Hu-Man (1975)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour 45 minutes, rated 5.2 by 98 generous cinematizens
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: France.
Verdict: Ponderous.
Tagline: Reality TV aborn(t)ing.
A scientific institute combines with a television network to place an actor in dangerous situations where his emotional reactions, multiplied by his thespian ability, will provoke a frightened response in the viewing audience, and the combined emotional energies discharged will be captured and stored in the Time Dome to fuel time travel. Sure.
They want an expendable Terence Stamp for the job and only one man can play Terence Stamp – Terence Stamp. He and his stringy mullet are plunged into the ocean. Dropped near a lava flow. Hike over an avalanche prone glacier. All this was done for real, by the way. Some of the images are spectacular, though most go on well past their view-by-date.
Stamp mugs and shouts but projects no emotion. Still the show is a success, as the producer boasts: ‘A great reaction! We even had a suicide!’ That brutal cynicism was a realistic touch.
Stamp wants to go back in time when he was happy, but will enough energy be accumulated for that. [And who cares?] The scientists want him to go to the future to see if their grant applications have been successful. The television producer wants more suicides to boost ratings.
By the way temporal retrogression is a common theme in time travel stories per Marcel Proust. When the prospect of time travel arises protagonists want to recover lost time rather than plunge ahead into the unknown in two marvellous films – La Jetée (1962) and Je t’aime (1968). Few time travellers are all the that keen to go into the unknown future.
Stamp proves once again that he cannot act. It is also apparent that the director has no interest in the actors, including, by the way, the eternal Jeanne Moreau. The scenery and the soundtrack offer some diversion, but not enough.
It was such a bomb that it disappeared from view for fifty years, and only recently has it come to light. Tant pis. That 5.2 seems way too high. By the way this was the first and last foray into drama by the director who went back to TV commercials.
Deathwatch (1980) is a far superior harbinger of Reality TV. As for the expression of emotion, almost anyone else would be better than stone-face Stamp. Well, not Steven Seagal.