Événement

4D MAN (aka MASTER OF TERROR)

Dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. (1960)
USA, 85 min.
In English.

Jack Harris' sensational followup to THE BLOB saw him working again with filmmaker Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., this time on a Faustian tale of prismatic fraternal jealousy. In 4D MAN, mutton-faced 20something scientist Tony (James Congdon) develops a technique that allows one object to pass through another (cf: the fourth dimension), while his older brother Scott (Robert Lansing) has coincidentally just invented a metal called Cargonite - so dense it can't be penetrated. Tony's recklessness and Scott's pathological resentment double-helix vis-a-vis the latter's girlfriend Linda (Lee Meriwether), instantly drawn to the younger brother's devil-may-care attitude while furthering Scott's descent into jealousy.

It doesn't take an orthogononical physicist to figure out what happens next: Scott co-opts Tony's experiment and turns himself 4D, tripling (or is it quadrupling?) down on the radiation exposure that was already giving him hellacious headaches - and, as it happens, accelerating his own aging in the process. Oscillating between unstoppability and death's door in his solid state, Scott reaches out to suck up the lifeforce of a litany of victims (including his old boss), bringing Yeaworth's narrative to a bitter interdimensional boil better seen than blurbed. From beginning to end, 4D MAN mixes a fine 1950s line between trenchant sci-fi boilerplate (ala print) and big-screen drive-in schlock-a-rama: the impossible object of earthly satisfaction drives both men to different dooms in a poetic crosshatch, while the matte-heavy SFX are breathtaking in their lo-fi conviction.