The Projected Man (1967)

Very disappointing...

Let's be realistic.

i must have seen a different film!!

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's a delightful but typical and overused cliché in horror movies that brilliant and obsessive scientists suddenly go bonkers and ruthlessly use themselves as guinea pigs with grotesque and catastrophic consequences. It's what makes this kind of movies entertaining, of course, but it's not exactly plausible. These brilliant men (or women) of science risk their lives even though they are practically certain the outcome will be irreversible and most likely fatal? Anyways, I'm always eager to watch a good old- fashioned "science gone wrong" horror flick; especially when it was made in Great Britain during the most flourishing decade for the genre (1960 – 1970). "The Projected Man" understandably became somewhat forgotten in between all the popular and high-grossing "Frankenstein" and "Quatermass" movies produced by the legendary Hammer Studios, but it's still a worthwhile effort with a decent screenplay, reasonable amounts of suspense and good gruesome make-up effects for its time. Doctor Steiner is a smart man, working on a hi-tech device that – during the first stage – vaporizes objects and then transforms them into pure energy that is kept is a cell, and then projected back into its original forms by a super-powerful laser. Don't ask me how it works, because I didn't understand one iota of all the technical details (and there are far too many overlong and purely technical monologues, by the way) but it's somewhat comparable to the "Tele-Pods" that previously featured in "The Fly". And here as well, the device works perfectly well with lifeless objects, but when Steiner attempts to project living tissue, the test animals die instantly and give off incredibly heavy electric shocks. Meanwhile, the director of the research facility wants the experiments to fail and even sabotages crucial demonstrations. I didn't quite capture why he – Dr. Blanchard – must terminate this genius scientific breakthrough, but at least he succeeds in driving Dr. Steiner to madness. He uses the unstable device on himself and re-emerges with a half-demolished face, a burning pair of hands capable of inflicting sudden death through electrocution and a lust for murdering everyone who gets in his way. I know it has a bad reputation, but I quite enjoyed "The Projected Man". Admittedly you require a fair share of patience and tolerance regarding stupid plot twists, dire love stories and tedious sequences set in cheap laboratory settings full of blinking lights and annoying buzzers. But when Steiner eventually goes on his rampage, it turns into a fun and unscrupulous midnight movie that I warmly recommend.

I enjoyed this film as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I am doubting I would have seen it otherwise, as I do not recall ever seeing this one play on television. A film that shares a premise with a couple of other films where a scientist is trying to do something grand, but instead of a rousing success story, the movie turns into a horror as something fails in spectacular fashion causing someone to get deformed, fused with something or have half their face looking quite icky, but on the plus side gain an ability to electrocute people so that they may take revenge on all those they perceive wronged them! Not a totally bad film as they did a wonderful job on the makeup, just takes a while for things to really get going and so for the most part during the first portion of the film we are treated to the wonderful world of grants, appropriation and sabotage. The film is already half over before we have the title character terrorizing the city and it kind of still moves slowly.The story has a woman arriving at an institution where a scientist is working on developing a device that can be used for teleportation. In fact, he has succeeded many times transporting inanimate objects from one point to the other and his only problem is doing the same with live subjects. Of course, the fact he was able to successfully transport inanimate objects should have been more than enough to secure funding for life, the people in this film seem to act as if this is not that big a deal. Kind of perplexing. Oh wow, you can transport things from one point to the other instantaneously...cool, wait, not animals. Loser! Well there is some sabotaging going on as soon the scientist who is played by the same guy who played the great Vorelli in "Devil Doll" decides to do something extreme to prove he has achieved success! The only way he can fail is if the other two scientist who are assisting him run into the room and yell, "Stop" right in the middle of the experiment...and they do, D'oh! He is transformed into a maniacal disfigured man who can touch people and kill them! This made for a very funny episode of MST3K as it is one of those films that has enough good in it so that their riffing does not have to completely carry the day. I would like to see the film without their aid as there seemed to be things that were not rectified on screen such as the mysterious man who seemed to be the one behind sabotaging the experiment. Most of the film though seems to be intact as the film only ran 77 minutes so most of it was likely featured. A lot of good jokes in this episode as I enjoyed Sheila in her underpants and the joke about being willing to give up half their face to break into drugstores and steal rubber gloves...just a very good episode.So the movie may have been good with a bit more work, it still made a fine episode of MST3K. I kind of wonder if Bryant Haliday's hair was naturally that orange color, if so it is a shame that "Devil Doll" was in black and white as that would somehow of made that film a lot creepier! This one had a great effect as Haliday as Professor Steiner's face was positively grotesque! I have seen things made a lot more recently than this film that did not look half as good as the makeup job they did here and it is the highlight of this film that is a bit strange as once again, shouldn't more people be shocked and in awe of something that can teleport stuff?

I remember this film, exhibit in Barcelona (Spain) in 1970, for the time of a week. Although it could seems incredible, and I can't offer any explanation for it, this movie was exhibit in a theater dedicated to... movies of art and big quality (that, is, Bergman, Resnais, Malle, Buñuel, and... The Projected Man). Few people saw it (luckly people, no doubt) and no reference about this very boring SF movie can be found in the Peter Nichols Science Fiction Encyclopidie, or about the author of the original novel. Very indicative. I remember of it, after all this years, a no-story, a lot of special effects that seems ridiculous effects in fact, and no more. It seems that in some countries the running time is 90 mm. and in anothers 77 min. Well, it means only a little more of pain.

Cripes!!....this one will bore your socks off. It's a little bit of a "The Fly" rip-off and a lot of endless talking, talking, talking. Dr. Steiner, of the apricot colored hair, is fooling around with teleportation and pays the price for dealing with things that man was never meant to understand (or so they say). Not only does the doctor have pastel hair and a shocking personality, but Derrick DeMarney, playing a bad guy, has the most unbelievable eyebrows you have ever seen. They soar skyward with saucy little tufts on the ends......unreal! (DeMarney was the lead in Hitchcock's "Young and Innocent" in the 1930's. What a comedown!)The story starts dragging from the first scene and never lets up. The doctor is paranoid about the Institute where he is conducting his experiments, paranoid about his ex-girlfriend who is assisting him and particularly paranoid about Lembach.....is he leaving, is he staying, is he coming or going? Oh, the indecision. What's the deal with Lembach anyway and who really cares?To sum this film up in a word....borrrrring! Of course, catch it on MSTK and get some laughs but on its own it's a loser. By the way, if you see Lembach, give him my regards.