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| Robert PRINCE on Mission: Impossible Season 6 (1971-1972) |
| Posted By: Thomas Rucki on November 14, 2009 - 3:00 AM |
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After Richard Hazard, Robert Prince provides just one score that is weird and distorted as his previous season 5 and he remains faithful to producer Bruce Lansbury for which he used to work on the fourth season of The Wild Wild West. Oddly enough, Prince and Golson inject avantgarde elements for harsh psychological scenes. This original composition has a lot of stock music because of its peculiar nature that is devoid of action cues. This is the fourth farewell to Mission: Impossible of a composer! As a reminder, find the previous score by Prince: “Homecoming” (season 5).
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PRINCE'S SOLO SYNDICATE SCORE
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Mindbend is a daring electronic musique concrète soundtrack that is fabulous because of its wild use of analogue synthesizers and oscillators that underlines the mental state of the guinea pigs which is thematically related to its previous 1968 score “The Night of the Winged Terror” from The Wild Wild West that I mentioned below—some of the most abstract sides “can” remind Gil Mellé’s 1971 The Andromeda Strain. The music is divided in three directions: the electronic torture/the slave killer state during the Prologue (Stambler is brainwashed and trained to kill Commissioner Charles Beresford; Stambler is released in the street, hears his wristwatch and really gun down politician Beresford on his way to testify against Pierson) - Act 1 (Barney is connected to the theta-waves machine and absorbs massive doses of sound frequencies while Dr. Burke and Stan watch him in the control room) - Act 2 (Barney gets out of the lab and feels a sudden side effect; Barney is strapped to a chair and is forced to watch shocking slides and throws out his chair; Dr. Burke conditions Barney to kill Deputy Mayor Harold Watson and to commit suicide after) - Act 3 (outside the green van, Stan releases Barney in the street; Barney takes a look at his wristwatch; Barney looks around the street as a robot-killer) and Act 4 (Barney enters the Municipal court building; Barney hides in the corridor of the municipal building and is about to gun down Deputy Mayor Harold Watson when Willy intervenes), the melancolic bluesy mindset during Act 1 (Dr. Burke questions Barney about his criminal record; Stan reports to Dr. Burke about Barney's hard case) and the theme of Mission: Impossible heard during Act 1 (Inside his blue delivery van, Jim tails Barney walking down the street and Stan's green van: jazzy arrangements) and Act 4 (Pierson and his men leave the apartment of Casey who steps back; Jim orders Stan to get out of the lab and calls Casey about Barney's location: paramilitary drum idiom). Despite an original score, the episode is filled with some stock music: the bulk is by Lalo Schifrin. Find the list:
• Schifrin's “The Killer” (Act 1: Jim watches the linen building with a pair of binoculars; Act 2: Barney removes his fake skin, picks the lock on his cell and checks out the corridor and rooms; Barney searches the files of the lab; Act 3: Jim and Willy worry about Barney, go to the secret clinic; Jim sneak into the torture room and substitutes the equipment)
• Fielding's “The Execution” (Act 1: Jim takes pictures of the linen building; Act 4: Teague breaks in Casey’s apartment by the wall and jumps out of the window)
• Schifrin's “Mannix” track (Act 2: Casey meets her hostess colleague at Pierson’s party)
• Hazard's “The Bride” (Act 2: in the torture room, Barney opens a wall panel, sees a faceless training dummy and slides machine with a bird’s yellow eye inside; Act 3: Jim enters the lab; Jim sits in the bed of Barney’s detention room and calls Casey)
• Schifrin's “Encore” (Act 2: Barney returns to his bedroom, takes off the pillow, gets the skin and grabs the radio transmitter and calls Jim to report the infos about the assassination MO; Act 3: Jim enters the corridors of the second floor)
• Schifrin's “Takeover” (Act 3: Jim carries the body of Stan and sticks a magnetic bug to the lamp)
• Schifrin's “The Contender” (Act 4: Pierson is mad against Casey’s trap; Pierson meets Dr. Burke in the lab)
• Fielding's “The Cardinal” (Act 4: at the hospital, Barney reassures Casey about his health)
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End music credits for "Mindbend".
