We have covered two excellent thrillers directed by Joy N. Houck, Jr. here at Senseless Cinema: Night of Bloody Horror (1969) and The Night of the Strangler (1972). Now we will consider Mr. Houck's foray into science fiction, 1972's The Brain Machine, a clever and thoughtful exploration of the differences between science and faith.
Shockingly, some of your universe's critics are uncharitable about the clearly evident qualities of The Brain Machine. For example, reviewer mark.waltz writes calls the film a "convoluted and pretentious movie that takes dreariness to a new level of sanctimonious boredom." Reviewer jh122 writes, "The story is very dull. I wouldn't watch it unless you wanted a laugh." And reviewer Chase_Witherspoon writes, "The acting is abysmal, the frequent cut-aways of the pool by the mansion and tall grey building are so over-used they become distracting, and the dialogue is laughable."
Please read on for a more accurate appreciation of the aptly titled The Brain Machine...
A car drives through a rural neighborhood to a scientific research center (ominously named the Environmental Control Center, or ECC) while discordant futuristic music plays. The man and woman from the car, the male Dr. Roth and his female assistant Dr. Portland, enter the building and walk downstairs to a basement lab.
At the same time, a security officer in the lab discovers two files missing from the file cabinets. One is a file on “the brain machine” while the other is a file on Dr. Krisner, an employee of the lab. The officer phones a general (who happens to be the passenger flying in a two-person airplane) who orders the officer to find Dr. Krisner because the two missing files are clearly connected.
Meanwhile, in the basement laboratory, Dr. Roth and his assistant Dr. Portland go over the files of four subjects chosen to be part of their mysterious experiment. These are 22-year-old Minnie Parks, 31-year-old Judd Reeves, 44-year-old Emory Neill, and 26-year-old Willard West, all of whom (coincidentally, no doubt) have no immediate family. (The distinguished cast must be noted here: Emory Neill is played by James Best and Willard West is played by Gerald McRaney.)
As they finish up looking at slides of the subjects, they see Dr. Krisner run out of the basement, which leads to a chase scene in which Dr. Krisner (who sensibly still wears his tight white lab coat) accidentally kills a security guard and drops his sensitive files, which the general’s men retrieve.
Dr. Krisner’s escape (which involves hiding in a small boat parked in a parking lot and skillfully knocking out a guard with what appears to be a toilet plunger) is intercut with intriguing shots of phone calls between the general, some people in a mansion, and a U.S. senator who explains, “I believe this country is riddled with enemies inside and outside. Your machine may be the only defense.” He adds, “Eternal surveillance is the price of liberty. That’s why I’m willing to go all the way with you.”
Unfortunately for Dr. Krisner, two men break into his hotel room and kill him. The government agents then transfer his project (E-BOX) to Dr. Roth, who believes he is working on an environmental research project.
Back at the ECC, Dr. Roth briefs his four subjects on the experiment before getting a phone call telling him the government agents will fund him if (and I am not completely certain I understand the complexities here) he gives them the results of his environmental experiment early, before it is complete. He agrees, as he needs the funding, so the experiment begins with the subjects shown photographic slides and asked for word associations. Oddly, Mr. Neill, a minister, says “Woman” when shown a photo of a cemetery. He becomes embarrassed and confused at his own association, but Dr. Portland allows him to continue the experiment. Moments later, the minister says “Woman” when shown a photo of a human skull with a grotesque eyeball.
As a result of this awkward slip, Dr. Portland says, “I’m going to let Dr. Roth take over at this point.” As she leaves the room, she adds (perhaps more accusingly than a scientist might in normal circumstances), “Aren’t you considerably more comfortable with Dr. Roth?”
Elsewhere, at the mansion where the general and federal agents hang out, the general explains to a somewhat dim-witted agent that, “To really know your enemy, you gotta know what he’s thinking, not what he’s saying.”
