"Expanding Human"
| Production Order #40 and Broadcast Order #36 Shooting Days: 21-28 August 1964 First Air Date: October 10, 1964 |
| Production Credits: Writer: Francis Cockrell Director: Gerd Oswald Assistant Director: William P. Owens Director of Photography: Kenneth Peach Composer: Harry Lubin |
| Cast of Characters: Skip Homeier as Dr. Roy Clinton Keith Andes as Dr. Peter Wayne Barbara Wilkin as Susan Wayne James Doohan as Detective Lt. Branch Vaughn Taylor as Dean Flint Peter Duryea as Lee Morrow Aki Aleong as Dr. Henry Akada Jason Wingreen as Coroner Leland Robert Doyle as Mark Lake Troy Melton as Detective Sgt. Alger |
Opening Narration:
"As far back as men have recorded their history, veils
have been lowered to disclose a vast new reality—rents in the fabric
of Man's awareness. And somewhere, in the endless search of the curious
mind, lies the next vision, the next key to his infinite capacity..."
Plotline:
In a University, Professor Roy Clinton experiments
a prototype drug named CE on him to increase Mankind's brain capacity
but it modifies permanently his complete genetic structure and splits his
personality. Dr. Clinton turns out to be a superman criminal and compels
his brother-in-law to absorb a dose to join in his master plan.
Closing Narration:
"Some success, some failure, but either way the gnawing
hunger to know is never sated, and the road to the unknown continues to
be dark and strange."
Quote:
"Now then, if you'd care to sample this, I promise that you will be charmed with its effect. (...) But it's not bad at all. And you'll also find that it will lead you into a world whose glory is magnificently beyond anything you've ever known!"
—drugged Dr. Roy Clinton (Skip Homeier)
Comments:
The dark prologue with the murder of a
night watchman is effective and shows another long corridor as in most
Gerd Oswald's ones followed by a low angle shot of mutant Roy Clinton
who opens the door which reminds Colas in "The Forms of Things Unknown".
Roy Clinton hypnotizes and empties the memory of an elevator operator
and a secretary to kill wealthy Hart Bellaire—witness the reflection
of the production crew in HART BELLAIRE BUILDING's plate. As in "The
Sixth Finger", Professor Clinton's moral values are twisted and reversed:
the end justifies the means. Professor Clinton is a drug proselyte and
restrains his brother-in-law to become an ally in his cause. A cause that
includes the manslaughter of one thousand persons. Notice the shadow of
a microphone boom when recently-drugged Peter Wayne lying on the bed talks
to Roy Clinton. Moreover, drugged Clinton suffers from schizophrenia and
megalomania because his second self has delusion of grandeur ("Why not, if God's too busy? Who's to say that it's not his will, that we're not his agents!")
and self-hypnotizes his real self to control him ("I can't let him
know about me, he's too traditionally moralistic, too shallow-thinking...").
Detective Alger guns Clinton down three times who doesn't bleed. Actor
Aki Aleong remains in his field of scientist character as in his "The
Hundred Days of the Dragon". This episode shows a chemically-induced
mind-reader with a deformed face as in the season 1 "The Sixth Finger"
and "The Mutant". Mind-reading is also the power that the alien-possessed
characters of "The Inheritors" obtain. Despite "Alfred
Hitchcock Presents" writer Francis Cockrell, here's another interesting
premise destroyed by a cheap tedious and laborious execution with a petrified
pace. A talky campus/whodunit-formated episode with a "Dragnet"
police procedure approach whose plot is derived from Robert Louis Stevenson's
"Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde". It also reminds me Nicholas Ray's
1956 "Bigger than Life", starring James Mason as a cortisone
addict high school teacher with harsh standpoints.
