<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Seconds (1966), directed by the late, great John Frankenheimer (1930–2002), is a faithful adaptation of David Ely’s novel of the same name, and was scripted by Lewis John Carlino. Along with The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964), it continued Frankenheimer’s examination of the public and private misuses of modern technology, although he did not consider that a unifying theme.

“It was never conscious on my part as any kind of a trilogy or anything like that,” he told interviewer Matthew R. Bradley. “To me, they were just three totally divergent subject matters that I did. It’s been pointed out to me that that similarity exists, and I say, ‘Oh, yeah? I never thought about that.’” A box-office disappointment at the time of its release, Seconds has since been hailed as a classic.

Frankenheimer was one of a generation of filmmakers to emerge from the Golden Age of television. Between 1954 and 1960, he directed 152 live dramas (including forty-two episodes of the anthology series Playhouse 90, many of which were written by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling), averaging one every two weeks and earning six consecutive Emmy Award nominations.

After his theatrical debut, The Young Stranger (1957), Frankenheimer switched to feature films full time with The Young Savages (1961). A period of personal disillusionment followed the assassination of his close friend, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968, but he bounced back with the spectacular back-to-back successes of French Connection II (1975) and Black Sunday (1976).

When several films failed to catch fire at the box office, he returned triumphantly to TV, winning Emmys for Against the Wall (1994), The Burning Season (1995), Andersonville (1996), and George Wallace (1997). Proving he still had the old magic, Frankenheimer directed the theatrical thriller Ronin (1998), and earned another Emmy nomination for Path to War (2002).

Seconds was one of Frankenheimer’s few out-and-out SF films, along with Prophecy (1979), which was profitable despite its critical drubbing, and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), a fiasco on which he replaced another director. Its central conceit is a process whereby, through surgery, people who are wealthy but aging can buy themselves not only a new identity, but also a youthful body.

Along with the unnerving strings of Jerry Goldsmith’s superb score, the title sequence by Saul Bass sets a discomforting tone from the start, as putty-like facial flesh is shown apparently twisting in extreme close-up. The film is breathtakingly photographed in black and white, with distortion lenses, by James Wong Howe, whose work was justly nominated for an Oscar.

Himself a sometime actor, Frankenheimer was an actor’s director, with many performers also nominated for his films, and in Seconds he elicited what may have been the best performance of Rock Hudson’s career. Frankenheimer also had a fondness for using actors who had been blacklisted in the McCarthy era, including several (John Randolph, Will Geer, Jeff Corey) in Seconds alone.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Businessman Arthur Hamilton (Randolph) is handed a slip of paper by a stranger in New York’s Grand Central Station, and then gets a call from a supposedly dead friend, Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton), urging him to go to the address on the paper. Drugged upon his arrival, he believes he is hallucinating his rape of a young woman, and glimpses a room full of men waiting.

Mr. Ruby (Corey) explains that the film of his staged “rape” will be held to ensure that he cannot change his mind, now that the company has faked Hamilton’s death with a body provided as part of their service. He meets the Old Man (Geer) who started the company, and a truth drug is used to elicit ideas about the ideal profession—a painter—for him to have in his new identity.

When he has healed from his surgery, Hamilton emerges from the bandages as Hudson, with the new name of Antiochus “Tony” Wilson, and his ostensible servant John (Wesley Addy) at his side as a company-placed watchdog. He meets Nora Marcus (Salome Jens) on the beach, and they begin an affair, but overall, he finds he is having trouble adjusting to this new lifestyle.

At a party, a drunken Tony becomes indiscreet and alludes to his transformation, without realizing that all of the guests—indeed, all of the residents of his community—are “seconds” like him. Completely disenchanted, he tries to visit Hamilton’s wife, Emily (Frances Reid), who still believes he is dead, but agents of the company catch up with him and return him to their offices.

There, Tony is ushered into the “waiting room” and sees Charlie, learning that those who have trouble making a go of it with their new lives are required to recruit their friends, as Charlie did Hamilton. Tony thinks he is simply waiting for another chance, with another new identity, but in a shocking finale he realizes that he is to provide the raw material for the next faked death.

A remake of Seconds by Jonathan Mostow has been announced, but it is doubtful that any advances in technology can improve upon Frankenheimer’s chilling original. At once terrifying and thought-provoking, it is full of telling details like Nora referring to Tony as a “dirty old man,” and stylistic flourishes like a cut from one hand signing papers to another one holding a scalpel.