Sci-Fi Film Fiesat: The Swingin' 60s - Volume 5: Mind Blowing Ris of the Machines by Chris Christopoulos - HTML preview

Find Professor Sigmund Marx.

Bring the professor to this command.

If he resists destroy him.”

“The trouble with this younger generation, they got no respect for the good old days “

Garth’s capsule materialises near an abandoned town with the imaginative name of

Old Town. Ans of course there’s a newer town with the equally imaginative name of

New Town in which,,,wait for it… .Future Industries Inc. operates.

A man and his old-timer Uncle Pete enter the town in a jeep and argue over the merits of life in the big city versus life in the past in a place like Old Town. They end their friendly banter with a time-honoured truce between the generations over a “couple of snorks.”

While this is going on, Garth is checking out Old Town. Upon entering a dilapidated building, he spots a wall calendar with the year 1906 printed on it – the year presumably that the town had been last been occupied. Garth finds himself in a time period that apparently has life and substance but within a building from another earlier time period that is but a distant memory eaten away by atrophy. A meeting of three time periods in a sense with one having given rise to another.

A German Shepherd by the name of Tex that accompanied the two men, has sensed the Cyborg’s presence and that perhaps there is something different about the nature of Garth. As they stand facing each other, the canine becomes more aggressive toward Garth who resorts to using his gun to stun Tex rendering him unconscious.

Wondering where the dog is, the two men come back out onto the street to find the dog lying immobile. Suddenly their attention is drawn to a noise coming from a building leading the men to conclude it was caused by “some stinking miserable helmet no doubt.” As they proceed to flush him out, the old timer enters the building and confronts Garth who is at first under the impression that the old man had been sent by someone to pursue him. Garth manages to disable Uncle Pete with his gun and does the same thing with the nephew when he enters the building. Garth then uses the men’s vehicle to make his getaway and proceed with his mission.

“RESEARCH TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW”

Garth makes his way to a service station in New Town and asks the two men in attendance the whereabouts of “a facility near here known as Future Industries.”

One of the attendants recognises the jeep Garth is driving as belonging to Sam Gilmore and decides to call the Sheriff.

Garth meanwhile has gone off to indulge in some breaking and entering and emerges from a store wearing a brimmed hat and a long overcoat, from the bottom of which protrudes his shiny silver boots. A middle-aged man wandering around the streets in that get up would never attract attention or comment, surely!

At the Sheriff’s station, the only action seems to be a desultory game of cards. In fact, the local reporter ‘JC’ intends to leave Desert Town as it’s “no place for a real reporter’ unlike Los Angeles “where the action is.” A phone call to the Sheriff is about to change this perception when he learns of strange goings-on at Future Industries, a stranger in a red Jeep, along with a possible bank robbery in which the safe hasn’t been even touched.

The Sheriff and his deputies assemble at the scene of the apparent burglary to investigate what happened. JC follows them in his cute little putt-putt car with a lawn-mower engine looking like it would be more at home zipping around the streets of the former Soviet Union. The car that thinks it can – love it.

Finally, having something to do, our laconic Sheriff confirms that Sam Gilmore had gone to old Town and orders that all the off-duty officers be brought in to patrol every alley and Street in town and pick up the stranger in question. Meanwhile, the Sheriff intends to go out to Old Town himself to investigate.

At Future industries Professor Marx is using his radio telepathy device involving a chimpanzee test subject ad a game of chess. Assisting the professor is an attractive Dr. Sharon Mason. At 9.00 am the next day, the professor is to meet with a committee of Washington officials to conduct a demonstration of his radio telepathy device. If all goes well, the professor’s project may very well be moved to New York which pleases Sharon no end as she feels somewhat constricted bvy small life. As the professor goes to leave for the long drive to Los Angeles, Sharon has no idea just how much her life and her entire future is about to change…..

Not long after the professor leaves the lab, Sharon is startled by unexpected appearance of Garth who silently entered without knocking or announcing his presence. When informed that the professor has left for Los Angeles to give a lecture, and that he wont be back until morning, Garth’s responses suggest that he is privy to information that no-one is supposed to know about.

Somehow Garth is aware that “tomorrow at nine o'clock the world is destined to learn about professor Marx's important breakthrough in the field of radio telepathy’

which he declares is “a fact of History….a fact which must be altered.” he goes on to state that he is here because of professor Marx’s intended demonstration which will not take place as it involves a premature scientific discovery – a scientific catastrophe – for which the “scientific world of today is not ready for this breakthrough.”

Sharon listens to what this mysterious and seemingly unhinged stranger has to say warning of the danger should the professor’s breakthrough fall into the wrong hands resulting in the warlords of tomorrow using radio telepathy “or evil purposes” by creating a “world of torture and terror, a world where free thoughts ceases to exist” and where “the minds of men are controlled by dictators through the application of radio telepathy.”

It is little wonder that Sharon tries to placate what to her is an obviously insane man by assuring him that she understands what he has been telling her, while hoping for a way to escape from his presence. Garth, however will have none of it. He will have to make Sharon understand and assist him in his mission.

Garth proceeds to give Sharon a demonstration of radio telepathy by using it on her by means of his own radio telepathy device that is apparently built into him.

