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Tuesday, October 2, 2018

THE POWER (1968)

After producing & directing a pair of appealing Kid-Friendly fantasies (TIME MACHINE/’60; 7 FACES OF DR. LAO/’64*), George Pal hired Sci-Fi & effects specialist Byron Haskins to helm this more adult-oriented project. A B-Pic with A-List talent behind the camera (script John Gay; score Miklós Rózsa; lensing Ellsworth Fredericks), it’s perplexingly feeble; a jumble of contrivance & misdirection laid out in Movie-of-the-Week trimmings. George Hamilton stars as the head of a Pain Research Institute where astro-wannabees are tested for NASA-ready toughness. But the company board, a roundtable of fading film stars & tv regulars, has come across a threat in the form of a ‘telekinetic’ power within the group. But who holds The Power? One by one, the department heads mysteriously die; while Hamilton, suspected by the police, goes on the lam with Suzanne Pleshette to find the real culprit. With flat staging and risible ‘60s period touches (a hotel party scene especially embarrassing), its hard to see how this could have worked even if the story added up. And we haven’t even mentioned what passes for acting. (Hint: Yvonne De Carlo & Ken Murray share The Booby Prize.) Hard to believe, but two months after M-G-M sent this into theaters, they released Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, pretty much putting the kibosh on films like this.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *With Tony Randall in various ethnic makeups, DR. LAO has become a tough sell. But it’s a real charmer.

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