“A motion picture that dares to be different,” proclaims the text on the film trailer for The Power, a 1968 thriller directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal, with screenplay Jon Gay based on the novel by Frank M. Robinson.
And this blog post is something different too: Usually for this series, I’ve posted about the movies that shaped me when I was younger, and movies that inspired bits of my writing and composition for Agent of C.A.R.D.S. However, when I first saw The Power relatively recently, I had written the ending to Agent of C.A.R.D.S. long ago, if not already laid out the comic. So it was not an inspiration — more like, observing the similarities in visuals and plot points and being like “Wow, someone beat me to a lot of the specific ideas I already had!”
One thing that makes the movie different is how it seems to belong in several different decades at once. As other internet writers have observed: the film has the bright color and aesthetics of its contemporary late 1960s setting, yet has the feel and traditional techniques of old 1950s science fiction (what George Pal and Byron Haskin were mainly known for collaborating on). At the same time, it kind of foreshadows both the later 1980s slasher genre, and — trying not to get into too much spoilers — if it was a 2010s movie it would have been part of a long line of sequels and spin-offs.
Getting back to the 1960s aesthetic… if you’re a fan of midcentury modern architecture and home interiors from that period, this film is a treat. All the spaces we follow the protagonist into as he tries to crack the mystery of who really killed his co-worker.
Yes, this is a “whodunit” movie, and the first time watching it casually, I really didn’t know who done it. (Although watching it the second time through and paying attention to details, it was obvious.)
The story’s own main character, Professor Jim Tanner (George Hamilton), is not off the hook on the list of suspects. We first see him doing some sketchy torture experiments, recruiting young college students who need the money, testing them to see how much pain they can endure. Tanner explains the process to government liaison Arthur Nordlund (Michael Rennie), providing exposition for the audience. Tanner is one member of a team of researchers, and he is looking into why some people endure harsh conditions in, say, space — while others die of the same conditions.
At some point, the researchers anonymously tested their own IQ, and the paperwork came back indicating one of them had results off the charts apparently indicating psychic powers. Professor Henry Hallson (Arthur O’Connell) is afraid that someone on the team could do anything and hurt the other team members with their mind if they so willed. However, no one on the team admits to being the psychic. Though he seems skeptical, Professor Carl Melnicker (Nehemiah Persoff) sets up a psi-wheel with a paper and pencil. It spins around to the intriguing score of composer Miklós Rózsa, so someone at the table has telekinetic powers — but again, won’t admit it.
Another young researcher, Professor Talbot Scott (Earl Holliman) has thoughts on exceptional powers. Kids grow up looking up to caped comic book heroes — could a real super-man exist?
Tanner is in a relationship with the only woman on the team, Professor Margery Lansing (Suzanne Pleshette), and they are at his apartment not taking the matter particularly seriously when they are interrupted by a phone call…
Hallson had been at the work building late at night to look at the files. He is suddenly in distress and falls over in what looks like a heart attack, but what actually kills him (or how his already dead body is abused) is much worse…
Tanner and Lansing go to the laboratory after Henry’s wife Sally Hallson (Yvonne DeCarlo) was wondering what happened to him. They find the weird way he was murdered, and see a piece of paper with the name “Adam Hart” scrawled on it.
But who is Adam Hart?
Mysterious circumstances abound, Tanner’s credentials are suddenly declared to be fraudulent, and he gets fired by Professor Norman Van Zandt (Richard Carlson), while police investigator Mark Corlane (Gary Merrill) seems to consider Tanner a suspect…
Here Be Spoilers
I love how it’s not even obvious in the beginning whether Tanner is a good guy or a bad guy. Usually when movies want to tell you that the protagonist is definitely a good guy — or even a bad guy worth redeeming — they show him in a “pet the dog” moment being nice to another character with no strings attached. Tanner, instead, pays college students to get tortured for science? So there are some ethical issues, even by the standards of the time. If the audience is meant to look down on him for that, Tanner definitely gets his comeuppance through the second two thirds of the movie as he goes through his hero journey with a lot of hardship himself to investigate, clear his name, and find out who really murdered his co-worker. Seeing what this guy endures through the movie — and it’s a deliberate theme — you really gain a lot of respect for the character.
After Tanner and Lansing go to the laboratory and find Hallson’s body strapped into the human centrifuge at lethal speeds with his eyes popped out, they try to comfort his widow who had asked them to check on her husband to begin with, and who tells them that “Adam Hart” had been a childhood friend of her husband although she doesn’t know any other details.
Later, however, Mrs. Hallson claims she didn’t call Tanner at all, information in the logbook suddenly goes missing, and even Tanner’s credentials were messed with so he is being considered both a suspect in the crime, and an academic fraud all along.
Tanner takes a walk in the town at night, has a bunch of trippy hallucinations (or maybe the weird things he is seeing are real?), and gets onto a carousel which malfunctions and gets close to killing him the same way that Hallson apparently died.