Through this process Sharon learns that’

• Garth is a cyborg, a cybernetic organism.

• All special agents of the future are equipped in this manner.

• Garth along with others were captured by the leaders of the Freedom Movement

• The mass of the population is not free thinking.

• The majority of the people have receivers implanted in their brain since childhood, Thoughts are controlled by the state.

• The enemy will have discovered Garth’s purpose and will send Tracer agents after him.

• Tracers are cyborgs programmed to find and kill.

• Garth carries a homing device in his chest.

• Once the tracers pick up his signal he cannot escape them.

• The beamer device has to be removed and destroyed.

With this last point in mind, Sharon undertakes to take Garth to her friend, Dr Zeller.

When she awakens, she willl not remember that Garth had forced his will upon her.

All Sharon will know is that she understands his mission and that she must assist him. This forcing of compliance upon Sharon, although a demonstration of the consequences of thought telepathy, raises all sorts of moral and ethical questions not to mention the exercise of free will.

An old man’s way out tall tales!

Three suspects that don't match the description of the wanted man!

Alarmed citizens!

Events seemingly out of control!

Rumours in the press!

Potential public panic attack!

What else will Garth lave in his wake as he proceeds with his mission?

“Those weird boots - out of sight!”

As one might expect, Dr Zella’s rational and scientific perspective on life wont allow him to entertain the possibility of Cyborgs time-travelling into the past to change the outcome of the future. He can’t understand what has come over Sharon to aloow herself to be taken in be a total stranger with “fantastic tales.”

Zella diagnoses that Garth is suffering from schizophrenia and that he oses a danger requiring the intervention of the police. I guess it’s time for a dose of incontrovertible evidence to convince the good Dr Zella.

The evidence comes in the form of a sneak peak at some of Garth’s incorporated technological bits and pieces in his chest and forearm. When Garth informs Zella od the need to remove the metal plate from his chest by means of an operation, Zella agonises over the fact that he not a medical doctor, that such an operation is illegal and that the whole notion of cyborg’s and time travel is “insane.”

Dispationately, Garth outlines the nature of the procedure from the removal of the plate and the extraction of the beamer capsule. Garth assures Zella that he can feel nothing as the nerves have been sealed off.

While the operation is about to commence, a bunch of teenage hot-rodders including Zella’s daughter, Laura arrive at the house. More disturbingly, two tracers have arrived from the future and are about to start on a long distance marathon to track down Garth: While the youngsters are shaking their bits and pieces in hernia and slip disc ‘60s dance moves, we find out a bit more about Garth’s future world:

• Technology exists to create a miniature transmitter that can span over vast distances and through time.

• Cyborgs like Garth are trained to ignore all feelings.

• Emotions & feelings like pain or pleasure “cannot exist in the military state of 2087.”

• All children are taken from their mothers at birth and become the property of the state.

On the principle that “every development of the future is the result of today's actions,” Garth’s mission is intended to prevent professor Marx’s discovery so the kind of future as outlined above will not result.

Once the beamer has been extracted, it will take high voltage – at least 5000 vlts - to destroy it. The closest source of such power is Desert town power Station. Both Zella and Garth get ready to drive out to the power station while Sharon stays behind at the house with Skinny and the crew.

When the two men leave, Laura comments on Garth’s unusual appearance and indulges in a bit of relationship counselling with Sharon by informing her that she and her father are so wrapped ip in their work that they’re both “blind as bats” and cannot see that they are right for each other.

Meanwhile, our two marathon runners reach the house and burst in on the go-go dance party. After a bit of menacing leering at Sharon and brushing aside of the gallant and chivalrous Skinny, the tracers get a bead on the direction that Garth has taken and hot foot out of the house. How rude! They didn’t even offer to pay for the broken door they smashed through. Arrogance and rudeness: another characteristic of the future!

When Sharon is unable to get through to the power station, she and Rick take the ego and arm-bruised Skinny’s hot rod and drive out to the power station.

“What the hell's got into all you people?”

At the highly imaginative named “Desert City Power Station,” Garth renders one of the guards unconscious with his toy...I mean ray gun which “can only paralyze, not kill” unlike of course the weapons of the super nasty tracers. As Garth explains, time travel involves tremendous risk when taking the life of someone living in the past as it might “start a chain reaction which may eradicate many lives in the future.” As for removing professor Marx from his time line, Garth concedes that under the circumstances and what is at stake the risk must be taken.

While all this Borg-splaining has been going on, Garth has rigged an electronic trap for the tracers as his gun would have no effect on them. After hurling a wrench at one of the tracers, it hits its mark and causes the tracer to fall flat on his face and rendered inactive due to the effects of the electrical charge. This is followed by long stretches of being pursued by the remaining tracer, super-human leaping hither and thither across roof-tops and from roof-tps to the ground.

In the meantime, who should arrive on the scene? Why, none other than our befuddled and disbelieving Sheriff. Deadly ray guns? “Oh, come on now!” “You’re out of your mind.” Have now fear for the Sheriff and his deputies will “bottle him up here and then smoke them out.”

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Just to let us know that he isn’t some hick thick head, the Sheriff wonders how it it is that Sharon and Zella happen to be by the power station that night and how “those two so-called lunatics” just happened to choose their house to break into.