What a weird movie. Almost hallucinogenic. Psychedelic, maybe. A techno-thriller! Right, it is from 1968. Mad scientists working on a government contract go spastic. Think of Dr. Fauci and Josef Mengele with no supervision. You know we're in trouble when the government and the military industrial complex want to study the human threshold for pain. Lab rats? Ha! People! Sure, why not? What could go wrong!? Just ask Lord Acton. Our feature today is "The Power," directed by Byron Haskin.
Mr. Nordlund (Michael Rennie) arrives from the government to provide supervision at a university's laboratory which is working on the aforementioned experiment. He is very interested in Jim Tanner's (George Hamilton) experiment in isolating the area of the brain that processes pain. The team converges for a staff meeting and the weird mad scientist Henry Hallson (Arthur O'Connell) is unnerved. Why? Ethics or pain? No! He has figured it out. He has passed out a survey and determines someone in the group has the power. What power? The power to control everyone, control nature, control physiology, control hormones, control the past and future. No, Fauci is not in this group. There is a problem, he doesn't know who the person is. He tries an experiment and this confirms he's right. Also in the group is Van Zandt (Richard Carlson), Scott (Earl Holliman), Margery Lansing (Suzanne Pleshette), and Dr. Melnicker (Nehemiah Persoff).
That night...Hallson is murdered in the most unusual way. Enter Detective Corlane (Gary Merrill). Oh, Tanner and Lansing are lovers. Guess what Corlane finds out. Tanner has no verifiable past. His university and past employments, listed on his resume, have never heard of him. Now fired, Lansing tries to figure out who is framing him and who is the one with the power. He visits Hallson's widow (Yvonne De Carlo)...she is now happier that her husband is dead. Uh oh...she can't even remember her husband. Tanner heads into the California desert to track down a name written on Hallson's notepad. The team members die in weird circumstances, one by one, and Tanner finds that everyone who knows of this mystery man, either has been brainwashed, or dies. Only Margery seeks to help Tanner clear his name and figure out who this superior being is.
Confused? Well, the ending will pull all this together and provide a proper moral for possessing this almost absolute power. Is Tanner really a fraud, and is he the one with the power? Is the nubile Margery, who doesn't seem to be vital for the project, too helpful, thus the one with the power? If Tanner is not the one with the power, why doesn't the being with the power just kill him? It'll take you several minutes to figure out what you just saw beyond the end credits. Still, it is worth it. See "The Power" and revisit one of the greatest warnings delivered to humanity.
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