Escapement (1960)

Captivating movie !

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I remember seeing The Electronic Monster as a lad way back when I was 11 years old and it was the second feature of a double bill. It had an interesting concept, but it was poorly executed.Rod Cameron and Mary Murphy are a pair of Americans in the leads of this British production which is set in France. An American film star dies in a car crash and the autopsy showed he was dead before his car went out of control. Too much electric shock of the brain. Cameron is an insurance investigator employed by the film star's studio. He discovers some other deaths of prominent people all had known the same femme fatale and all had extended stays at a 'resort'. Roberta Huby is our Mata Hari.The resort is run by a rather cold and bloodless Peter Illing and the people are there for some kind of new psychotherapy. Dr. Meredith Edwards has investigated a kind of electric shock therapy which feeds certain erotic images into the brain and records. Kind of a Krell brain test. But Illing has seen the possibilities of mind control.Illing is also engaged to another film star Mary Murphy who was once an item with Cameron. That's one major weakness of the movie there. He's so cold and bloodless, sinister but also a drip. What she saw in him I'll never know.Interesting concept, but the execution was so lifeless and dull. Both the leads got a European vacation out of it so that might have been the reason they signed for The Electronic Monster.Good a reason as any.

This is an abominably bad movie, far worse than anything Ed Wood ever did. Wood's oeuvre is at least watchable, if only for camp humor. And Wood's films had a certain loony integrity, a virtue lacking in "The Electronic Monster". "The Electronic Monster" has none of that, offering only an excruciatingly dull mishmash of a confusing script, dreadful acting, a totally misused electronic music background and grade-Z production values. Professional lox, Rod Cameron, never any threat the Lawrence Olivier anyway, is egregiously bad and his somewhat fickle paramour, Mary Murphy demonstrates why she was seldom heard from againWatching this movie makes one wish the dream machine really worked so that they may erase the memory of ever seeing this completely valueless waste of film.

In Charles Eric Maine's excellent (for its day) novel, a scientist invents a mind-tape-recorder (helmet on the head, bazillion-track tape), hoping to use it for Good, like studying mental disorders. A movie mogul gets hold of it and soon billions of people waste their lives and their savings in tanks "experiencing" recorded porn or schmaltz (ultraslow replay intensifies the sensations). The scientist decides to take drastic measures, batters the mogul to death and plays the recording to the billions, hoping to scare them back to reality. Instead they die and the book ends as he's about to be sentenced for the death of the mogul, raising the ethical question of the collateral damage.Bear in mind that when Maine wrote this, brain waves were novel, magnetic sound recording was only about a decade old and video recording was still in the future.In the Z-grade film, the WHOLE story is ripped out (daren't offend Hollywood) and we're left with an ordinary quarter-inch reel-to-reel recorder and a squawking electronic soundtrack that has nothing to do with the action on screen. I've completely forgotten the new plot, but vaguely remember people in leotards writhing around some cheesy gauzes to hint at forbidden pleasures.I'd give it an award for Worst Adaptation ever.

Dull, dull, cliche ridden film . Brainwashing has been used as a topic for many interesting films(IPCRESS FILE for one). This 1950s British film is not one of them. Instead we get a very basic storyline with no punches whatsoever. Rod Cameron sleepwalks throughout, looking like he would much rather be in a Western. There is an annoying love angle thrown in and some two dimensional characters(mad scientist, caring scientist, power hungry industrialist, rock jawed hero,psycho etc.). The result is a very boring film with no delivery whatsoever. Only the poor viewer is brainwashed.