Sunday Halloween Morning! Seconds (1966)

This post will run on Halloween, which I will be celebrating in the East Village with my ladyfriend. This is assuming the border crossing and flight go well, two potential horror stories of their own. But I wanted to make a Halloween recommendation for a scary movie to watch from the comfort of your own home.

The problem is there are dozens of these lists of recommendations out there already. Do you really need to be reminded that Halloween and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre are frightening movies? Have you not heard of the Babadook or Us? Do you not already watch Creepshow or Trick or Treat every Halloween?

It occurred to me, though, that there are different types of horror that affect us in very different ways. The visceral fight-for-survival horror films are effective and cathartic from the time you’re old enough to realize that a stranger with a knife could kill you one day. Instead, however, I want to talk about a movie that dwells in existential horror and proposes something more terrifying in many ways: the possibility that the person you should have been was already killed slowly and surely, such that physical death is only an afterthought.

As one says: SPOILERS AHEAD.

When John Frankenheimer’s film Seconds debuted at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival it was poorly received, which just goes to show how little that means. The film gained a cult following over the years and has since been critically reassessed; it was actually brought back and honored with a special screening this year at Cannes. It’s possible that Seconds was just too far ahead of its time; younger viewers appreciated it much more than older ones did, which seems a little surprising because it’s a nightmare vision of middle-age social conformity. But, they were likely terrified this was their future.

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is the archetype of a successful American man in the mid 20th century. In fact, we meet him in New York’s Grand Central Station making the daily ride home to the suburbs that was standard for the man in the grey flannel suit and countless John Cheever characters. But there’s a distinct air of paranoia here; a stranger follows Arthur to his train and hans him a piece of paper with an address written on it before disappearing back into the crowd.  The Academy Award nominated cinematography by Wong Tung Jim, one of the greatest cinematographers in film history, sharply heightens the feeling of claustrophobia and dread; the camera follows Arthur like a stalker too. We are never alone, the film says, even as an anonymous members of the crowd.

We quickly realize that Arthur, like many men of his milieu, is a thwarted soul. When he arrives home to Scarsdale, New York, his profound unease about his life reads on his face which the camera hovers on. His daughter has married and moved away, he’s been receiving prank phone calls that unsettle him, his wife Emily (Frances Reid) talks to him with all the emotion of a grocery store clerk; in one of the most chilling images in the film, when Arthur kisses Emily, a look of horror crosses his face- he feels nothing. The cinematography and lighting make their home look like an empty building, which in many ways it is.

As for the prank calls, they’ve been coming from Arthur’s old friend Charlie, who died two years earlier. Arthur threatens to contact the police, but the caller knows too much about their shared history- things only Charlie would know. Not only is his friend alive, he claims he’s “more alive than I’ve been in the past 25 years.” He insists that Arthur must go to that address the next day and use the name “Wilson.” Charlie asks him what does he have to lose: “what have you got now?”

He goes to the address: it’s a dingy laundry. They give him a new address: it’s a meat packing plant. They’ve been expecting Mr. Wilson and take him in the back of a meat truck to a second industrial building; this one has an elegant office and reception room. He shouldn’t have drank the tea, however, and soon passes out. He has a bizarre hallucination in which he forces himself on a strange woman in a bed. When he awakens, the only one who will talk to him is an executive named Mr. Ruby (Jeff Corey) who:

has been assigned to go over the circumstances of your death with you.

The Company offers a special service: for a hefty fee, they will orchestrate your fake death, so that you can be reborn into a new identity. CPS (Cadaver Procurement Services) will provide a dead body with with your approximate proportions. In this case, Ruby suggests that Arthur “die” in a hotel fire with the classic advice:

The question of death selection may be the most important decision of your life.

The company’s founder, played to devilish perfection by Will Geer, then explains they have made a blackmail film, in which Arthur seems to assault the woman in the bed, telling him: “It’s easier to go forward when you know you can’t go back.” But, then again, he muses: “Fact is you really don’t want to go back.” They’re offering Arthur the deal of a (second) lifetime: he can begin again,  and live the life he always wanted, instead of the one he settled for. As for that old, predetermined life, “It can’t mean anything any more. There’s nothing anymore, is there? Anything at all?”

It’s a devastating scene. All Arthur can say to defend his life is: “We get along. We hardly ever quarrel.”

He submits to the procedure. His death is faked. He receives extensive plastic surgery and is reborn looking like Rock Hudson with the new identity “Tony Wilson.” Here’s a bit of trivia: Beach Boy genius Brian Wilson went to see the film during its release in 1967 and arrived late and likely on acid; he was terrified by all the characters’ direct addresses to “Mr. Wilson,” and thought the film was about him, triggering his mental breakdown. He would not see another film in a theatre until E.T. which is slightly less terrifying.

At any rate, Tony Wilson is a new man; he’s been given “what almost every middle-aged man in America would want to have: freedom, real freedom.” He has a new identity as a painter- a wish he confessed while under the influence of sodium pentathol- with a ready-made reputation, a bungalow on the beach (Frankenheimer’s own home), and a servant to help him adjust. Tony takes quickly to his new life, starting a romance with beautiful neighbor Nora (Salome Jens), who soon takes him to a wild Bacchanalia in the woods with naked revelers stomping grapes, plenty of booze, and an environment in which he can finally let go and enjoy himself uninhibitedly, for the first time in a long time.

But, the thing with Faustian bargains is they always have fine print. When Tony throws a party to meet all of his neighbors, he has too much to drink and blabs about his old life. Quickly, a group of the men take him to a back room and tell him it’s absolutely forbidden to speak of such things: company policy. Most of the men at the party, it seems, are “reborns” like himself, Nora is an employee, and in reality, he’s no freer than he was before. A life without responsibilities turns out to be as fake and empty as a life of social conformity. Either way, his desires were chosen for him and provided by those around him.

Now in despair, “Tony” goes to visit Arthur’s “widow” Emily pretending to be an old friend. The house is warmer, but suffused with sadness. She remembers her husband as a good man who “lived like a stranger here,” mostly recalling his quiet desperation. Originally, Hudson was approached to play Arthur, but felt he couldn’t handle it and would be better for the role of Tony. He is remembered today as one of the most famous closeted gay actors in classic Hollywood, which adds another layer to Seconds. Playing a lonely and repressed husband in a sham heterosexual marriage might well have scared Hudson. Still, it’s hard not to see themes of closeting and double lives in Tony and the men around him who lash out when he reveals who he really is, possibly blowing their own covers.

But, who is he in the end? Which man was the real person? Did he ever know? Or was he always playing a role for the benefit of others? We obsess constantly about the nature of freedom and how we balance our own with the needs of those around us. Seconds still terrifies me because it suggests we’ll never be free because we fundamentally lack that capacity. Instead, we’re always playing a role that approximates what we think we want. It’s easy to die a gruesome death; imagine the horror of getting wrong everything before that.

Tony/Arthur is in despair. Unable to resolve any of his questions, he returns to the Company offices to undo his new life. Apparently, many “reborns” fail this way. Once again, they have a plan. In a still shocking ending, he realizes only after they have strapped him to the gurney and started administering last rites what they meant by the “next stage” to which he’s ascending. But, as his widow already told him, when she thought he was Tony:

“Arthur died a long long time before they found him in that hotel room.”

Really, the victims of all those B-movie slashers were lucky- they only died once.

And so, what are YOU reading, watching, playing, pondering, creating, or terrifying this Halloween weekend?