George Grizzard is a nice enough young man except one night on a lonely subway platform he begins to hear this electronic monkey music in his head and pushes an old lady to her death in front of an oncoming train.
This puzzles him a little, because after all he's an electrical engineer who works on computers, is visiting New York City, and in just a few days has met a pretty and companionable young woman who dotes on him. So where did that impulse to kill come from? Well, he overcomes his doubt and takes his girl friend, Gail Kobe, on a trip to his home town of Couerville to meet Aunt Mildred. (The viewer may or may not be surprised to learn that the back roads of upstate New York are shaded by eucalyptus trees.) Only they arrive in Couerville to find that things aren't what Grizzard remembers them to be. The hotel no longer has a restaurant. A modern new building appears to have been built in the past week. Aunt Mildred's house belongs to a burly and irritable stranger. The university where he works doesn't exist. The names on the headstones in the family plot are different from his own.
So far, so good. Grizzard may not know where he is but regular viewers will recognize that he is now in the town of Twilight Zone, New York, 13905. It's one of those stories in which a man without a past must discover his identity.
Before they return to New York City, Grizzard suffers a slight wound in his wrist and discovers that the inside of his forearm is filled with wires, cables, and electrical doodads, much like Arnold's in "The Terminator." Back in the city, Grizzard manages to run into his own inventor, a Doppelgänger who is a genius but a shy loner. He invented Grizzard as a phantom who would fulfill the inventor's own dreams, gave him his own twenty-year-old memories. But things have evidently gone awry.
Grizzard's brain isn't working the way it's supposed to. The electronic whirrs and sounds of static signal the breakthrough of promitive impulses to kill. The most recently evolved, the most sophisticated part of the brain not only serves as a center for reasoning but one of its main functions is to damp down those primitive pre-human impulses. He got that right, although he didn't put it quite that way. Beaumont, the writer, must have been boning up on Hughlings Jackson, the British neurologist. Medical discretion forbids the revelation of further plot points.
George Grizzard has always been a likable actor, projecting affability and common sense. He didn't come out until late in life. Frankly I didn't want to see either Grizzard the robot or Grizzard the inventor get hurt. Gail Kobe is attractive but thirtyish, a dangerous milestone for a woman, and her yearning to "build a home" (what a revolting phrase) is almost palpable. The second half of the film slows down a bit, what with all that exposition going on, but it's interesting in itself. It's the kind of explanation that the half-hour shows rarely had time to get into.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. Good performances, good effects, engaging story. What more could you ask for?
This puzzles him a little, because after all he's an electrical engineer who works on computers, is visiting New York City, and in just a few days has met a pretty and companionable young woman who dotes on him. So where did that impulse to kill come from? Well, he overcomes his doubt and takes his girl friend, Gail Kobe, on a trip to his home town of Couerville to meet Aunt Mildred. (The viewer may or may not be surprised to learn that the back roads of upstate New York are shaded by eucalyptus trees.) Only they arrive in Couerville to find that things aren't what Grizzard remembers them to be. The hotel no longer has a restaurant. A modern new building appears to have been built in the past week. Aunt Mildred's house belongs to a burly and irritable stranger. The university where he works doesn't exist. The names on the headstones in the family plot are different from his own.
So far, so good. Grizzard may not know where he is but regular viewers will recognize that he is now in the town of Twilight Zone, New York, 13905. It's one of those stories in which a man without a past must discover his identity.
Before they return to New York City, Grizzard suffers a slight wound in his wrist and discovers that the inside of his forearm is filled with wires, cables, and electrical doodads, much like Arnold's in "The Terminator." Back in the city, Grizzard manages to run into his own inventor, a Doppelgänger who is a genius but a shy loner. He invented Grizzard as a phantom who would fulfill the inventor's own dreams, gave him his own twenty-year-old memories. But things have evidently gone awry.
Grizzard's brain isn't working the way it's supposed to. The electronic whirrs and sounds of static signal the breakthrough of promitive impulses to kill. The most recently evolved, the most sophisticated part of the brain not only serves as a center for reasoning but one of its main functions is to damp down those primitive pre-human impulses. He got that right, although he didn't put it quite that way. Beaumont, the writer, must have been boning up on Hughlings Jackson, the British neurologist. Medical discretion forbids the revelation of further plot points.
George Grizzard has always been a likable actor, projecting affability and common sense. He didn't come out until late in life. Frankly I didn't want to see either Grizzard the robot or Grizzard the inventor get hurt. Gail Kobe is attractive but thirtyish, a dangerous milestone for a woman, and her yearning to "build a home" (what a revolting phrase) is almost palpable. The second half of the film slows down a bit, what with all that exposition going on, but it's interesting in itself. It's the kind of explanation that the half-hour shows rarely had time to get into.
Anyway, I enjoyed it. Good performances, good effects, engaging story. What more could you ask for?