Mindsnatcher DVD

Christopher 'Barking Mad' Walken in his first leading role. In this his first leading role Christopher Walken plays a misfit G.I. who finds himself as a guinea pig in a bizarre brain research experiment. A compelling tale of mind-numbing drugs boisterous soldiers and a sinister German scientist. Hailed as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest meets A Clockwork Orange The Mind Snatchers is adapted from the Broadway play The Happiness Cage and features a very young Walken showing his early talent for spontaneous menace giving a chilling performance as Private James Reese who... has his mental stability stolen from him. It seems that Walken never really got it back as he went on to build an illustrious film career playing killers gangsters and plain barking mad psychos. Reese is a constant offender sociopathic bordering on schizophrenic. His wild behaviour means he has inadvertently caught the attention of the army shrinks who have sinister plans for him. A German scientist Dr. Frederick (Joss Ackland) is working on a way to pacify overly aggressive soldiers by developing implants that directly stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain. Reese is 'volunteered' by his superiors for the secret medical experiment and finds himself in a military hospital. There are two other patients only one of whom Sgt. Boford Miles (Ronny Cox) can speak. Reese's attempts to discover the nature of the experiment are unsuccessful - he knows that Miles and the other patient have fatal diseases and that the work has been sanctioned by The Major (Ralph Meeker) but when enlightenment finally comes Reese wishes he had been kept from the truth after all. In 1970 Walken had screentested for the Ryan O'Neil part in Love Story. They didn't think he was right for the part but things could have been so very different if they had. Following a brief appearance in The Anderson Tapes as Sean Connery's sidekick Walken's mesmerisingly dark performance in The Mind Snatchers in 1972 meant that he was never going to play the romantic lead and instead went on to become our favourite screen weirdo. [show more]

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