‘Isn’t it easier to go forward when you know you can’t go back?‘
One of the great things about cinema, even specifically horror cinema, is that you can never complete it. You can never watch everything. I’d never even heard of John Frankenheimer’s surreal 1966 classic, Seconds, until Mike Muncer covered it for his excellent horror podcast, The Evolution of Horror, despite the fact that it is genuinely wonderful…
Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson), a middle-aged New York banker, becomes disillusioned with his life and is offered a way out by a shady organisation known only as “The Company. They promise Tony a ‘rebirth’ through the use of plastic surgery and fake papers. After agreeing to the procedure, however, things begin to take a dark turn in Tony’s life.
Part of Frankenheimer’s Paranoia Trilogy (along with The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May), Seconds serves as an interesting companion to Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy (Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant). Both sets of films explore the dark underbelly of America in the ’60s, both weaponise suspicion and paranoia as a way to create meaning, and both flirt with the concept of folk horror, but in an urban setting. One extended sequence here sees Tony arriving at a Bacchanalia party in Santa Barbara that soon descends into drunken chaos. It’s a scene that could be taken straight from The Wicker Man. And that’s where the horror comes from here. It’s rarely bombastic but rather lurking in the shadows. A sense of unease. A mounting feeling of dread. Seconds is an ominous film. This is partly because Hudson, so often a romantic lead, is playing so violently against type, partly because of the narrative itself, but mostly because of James Wong Howe’s enchanting monochrome cinematography. This is a beautifully crafted film (Howe was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for his work), and its influence has clearly resonated throughout surrealist and avant-garde cinema.
Seconds is highly thought of amongst cinephiles, but it deserves a wider audience. This is bravura filmmaking.
