After the opening credits, a kind of prologue rolls on for five minutes, narrated by Paul Frees (whose voice you'll recognize) doing a parody of himself. "What happens when you sleeeep? You dreeeem. And the dreeeems are filled with terror." We're treated to drifting images -- expanding spider webs, floating silhouettes, a surrealistic fist clutching a surrealistic eyeball that stares helplessly out of the screen.
Are your dreams like that? If so, you should stop dreaming at once. Statistically, the most common dream isn't of flying or appearing naked in public but of being pursued. They're not much fun. I'm usually chased by some unidentified monsters but I'm trying to slog my way through some bog filled with molasses so I have to run in slow motion. The sex dreams are usually amusing, at least until the censor brings in the hobby horses.
"Dreeems are filled with meeeening," the narrator tells us, but the most recent theory, last time I checked, was that they aren't. While we're asleep, certain structures deep in our brains are defragging themselves, getting rid of some memories, assembling others. It generates a lot of neuronal activity and randomly bombards the cortex, the reasoning part of the brain. The cortex weaves all of this stuff together and tries to make sense out of what is essentially nonsense. Some people take all this more seriously than others. The tribes of Central Australia had a concept of "dream time," in which these imagined events actually took place in a kind of mystical alternative universe.
Why do I go on like this, you ask? I don't know. Maybe I'm just dreeeming that this is being written. Who knows? A poet of ancient China, Zhuangzi, once remarked that last night he dreamed he was a butterfly. Today, is he a butterfly dreaming that he is Zhuangzi?
Okay. I think the Thorazine has hit bottom. Back to the movie. I remember seeing it when it was released and I thought it was spooky. It still has its spooky moments but it takes a while to get going because the beginning resembles an episode from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Stanwyck is married to a bitter blind man. The blind man's attorney is Robert Taylor. The blind husband is apparently killed in an explosion and a sleekly handsome younger man, Lloyd Bochner, begins to show up at night, when she's supposed to be sleeping, and squires her around. Stanwyck can't tell the dreams from the reality.
The reason it's still a bit spooky is that the director uses every tried and true cliché in the book, no matter how hoary. If a frightened woman is standing in the middle of the frame, a hand reaches in from off screen and grasps her shoulder. (Twice.) Stanwyck screams more often, and louder, than in all her previous movies put together. The plot is ludicrous, which is why I'm not getting into it in any more detail, and the drollery is helped immensely by the score. The "suspense" music, built around four notes on an upright bass, is straight out of an Abbott and Costello movie.
It's utter schlock that leaves multiple loose ends dangling. (How did the fake wedding ring get on the floor of the fake chapel?) I've now seen it twice and that's enough.
Are your dreams like that? If so, you should stop dreaming at once. Statistically, the most common dream isn't of flying or appearing naked in public but of being pursued. They're not much fun. I'm usually chased by some unidentified monsters but I'm trying to slog my way through some bog filled with molasses so I have to run in slow motion. The sex dreams are usually amusing, at least until the censor brings in the hobby horses.
"Dreeems are filled with meeeening," the narrator tells us, but the most recent theory, last time I checked, was that they aren't. While we're asleep, certain structures deep in our brains are defragging themselves, getting rid of some memories, assembling others. It generates a lot of neuronal activity and randomly bombards the cortex, the reasoning part of the brain. The cortex weaves all of this stuff together and tries to make sense out of what is essentially nonsense. Some people take all this more seriously than others. The tribes of Central Australia had a concept of "dream time," in which these imagined events actually took place in a kind of mystical alternative universe.
Why do I go on like this, you ask? I don't know. Maybe I'm just dreeeming that this is being written. Who knows? A poet of ancient China, Zhuangzi, once remarked that last night he dreamed he was a butterfly. Today, is he a butterfly dreaming that he is Zhuangzi?
Okay. I think the Thorazine has hit bottom. Back to the movie. I remember seeing it when it was released and I thought it was spooky. It still has its spooky moments but it takes a while to get going because the beginning resembles an episode from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Stanwyck is married to a bitter blind man. The blind man's attorney is Robert Taylor. The blind husband is apparently killed in an explosion and a sleekly handsome younger man, Lloyd Bochner, begins to show up at night, when she's supposed to be sleeping, and squires her around. Stanwyck can't tell the dreams from the reality.
The reason it's still a bit spooky is that the director uses every tried and true cliché in the book, no matter how hoary. If a frightened woman is standing in the middle of the frame, a hand reaches in from off screen and grasps her shoulder. (Twice.) Stanwyck screams more often, and louder, than in all her previous movies put together. The plot is ludicrous, which is why I'm not getting into it in any more detail, and the drollery is helped immensely by the score. The "suspense" music, built around four notes on an upright bass, is straight out of an Abbott and Costello movie.
It's utter schlock that leaves multiple loose ends dangling. (How did the fake wedding ring get on the floor of the fake chapel?) I've now seen it twice and that's enough.