After that, he decides he has to leave town against the detective’s orders and find out who is messing with his head and framing him for his co-worker’s murder. He travels to Hallson and Hart’s old hometown and is told conflicting descriptions of what Hart looked like — are one or more witnesses lying, or sincerely misremembering things from mind control? I kind of enjoyed the ambiguity. At least one witness who turned out to be messing with him on purpose — and from years-old orders — dumps Tanner off at an artillery range in the middle of nowhere, and Tanner survives another attempt on his life.
Returning to the city, Tanner goes to visit Mrs. Hallson who is confused rather than grieving. She not only forgets calling Tanner, but doesn’t remember being told about an “Adam Hart,” admits she got rid of evidence, and admits her memory of her husband is already slipping away and doing the whole “I’m not trying to seduce you” pose with Tanner.
Tanner next goes to the house of Professor Melnicker, who fights him thinking Tanner did it. They smooth things over, and Tanner, Lansing, and Melnicker decide to stick together as they attend a social event. As Tanner is weirded out by a strange conversation with another random attendee and unsettled by something about the traditional music, they go into another room with a swinging 60s rock party where they dance until they are exhausted — and Melnicker is found dead. At this point it’s kind of a slasher movie where whoever the culprit is, is picking off researchers one by one.
Even Nordlund, the government employee who was at the table but isn’t part of the actual research team, seems to be a target — he survives an apparent psychic heart attack while Tanner and Lansing are trying to reach him, and Tanner does a suspenseful maneuver into a malfunctioning elevator to get to him.
That leaves Scott and Van Zandt. Nordlund proposes killing both of them to be safe, but Tanner says he would rather continue to investigate, saying Lansing would be safer staying with Nordlund.
Tanner goes to the home of Professor Van Zandt and his wife, and overhears a muffled conversation showing they are cool with “Adam Hart” and there seems to be a plot where some new order will be governed not by the political establishment or military, but my men of science.
Whatever technocratic dystopia was being planned for, ends up being irrelevant — after Tanner survives yet another attempt on his life in the form of a dramatic car chase, he learns that “Adam Hart” showed his gratitude for Van Zandt’s alliance by burning down the house and killing the couple.
Scott is the only other professor unaccounted for, and as Tanner approaches him, Scott panics and — thinking Tanner has framed him — gets tragically killed in a shootout with police.
Tanner and Lansing are reunited near the experiment rooms for testing people in harsh conditions, and “Nordlund” approaches behind them. Tanner addresses him: “Congratulations, Adam Hart.”
(He had inadvertently left his girlfriend alone with the psycho. Whoops.)
In their final standoff, Nordlund / Hart tries to kill Tanner with his mind — putting him through various extreme pains through a charmingly low-budget trippy sequence, taunting him to “Give it up Tanner, give it up.” Hart appears to be able to stop Tanner’s beating heart with his mind —
— but then Tanner recovers, stands up, and turns the same power back on Hart. The latter, alarmed, tries to back out of the room in vain. His own target kills him by cardiac arrest with a steely-eyed stare.
Lansing figures out what the situation was: there were two people with the power. Tanner himself was the secret psychic who had the extraordinary test scores and turned the psi-wheel without realizing it. His latent powers attracted the attention of longtime psychic Adam Hart alias Nordlund, who then set out to eliminate his rival in power. He killed off the other committee members one by one — apparently as bait for Jim Tanner.
I’m not sure how this works — I mean, Hart had many chances to kill Tanner at the beginning of the movie or any other time they were alone together? It would make more sense if Hart genuinely didn’t know which of the team members had the power at first — but no, he was definitely after Tanner from the beginning, as shown by the altered documents. Also, did Hart fake a heart attack and elevator malfunction to look like one of the intended victims? Or was it a genuine phenomenon that the approaching Tanner had inflicted on him without realizing it?
There’s plenty of ambiguity in this movie — some of it just seems like plot inconsistencies, but some of it is a feature and part of the fun. Like, is this character deliberately gaslighting some other character, or are they genuinely confused from mind control?
This is just a fun, if sometimes silly, speculative thriller. There’s a reason it’s not particularly famous nor considered a classic, like previous Byron Haskin / George Pal collaboration War of the Worlds (1953). But the battle of mind games is an interesting watch, and George Hamilton makes a compelling protagonist, reminding me of something between Neo from The Matrix and Doctor Strange from the MCU. In a later era this kind of film would be the first in a franchise, a superhero origin story.
In the ending scene, Tanner and Lansing step outside in the sunrise with the globe sculpture on the lawn. Tanner comments: “They say that power corrupts, and that absolute power… I wonder.” The dialogue by itself leaves you hanging — Tanner has only just discovered his power and could go in either direction with it, with the potential of corruption — but the uplifting music and sunshine imply that he will use his power for good after all.
I saw this a couple of years ago at the insistence of my uncle, who had made a recording of it from a TCM broadcast. And, honestly, some part of me is still trying to figure out what it all really meant...