Almost Worthless: The Mind Snatchers

This next DVD is a double feature, so I've decided to review each film separately. The first one stars Christopher Walken, so we already don't have enough space to contain his awesomeness.

This DVD is another EastWest product. (They must have a deal with the Just a Buck chain). There are some titles issues here: according to imdb, this movie has been released as Brain Control, The Demon Within, and just simply Mind Snatchers, which is the case here. In the opening credits, though, the movie is called The Mind Snatchers, so I'm sticking with that name. As if that weren't confusing enough, the movie was first released in 1972 as The Happiness Cage. It's based on a play of the same name and it was directed by Bernard Girard.

Nevermind that both Walken and the guy behind him look like they were either made of wax or someone at graphics got very excited about using the Plastic Wrap filter on Photoshop. Possibly both. What I like best about the cover, though, is the Star Wars-esque font. Maybe it's retroactively mocking the fact that Walken lost the part of Han Solo to Harrison Ford. Incidentally, this movie provided Walken with his first starring role.

It's always the Germans, isn't it? Or the Russians. Germans tend to dominate the Movie Nationalities of Evil, but during the Cold War, Russians ruled the Malevolent Technology territory. These days, movie laboratories tend to be corporate property and therefore don't belong to any one country. Which is too bad. Just once I'd like to see a mad scientist who's Canadian. I mean one who's written that way, not just a Canadian actor.

All right, then. Let's see Walken in action.

Okay, it's been 10 seconds so far and I already want someone to wrap a blanket around me, give me a cup of tea, and hold me while softly saying that everything will be all right.

And now I want that someone to be young Christopher Walken. Wow. I'd seen him in The Deer Hunter but here he doesn't even have his paint-brush head of hair yet. Sure, he's still ghoulish from some angles, but...his eyes!

Wait a minute. What's going on? What happened after Reese (Walken) punched that piece of furniture that led to him having sex with who up until that point I thought was his mother? Did the cops just take him naked to the police station? How come no one in Germany has a German accent? This movie wastes no time on plot development.

I'm not all that sure what's going on, but it does look like some Clockwork Orange business is about to go down. Walken drives that car scene like an American Alex DeLarge. In Germany.

I don't think I have ever seen a movie like The Mind Snatchers. The first hour goes verrry slowwwly as it meanders toward the thematic territories of A Clockwork Orange and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It doesn't reiterate the points of those works, but it doesn't expand on them, either. Characters and plot lines drift in and out without explanation. Sometimes the dialogue is downright terrible. There's no real reason for Reese to be at the hospital.There's no reason why it's such a huge place if there are only three patients. There's almost no reason for this movie to exist.

Then the last 45 minutes kick in. And it's intense. I don't want to give away too much because you really should see it, but The Mind Snatchers raises some ugly questions about dealing with trauma. In the end, all the German doctors want to do is to eliminate what they call schizophrenia but in reality it would be post-traumatic stress disorder. After getting a series of wires implanted in your brain, all you have to do is squeeze some handheld remote control-like device to replace any hurtful feeling with one of pure pleasure. Not surprisingly, one patient gets addicted and is eventually debilitated by it. The brain implants are an easy but empty solution. In fact, the head scientist came up with the idea after his own ex-soldier son shot himself in the head, which is essentially the principle behind the invention. Yet it's Reese who points out that people are defined their by their pain. His own inner anguish isn't pretty, but it's still a part of him. That's one potent message.

The acting's good, too. Reese's roommate Miles (Ronny Cox), initially comes across as an annoying Texan-style stereotype but once it becomes clear that it's all an act, he becomes a deeper character. And he does the best he can with his cringe-worthy lines. Top honors, of course, go to Walken. He was always distinct from the group of other actors that reached prominence in the 1970's simply because he's not loud. He can get loud, but his performances aren't as commanding as those of Al Pacino or Harvey Keitel or Dustin Hoffman. Christopher Walken is like the Incredible Hulk of actors. He doesn't look like much, but when he plays angry, the whole world's at his mercy.

Before I end this thing, I must tell you: the end credits give a little write-up on the inspiration for the story, which was the discovery of separate pain and pleasure centers in the brain. It was done by two Canadian scientists.