JW: The film was never theatrically released in the UK and suffered badly in the US after disastrous test screenings. What else is there to be concerned about? Yes, all my films have been concerned with money, power, and corruption. Never have we lived in times where this has become more transparent. Decay and corruption travel in tandem with money and power. And, like teeth subjected to sugar, they rot. These latter concerns appear constant throughout your body of work. JW: The film also raises serious moral considerations about the state’s right to use criminals for experimental purposes, with tests carried out more in the name of money and power than in the hope of providing a cure. At the moment we see it as benign, but it won’t always be like that. We don’t seem to realise that our lives are already gripped in the steely de-humanising equivalent of a totalitarian state. And don’t let me start on machines used in surveillance. That clearly illustrates the depth of our addiction. The withdrawal symptoms would be too painful politically. That’s why no government will touch the motorist, despite the fact that the very future of our planet depends on restricting the use of cars. Find the Achilles heel, exploit it! Hence Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Hollywood Movies all highly addictive. The object of every manufacturer and advertiser was to make people become addicted to something, anything. But what was it? I began to realise it was a culture based heavily on addiction. Its motivation was totally different from that in the UK of those days (but sadly no longer).
America puzzled me from the moment I went there in the mid 1960s. Machines grow more and more seductive we are now addicted to them. MH: I share Benson’s fear of machines and their force that’s the reason I accepted the job. This has surely become more relevant in an age increasingly reliant on new technologies. JW: A key aspect of the film is Benson’s fear of machines and their manipulative power. It turned out better that way although watching the puzzled executives waiting for those colours finally to arrive caused me great amusement. So with Fred and my cameraman, Richard Kline, we managed to eliminate colours other than black, white, grey and flesh tones, introducing red for Benson’s first lethal attack and a mass of primary colours for his own demise at the end. I had wanted to shoot the film in black-and-white but Warner’s baulked at the idea. In the studio you have complete control over the way a film looks and sounds, and that’s a state I like to be in. Once I went for it I was as happy as a sand boy. Remember, until then, I had only worked on location.
MH: I was lucky enough to meet a wonderful production designer, Fred Harpman, who convinced me to build the hospital in a studio. JW: How then did you arrive at the film’s extremely distinctive look? Turning the pages I recognised that the loneliness, the sparseness of his work, was key to my thinking. I had never heard of Hopper then nor had most people in the UK. Browsing in the art book section I saw a spine with his name on it, and pulled out this substantial volume of his work. There was/is a bookshop on Hollywood Blvd called Pickwick’s.
MH: Yes, Edward Hopper did influence my thinking (if not the look) in making the film. JW: I was frequently reminded of the paintings of Edward Hopper in the film’s evocation of this loneliness and alienation. It brought me closer to understanding the loneliness and fear that Harry Benson, the film’s focal character, would experience on screen. I knew nobody, but turned this to my advantage. I was also working in LA for the first time. It was Warner’s policy in those days to embody writer/director/producer in one person and that’s what they did their faith in the film-maker was absolute. Mike Hodges: I tried, and hopefully succeeded, in creating a world that would override time and fashion. Jason Wood: It’s coming up for the 30th anniversary of the film, but with its look at how violence is controlled and individuals are manipulated by science and society, The Terminal Manstill feels extremely prescient. It’s a superb, deeply pessimistic sci-fi thriller that has proved notably prophetic in a number of ways. Not least 1974’s remarkable, and remarkably overlooked adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel The Terminal Man, in which a psychotic George Segal so enjoys the calming sensations caused by a computer implant designed to quell his violent impulses that he embarks on a murder spree to experience further treatment. The consensus? That there’s far more to Hodges than the seminal Get Carter.
With the attention shown his latest film, pin-sharp noir I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, critics and audiences are re-assessing the work of British auteur Mike Hodges. The Terminal Man By Jason Wood 30 years on, Mike Hodges’ overlooked 1974 chiller remains prescient and troubling
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