Seconds - Rock Hudson as you've never seen him before
Published December 12, 2004
A terrible title for a superb, nearly forgotten 1966 movie directed by John Frankenheimer.
Made during the period he created his greatest films - "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962), "The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and "Seven Days In May (1964) - this picture somehow disappeared.
I only learned of it when a bookofjoe reader suggested it in a comment on a post dealing with paranoia.
Long story short: Rock Hudson plays an aging banker who's given a chance to live his life over, courtesy of a shadowy company which stages a person's death and then recreates an entirely new body with advanced plastic surgery techniques.
As a "Reborn," he can't shake the memories of his old life.
It's by far the best performance ever by Hudson, who is altogether believable as a man haunted by the life he'd failed in, now apparently doomed to repeat those failures in an entirely different setting.
How much of life is accident, and how much inevitable?
Frankenheimer explores this question wonderfully here.
Superb, haunting score by Jerry Goldsmith; wonderful, disturbing Francis Bacon-esque titles by Saul Bass; and an almost Hitchcockian sense of foreboding and impending doom pervade this haunting black-and-white film.
An entirely subversive movie whose theme of the absurdity of modern life was even more anti-establishment in 1966.
The DVD has been rendered beautifully and it sounds superb as well.
You could find many lesser movies to spend $13.49 on.
Highly recommended.
- Seconds - Rock Hudson as you've never seen him before
- Published: December 12, 2004
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- Section: Video
- Writer: bookofjoe
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Comments on this articleComments
I saw this eons ago, and the final scene has always stuck with me as a brilliant combination of terror, horror and helplessness. I'm going to have to rent it and see it again sometime soon.
A quibble - Frankenheimer was usually as good as his material. Seconds was a fair novel, and it was adapted for the screen by a pretty good writer, LJCarlino.
Grand Prix, which Frankenheimer directed the same year, is notable chiefly for SOUNDS OF RACE CARS! and split-screen photography. Lesser material, lesser movie. Better material, better movie: Seconds was not only good for its time but just good, period.
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Consider the title of "seconds" as slightly damaged clothing, which isn't perfect, so is sold cheaper.
This is probably one of the best horror movies which doesn't really have anything explicitly scary in it.