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The joke is on "descending a rung or two on the old evolutionary ladder," as Albee would have it, just an academic with "primitive species on the brain." The dean's daughter (Joanna Moore) cannot compete with a prehistoric fish for the attention of her fiancée (Arthur Franz), a science professor without much faith in civilization. ("Man's only one generation away from savagery, anyway.") Warped by gamma rays, the ancient creature exudes a regressive power—a brush with it gives saber fangs to a placid pooch and dilates a dragonfly into a miniature bombardier. A scratch is all it takes to rouse the beast within the protagonist, a flirtatious nurse is the first victim, hanging by her hair with staring lifeless eyes while the doctor awakens with his memory wiped clean. University killings, a "throwback" essence. "Isn't actually this whole thing very improbable?" "Only as improbable as... life itself." Waggner's The Wolf Man is the main precursor, mined by Jack Arnold into a severe little frenzy of transfiguration and addiction. (The primordial fluid is smoked by accident, then injected via syringe.) Mamoulian's POV (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) gets a wavy filter, from a high angle the camera ponders a detective by a phone booth while an upside-down shadow approaches from the top of the frame. A matter of unstable form, it is said, a certain Doctor Moreau from Madagascar. "In other words, dead of fright." The troglodyte wears flannel and wields a hatchet, nothing less than an attack will convince the skeptical colleague. Absolutely the seed for the Russell-Chayefsky Altered States. With Judson Pratt, Nancy Walters, Troy Donahue, Helen Wescott, Alexander Lockwood, and Whit Bissell. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |