hoo-doo” “You do!” “Do what?” [etc. etc.]
January 21, 2012 at 10:20 pm
I forgot to add that the “You remind me of a man …” routine is quoted, and identified, as the novel’s epigraph. Part of the reason why this stuck with me is that the daughter of the man who wrote BACHELOR, Sidney Sheldon, was a friend at the time that I saw and read THE POWER.
January 21, 2012 at 11:06 pm
That kind of makes sense…
The Power is much too quirky for TV, although they do try to make it look as flatly televisual as possible at times. It’s like TV gone insane.
January 23, 2012 at 6:48 pm
BTW, why no mention of director Byron Haskin? Admittedly, Pal is himself an auteur, but … Haskin merits at least a name-check. Outside of his work with Pal as producer (NAKED JUNGLE, WAR OF THE WORLDS, ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS) he’s also done such creditable work as TOO LATE FOR TEARS and I WALK ALONE. Just last night, I was debating whether to watch a *very* good episode that he directed for THE OUTER LIMITS, “Demon with a Glass Hand” (written by Harlan Ellison, with Robert Culp).
January 23, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Pal’s films always seem to me to be uniquely his, although Haskin was obviously a valuable collaborator. As cinematographer and special effects artist he had the technical skills to help fulfill Pal’s demands.
Haskin maybe shines more away from Pal – I’d like to see that Outer Limits, and have been meaning to look at Treasure Island again.
July 25, 2016 at 2:21 am
“The Power” is a true masterpiece, as well as a great “period piece” of the “mid-Century” era that was fast coming to an end. I must admit that It’s my second favorite movie of all time (only following Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece “Vertigo”). George Pal, Byron Haskin, terrific score by the great Miklos Rozsa, good source material from the Frank M. Robinson novel (all suitably updated from the 1950’s of the book, and given a much more upbeat ending, btw!). Plus a great ensemble cast of stalwarts and long-time character actors. George Hamilton is wholly adequate in the lead as Professor Jim Tanner, while Suzanne Pleshette is perfect as his girlfriend, Professor Lansing — she’s got brains and looks! LOL Michael Rennie is superb as Mr. Nordlund/Adam Hart, while Yvonne De Carlo, Richard Carlson, Gary Merrill, and Arthur O’Connell are all very good. Nehemiah Persoff, usually a loud-mouth mafia type or banana republic strongman, actually carries away the top acting honors in “The Power”. His absent-minded Professor Melniker is played very subdued and understated, yet effective, and Persoff is hardly recognizable in either looks or demeanor. Ken Murray, Aldo Ray, Earl Holliman and blonde bombshell Barbara Nichols are all adequate in their parts. Vaughn Taylor, Celia Lovsky, Lawrence Montaigne (yep, both from the “Amok Time” episode of “Star Trek”, though here they share no scenes) all come off well in smaller parts. You could never assemble such a terrific cast again!
The sets are superb, with only a very slight “futuristic” look (such as Robert Lee Frost Auditorium in Culver City, which doubles as the research institute and auditorium nicknamed “The Babble Pit”). The institute offices are interestingly rendered, with each looking onto the others through floor-to-ceiling glass. Thus while the protagonists discuss their predicament and speculate on who has ‘the power’ we can see them studying each researcher in turn. As always, Pal and Haskin combine to give memorable set-pieces, scenes, and effects. The middle of a totally flat, desolate plain where Aldo Ray dumps George Hamilton (and turns out to be a USAF bombing range!). A car chase that ends at a drawbridge in LA Harbor. A fun hotel convention sequence where Ken Murray latches onto Hamilton, thinking he’s an old crony; then the wild party up in the hotel suite (including rock band, later a phonograph, and even a strip-tease by Miss Beverly Hills; yes, that was her actual screen-name! For those interested, you can see her doing the same in “Breakfast at Tiffanys” at a strip-club. LOL). Yvonne De Carlo going from dowdy housewife of Arthur O’Connell to hot seductress-widow in her trailer, plying Hamilton with drinks. O’Connell’s death in the institute’s centrifuge is well handled, and it’s later mimicked on a carousel-gone-crazy with Hamilton aboard. Pal’s son David worked on the tricky but effective hallucination scene where Hamilton comes across one of those novelty “drinking bird” glass tubes, which first winks at him, then spits water! Next is an army of toy soldiers who march and drill, then proceed to fire volleys at Hamilton!
And of course, the clincher of “The Power” is the final montage where Hamilton comes under the full effect of ‘the power’ in an epic showdown with evil Adam Hart. This sequence still looks good after almost 50 years — and done at a time with absolutely no computer effects! Hamilton is frozen solid, burned, skeletonized and set adrift in space among stars and galaxies….
As we’ve come to expect from George Pal, very impressive effects for his era! In fact, “The Power” is perhaps the last great “mid-Century modern” motion picture. It is firmly Fifties/early Sixties in look, tone, and feel; yet was released just as movies were changing radically and “Easy Rider”, “Midnight Cowboy” and the like were coming in vogue. In that sense, “The Power” looks like it belongs to an earlier era, which in retrospect is one of it’s greatest strengths. It also keeps the “sci-fi” to a minimum, aside from the fact someone has tremendous mind-powers. It’s really an action-adventure and mystery movie with sci-fi overtones. And definitely constitutes “must see” cinema for buffs of Pal, Haskin, and mid-Century modern motion pictures in general. For years I had to make do with taped-off-TV VHS copies of “The Power”, then finally it was released on DVD, remastered and in letter-box.