FANTASIA OBSCURA: Before ‘Scanners’ There Was This Tale of Terrible Telekinetic Powers
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though, having all the best pieces in place just doesn’t guarantee you have enough power to get anything done…
The Power (1968)
Distributed by: MGM
Directed by: Byron Haskin
Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right; the weaker is always wrong.
-Attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli, but unsourced, possibly made up out of whole cloth
…which, if that’s the case, makes it an even more fitting opening hereto:
The film opens, according to a title imposed on the screen, “tomorrow,” at a lab in Southern California where human endurance tests are being held to see how much punishment humans can stand, the better to prepare them for trips into space. Which is why the government sends Arthur Nordlund (Michael Renee) to the facility, headed up by Professor Jim Tanner (George Hamilton), to make sure the work is progressing along well.
It’s during the staff meeting held in the midst of the visit that Professor Hallson (Arthur O’Connel), the team’s anthropologist, reveals that he’s conducted a questionnaire survey that measures intelligence that’s found that a member of the lab’s steering committee may have a score that’s off the chart:
Soon after the above happens, just about everyone in the room dies in a bizarre, inexplicable manner. The only survivors from the demo in the conference room as the film sprawls on are Professor Lansing (Suzanne Pleshette), Nordlund, and Tanner, who is tough to kill despite the effort to frame him for Hallson’s death, which is to be expected when you’re going up against…
Okay, hold it a sec. Supposedly, superior intelligence is a sign of psychic powers? Really? Which means that instead of the Manhattan Project, Einstein and Oppenheimer should have just telekinetically busted apart the Axis Powers with their minds?
And just what psychic powers? Whoever is using their mind to kill Hallson and erase memories held by his wife Sally (Yvonne De Carlo) as part of the plan to frame Lansing seems to have enough choices to pick from; telekinesis, mental mind wipes, illusion generation, hey, whatever the script calls for.
The fact that the psychic abilities follow no rules save whatever looks like it might be cool at that moment gets annoying at first as the plot rushes along from scene set-up to payout leading to the next set piece, but after a while this starts to feel boring. This was apparently a problem with the source material as well, the debut novel of the same name from Frank M. Robinson from 1956, which is why readers were drawn more to the work’s thriller elements and pulpy noir sensibility.
Given that, it’s no wonder Haskin goes for scenes that could all have served as decent little shorts. Watching the film go from a chase across a desert weapons testing range to a swinging party, it’s like a clip reel showing how he could handle topics as varied as he had on The War of the Worlds and Treasure Island. Having George Pal as his producer, getting him whatever he needed that the script from John Gay called for, certainly didn’t limit him as far as what to try and how to mount it.
And yet, the overall story as filmed was like a car trip where all the roadside attractions were worth paying a visit to, but no one considered the final destination worthy of thought. With undefined psionics running rampant and popping up to intrude on the story, possibly throwing a scene’s mood out of whack, there’s no coherent draw to keep the film going. And by the time we get to the end, we start noticing how little was accomplished before then; with no earned payoff, we wonder why we bothered staying this long.
It’s interesting to speculate how soon into this trip the cast came to realize that things were going nowhere. As noted earlier, only three of the principles spend any serious time on screen, and Hamilton and Pleshette sometimes feel like they’re idling in their scenes together, trying to set up the nest set piece. (Hell, even their love scenes can’t dispel the ennui that threatens to overcome them.) Had there not been a score by Miklos Rozsa that makes great use of a hammered dulcimer (including shots now and then of the musician’s hands playing the instrument) to break our concentration, we might have better noticed when they sighed as they went through the motions for a paycheck.
They may not have had any idea how to make sense of any of this, as they leave behind for us a few big questions unanswered, like:
- How does a “psychic superman” make any sense here? Where did this person come from, and why is someone so powerful slumming with the space project anyways?
- Why did this person not use these extreme, undefined powers to just do away with everyone, erasing minds and such, rather than let this all play out as it did, which was a question from Robinson’s book as well?
- How could so many talented folks both in front of and behind the lens just not make anything of this? Is something like this just un-filmable?
That last one may not be a fair question, as there ultimately would be a later movie covering this topic better:
Which demonstrates a truism older than Machiavelli’s work: It’s not how much power you have, it’s how it’s applied…
NEXT TIME: Do something light and funny, they said; you worked so hard before, you could use a simple project, they said; it’ll be good for you, kind of a little vacation, what’s the worst that could happen, they said… sigh