Back at the ECC, another scientist (Dr. Morris) fills in for Dr. Roth with the minister. In a revealing conversation, though one that might stretch scientific objectivity, the scientist eloquently explains the minister’s attitude toward metaphysics: “You know man exists, and you believe God exists, but you’re not sure which one created the other.”
At night, as the experimental subjects sleep in their small private rooms, a mysterious figure enters the room of Minnie and begins unbuttoning her pajama top. She screams, alerting the scientists, and the figure runs away. Everyone wakes up, but Dr. Portland dismisses Minnie’s experience as a nightmare.
The experiment — which consists mainly of the scientists haranguing the subjects — continues. In the subjects’ break room, disturbingly, Judd implies he would have raped Minnie and she would have liked it. The other subjects get close to threatening violence.
Meanwhile, an electrical engineer is killed when he touches some tubing on the brain machine, which appears to be as large as a building. The engineer’s death has something to do with the federal agents, who attempt to remotely disable a fail safe on the brain machine but are unsuccessful.
As the experiment unfolds, Dr. Roth speaks with the subject William as they stroll outside the ECC building. Dr. Roth asks, curiously, “Do you like trees, the woods?”
“I don’t know,” William replies. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I’m not in love with them. Not like my father. My father really loved trees. He liked the woods, the shadows, walking.”
Dr. Roth, in what might be considered another violation of scientific objectivity, tells William, “Your brain has the strongest impulses of any subject we tested.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Neither one. Nature doesn’t make moral judgments. It simply balances the books. I think.”
The men are interrupted by an alarm at the ECC building, but there are no consequences of this whatsoever.
The next scene is an extended explanation of the actual experiment being performed. Dr. Morris (who has, not at all confusingly, replaced Dr. Roth for some duties) lectures the subjects in a lecture hall while revealing the depths of scientific understanding evidenced by the research team (and the filmmakers). “Each day in the E-Box represents five years of time. You’ve all been briefed on a number of problems, discomforts, and the possible dangers involved. Now, the population explosion is going to be simulated not by increasing the number of people in the box but by decreasing the space. The walls will actually move inward toward the service module. Now certain pollutants will be added to the area, and noise levels will fluctuate.”
The scientist continues: “Now, we’ll be doing many things. We’ll be measuring the electrical impulses of your brain, and we’ll be sending impulses back into the box. You know, the magic of this computer enables us to formulate and insert into this experiment calculations that would have taken many great minds many years to perform.”
At this point, the minister Mr. Neill decides not to participate in the experiment because he feels awkward without his collar. Dr. Roth says everything is all right, implying he can leave the experiment, but in the next scene the minister is still among the subjects, and now he is wearing his collar.
The subjects enter the brain machine service module, and it is a beautiful piece of production design.
As the experiment begins, it becomes clear that the general and his agents have control over both the cameras in the service module and the electrical impulses directed at the subjects. Minnie lies on an expensive piece of electronic equipment (which appears to be a lounge chair to the naive viewer), and the remote agents send her an electrical signal which forces her to flash back to a time when she saw her father die.
Similarly, Judd is forced to relive an incident when he was under fire, apparently in Vietnam.
Minutes later, the scientists confront Minnie with an apparent contradiction in her interviews, a contradiction identified by the all-seeing computer. She said she had never been married, when in fact she had a marriage that was annulled. Minnie explains to all the scientists and subjects as she relates a somewhat confusing story about being pregnant, annulling her marriage, and having an abortion. “And when my daddy found out, he just killed him! Don’t you see? I killed my baby, and my daddy too!”
Similarly, the computer finds an untruth in Judd’s interviews, something about a man named Lt. Merriman in the war. Judd gets angry. “He was killed, you scientific birdbrain! You shove that up your computer, Morris!”
When Judd punches another subject, the computer takes over, creating a mildly annoying sound and bathing the place in red light.
All the subjects fall to the floor. “I’ll go insane!” yells Dr. Portland.
