The Mind Benders (1963) 17 years before Ken Russell (and Paddy Chayefsky's) sensory deprivation thriller "Altered States" , some Brits took a fair crack at the subject......
Made by the producer-director team of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden, "The Mind Benders" remains a superbly acted, but bizarre and troubling little obscurity, long forgotten till I unearthed it yesterday.
To its great credit, it boasts a top-of-the-line roster of talent in the cast, headed by Britain's supremely versatile leading man , Dirk Bogarde, along with Mary Ure, Michael Bryant and John Clements.
And as far as I know, it's the first film treatment of real experiments in sensory deprivation. This involves cutting off all of a person's senses.....no touch, hearing, taste, smell, or vision. This is accomplished (in this film, anyway) by outfitting someone in a scuba suit with a blacked out mask, then letting them float tethered in a large tank of water......for a long time.
Scientists viewed these experiments as a method to gage the potential effects of prolonged space travel, or of solitary work in isolated environments.
The results? At the very least, massive disorientation.......in the 'worst' category, you could go stark raving bonkers. (Try to imagine one of today's cell phone/social media addicts dropped into one of those tanks......)
So we start with Prof. Sharpey ( Harold Goldblatt) who's been putting a lot time in the ole tank. Abruptly, with his briefcase stuffed with cash, he hops on a train and promptly hops right off it again......only when it's moving at full speed.
Major Hall, an MI6 scientist/operative (Clements) thinks the prof sold secrets to Russian spies. But not before the commies used Sharpey's brainwashed, easily suggestible state, a byproduct of his tank time, to sell out his country and then off himself.
Not so, believes Sharpey's associate Longman (Bogarde), who's willing to stick himself in the tank to prove he can't be brainwashed with any weird notions that aren't his own.
Major Hall and Longman's young colleague Dr. Tate (Bryant) decide to put that assumption to the test. When they extract an addled exhausted Longman from the tank after eight hours, they implant the idea that Longman thinks his lovely wife Oonagh (Ure) is a lazy slut whom he's always hated.
(Young Tate, protests about this being a nasty, rotten experiment to test on Longman, but deep down he's got no real problem with it, since he himself has been lusting after Oonagh for years.....)
Uh oh.....it works all too well. Longman swallows their debrief suggestion and subjects poor Oonagh to endless belittlement and casual abuse. And Bogarde makes use of his infinite range as an actor to make Longman's mistreatment of his long suffering (and now pregnant) wife, both frightening and pathetic. His brain's so washed and dry-cleaned even letting him hear the tape of Hall and Tate indoctrinating him doesn't snap him out of it.
(For your full enjoyment, I won't reveal what happens next......other than to say it's properly traumatic, nerve inducing and displays the actors at the top of their game.....)
All in all, quite a trim little thriller-drama, a perfect example of modest, low key but still finely crafted British cinema. Calling all Anglophiles to seek this one out.......you can find it hiding on Kanopy, the free streaming service that might be available to you through your library card. 3 stars (***).
(and unlike "Altered States", nobody in the tank turns into an apeman or goes hallucinogenic trippin' through the universe.......)
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