“Saul Bass’ unsettling title sequence sets the scene for the concise articulation of fifty-something bourgeois despair, as visualised by James Wong Howe’s distorting camerawork and the edgy discord of Jerry Goldsmith’s excoriating score... [and] one of the most chilling endings in all American cinema.”
This year’s Halloween Screening is John Frankenheimer’s criminally underseen cult classic, Seconds. Arthur Hamilton is a paunchy, middle-aged banker who, dissatisfied with his safe suburban existence, elects to undergo a strange and elaborate medical procedure that will grant him a whole new life. Rock Hudson gives it his all (and then some) in this Kafkaesque horror story of ennui, paranoia and alienation.
Along "Giant" , "Seconds" remained one of Rock's favorite of his movies. The film was based on David Ely' s novel. Rock was finding himself pigeonhelded in comedy & yearning to change his image and "Seconds" was an opportunity to break out of comedy mold.