“Saul Bass’ unsettling title sequence sets the scene for the concise articulation of fifty-something bourgeois despair, as visualised by James Wong Howe’s distorting camerawork and the edgy discord of Jerry Goldsmith’s excoriating score... [and] one of the most chilling endings in all American cinema… ”
Arthur Hamilton is a paunchy, middle-aged banker who, dissatisfied with his safe suburban existence, elects to undergo an elaborate medical procedure (courtesy of a shady organisation) that will grant him a whole new lease of life (and then some). But what should be a simple case of paunchy-middle-aged-banker-makes-deal-with-shady-organisation-in-order-to-look-like-Rock-Hudson-and-enjoy-an-entirely-new-lease-of-life, is complicated when settling into his new life proves a lot harder than Arthur had imagined - especially when he's not entirely sure who he can trust... Rock Hudson gives it his all in John Frankenheimer’s criminally underseen cult classic, a Kafkaesque horror story of ennui, paranoia and alienation - and one of the strangest and singular films of the 60s.