As with other events at the ECC, everything is normal minutes later and the experiment continues. This time, however, Dr. Roth calls the general’s office to find out what is going on. His inquiry is blocked.
With everything back to normal yet again, the general’s agents send an impulse to Reverend Neill, who flashes back to an affair he had with a woman during which he denies that God exists. Also, in the same flashback, we see that Reverend Neill broke into Minnie’s room and began to undress her.
When confronted about these revelations, Reverend Neill speaks out both to the scientists and to the observers watching through the cameras. “A man do dares enter the infinite must be willing to suffer the consequence. God’s wrath shall fall on your head, you and your kind. I do not have to suffer this blasphemy. A man has a right to hide his innermost thoughts from mere mortal men. God is my witness. My sins are between God and me. I don’t have to put up with this. I want out, you hear? God in heaven, I want out!”
Reverend Neill smashes an emergency window marked “FAIL-SAFE.”
At the same time, Dr. Roth tells a government agent that “the damn machine has gone berserk!”
Shockingly, the service module’s walls begin to close on the subjects as well as Dr. Portland.
Intriguingly, Dr. Roth and Dr. Morris (who are safely in a computer room down the hall) realize that the computer converts brain impulses into “exact pictures of thought, audio and visual.” They also realize the computer is going to force the subjects into realizing they are not immortal.
Dr. Roth cries out, “Mortality! You stupid fools! No man, no human ever believes they’re going to die! That’s a question of faith. That’s the paradox of mankind. No one ever really believes they’ll ever die. Don’t you understand? Faith, human faith, to a computer doesn’t compute!”
One of the government agents replies, “Yes, we understand that…now. We made a mistake.”
In the module, Minnie hangs herself for unknown reasons (and with an unknown rope).
In the climax, Judd attempts to kill Reverend Neill, but William knocks Judd out. This results in the death of both Judd and the reverend, but William is able to rescue Dr. Portland. Thrillingly, William breaks into the core of the service module and short-circuits it (cleverly using his tennis shoe soles to insulate himself). At the same time, Dr. Roth and Dr. Morris climb down into the service module to rescue Dr. Portland.
However, everything explodes.
In the chilling denouement, we watch a newscaster read a bulletin on the air: “This just in. The National Environmental Control Center reports that Dr. Roland Roth, world-famous authority on the human brain, was electrocuted along with six others when a patient broke from an experimental therapy area, ripped through a protective panel, and exposed himself and the other victims to 500,000 volts of electricity. Along with Dr. Roth, the dead include his two assistants, Dr. Carol Portland, Dr. Elton Morris, three other patients, and Willard WestEd, a patient who apparently went berserk during a routine experiment, shouting, ‘I can’t die. I am immortal. I am God.’”
In the coda, the U.S. senator tells the general, “The machine works. That’s the important thing. And this is only the beginning.” He adds, “You understand, no matter what happens, I don’t know about anything except the environmental test.”
The End
In addition to starring James Best (in the middle of his career) and Gerald McRaney (at the beginning of his career), The Brain Machine features gorgeous cinematography of the outside of a building and the outside of a mansion. The film also features some of the most philosophically heady discussions outside of a Star Trek episode. When it becomes clear that the computer they designed to visualize people's innermost thoughts will be used by the military to visualize enemy leaders' innermost thoughts, the well-meaning scientists have not choice but to destroy their scientific creation to save lives. The drama is intense and the political commentary is scathing. The choice to make the literal walls close in on the experimental subjects is a brilliant metaphor (and it is also an underutilized way to simulate population explosions).
Every aspect of The Brain Machine is thought-provoking, and for once a film this excellent has an excellent, accurate title as well. Joy N. Houck, Jr.'s heyday of directing fantasy films only lasted seven years and encompassed five films, but Mr. Houck's influence could be felt in science fiction and fantasy throughout the 1970s and beyond.