The Cube (1969)
An unnamed man, simply called "The Man" is trapped in a cubical white room where anyone else can enter and leave, but which he himself apparently cannot leave. A stool is brought in covered in strawberry jam, the furniture changes throughout the play. The main character, is subjected to an increasingly puzzling and frustrating series of encounters, as a variety of people come through various hidden doors. But, as many remind him, he can only leave through his own door, so he must find it to leave. Originally airing on NBC's weekly anthology television show NBC Experiment in Television in 1969, the production was produced and directed by puppeteer and filmmaker Jim Henson, and was one of several experiments with the live-action film medium which he conducted in the 1960s, before focusing entirely on The Muppets and other puppet works.
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Reviews
A Masterpiece!
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
'Time Piece' was fantastic, and Jim Henson's follow up of sorts is even better. It is called 'The Cube' and is about a man trapped in a cube that he cannot escape...and that is, essentially it, but that is also not it at all. It sounds simple, but gets more complicated by the second as strange characters come and go and come back again and go away again; the man is confused and so are we, it seems that there is no solution to a problem so absurd, so nonsensical. It takes on a style of sorts (story-wise) that expresses what the halfway point between the meeting of the worlds of 'The Twilight Zone' and a Samuel Beckett play would look like. It is so surreal and thought provoking, but also extremely funny (an important aspect of Henson's entire career was, obviously, his witty sense of humor that hasn't aged in the slightest), and kind of disturbing and weirdly sad and sadly weird (sadly as in the weirdness itself sometimes takes on a more tragic feeling, even when it's still being very humorous, not as in the weirdness itself is an unfortunate product of the film, as it is certainly quite the opposite of THAT), and genuinely really terrifying in parts (those laughing clowns, the boy on the bike singing "you'll never get outta here..." *shudders*). It's so many emotions bottled up into one stylistically consistent surrealist comedy that is as metafictional, postmodern (more so in an artistic sense than in a philosophical sense, although there's a little of that, too), philosophical, strange, confusing, thought provoking, troubling, dark, funny, and entertaining as I could have ever anticipated!
I haven't personally bought it, but there IS an internet company supposedly offering copies for sale at $11.99. The website is www.dvdmovie-finds.com As for myself, I also have memories of seeing this as a child and having it stuck in my head and wondering all this time if it was just a nagging old dream. Amazing! It's almost as if it was some bizarre cultural experiment by Henson to see if he could get some program in your brain that won't go away. There's something about the idea of being in a small "room" that allows visitors to enter and exit, but NOT the occupant, that is so oddly frightening, yet thought-provoking, that young minds (I was eight-years-old at the time) buying into the fantasy can never forget it. It's an early brush with the frustrating world of Kafka. I'm tempted to buy the DVD and watch it again, but maybe knowing it WASN'T a dream and could be simply a silly old TV program might ruin the sense memory. Then again, maybe that website is lying and the film truly ISN'T available, thus keeping 'The Cube' as fittingly out of reach as getting out of the cube was to the occupant!
I have looked for information on this show FOREVER. Wish I had a way of buying it. Like other comments I have seen here, I saw this show many years ago as I teen. However I don't think a year has gone by since that I have not thought of it one or more times. I have also tried to talk with other people about it but other than my brother, who also happened to watch when I did, I have never yet found anyone else who has seen it.It was such a bizarre story. And of course it pre-dated even VCRs so I have NO idea how a person could get a copy. I'm not even sure who would own the rights to it. I am pretty sure it was not from a major network. I can not imagine a mainstream network in 1969 that would have shown it let alone developed it.It definitely had an impact on me.
Me too. I've been telling people about this for 30 years. I can't believe I found proof it really exists! I was starting to think I'd dreamed it. Jim Henson? That's quite a leap. From "The Cube" to "Sesame Street". It was almost 35 years ago and I just happened to catch it one weekend morning. (I think I was hung over or coming down or something.) But it left a lasting impression on me. I would LOVE to see it again.