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131-MINDBEND (episode #4, airdate: October 9, 1971)
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Prologue
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A blonde runaway hood named Stambler, dressed in a white outfit and carrying a holster, is sat on a chair, under a harsh ceiling light, in the middle of a dark room, lit lowkey by flared spot lights and watches disturbing fast pictures of animals and insects (shifting back and forth like flashes of light from a spider to an extreme close-up of a bird’s eye) endlessly on a giant screen that makes him sweat and suffer at the beat of weird sound effects. He then watches pictures of a black man which seems to move forward. His vision is distorted and oiled. His wristwatch buzzes and he takes a look at it: it reads 11:45. He stands up, draws his gun and fires three times at the black man which happens to be a dummy. He sticks the gun to his right frontal lobe and squeezes the trigger five times as an act of suicide. The gun is empty. A door opens, a medic steps into, meets the guinea pig, takes off his gun and leads him to the control room. Dr. Thomas Burke asks his assistant Stan if the subject is ready. The phone rings, Stan answers and passes the line to Dr. Burke who is lectured by his boss gangster Alex Pierson. Dr. Burke fixes the final details (loading the gun and setting the watch of Stambler) of the procedure and orders Stan to let go Stambler. Commissioner Charles Beresford is driven by car to an official building. Stambler, dressed in a blue suit, walks in the street, stops, hears the buzzer of his wristwatch, looks at the time (1 P.M.) which triggers a weird sound and fires three times at Beresford.
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Tape scene
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The hand of Jim switches on a reel player planted at the top of a little grey footlocker. He watches two documents: the color picture of gangster Alex Pierson and the monochrome F.B.I. file of psychopatic genius Dr. Thomas Burke. At the top of a lighthouse-like observation tower, Jim is dressed with hip white and dark blue outfits and listens carefully to the instructions in a squatting position.
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The color picture of dashing gangster Alex Pierson | The monochrome F.B.I. file of Dr. Thomas Burke
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Jim is watching the pictures of his targets while listening to his instructions
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Summary
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To stop a series of political assassinations supervised by Dr. Thomas Burke and to get the indictment of gangster Alex Pierson who finances these operations, Barney poses as a small time crook fugitive to infiltrate Dr. Burke's laboratory located in the second floor of a laundry factory. But things turn wrong, Barney is really brainwashed and programmed to gun Deputy Mayor Harold Watson down when his wristwatch rings and then commits suicide. The IMF makes Pierson believe that Barney is trained to kill him to put an end to Dr. Burke’s sinister activities.
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Cast and details
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• Elegant art collector-mobster Alex Pierson played by Donald Moffat
• Pierson’s right-hand man Pete played by Dennis Cross
• Sadistic ex-convict Dr. Thomas Burke played by Leonard Frey
• Burke’s assistant Stan (with a moustache) played by Bill Fletcher (returning from the season 1 "The Legacy")
• Party girl Rita played by Ann Willis
• Deputy Mayor Harold Watson played by Don Gazzaniga
• Guinea pig Stambler played by Rick Moses
• Commissioner Charles Beresford played by Lee Duncan (returning from the season 5 “The Hostage”)
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| Guest IMFer |
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Featuring Teague Williams (no onscreen credits but, actually, two stuntmen whose one puts on the mask next to Peter Lupus and the other one jumps in the void: Tony Brubaker) disguised as Barney.
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| Jim Phelps |
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Jim just does an undercover job: he takes pictures of the “Superior Linen Supply” building with a double lens Rolleiflex; he is later suspended and travels through the building and sneaks to the secret medical section to change the brainwashing equipment.
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| Barney Collier |
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Barney poses as escaped prisoner Steve Hawkins who looks for a new face and leaves America. Here’s his gadgets that he extracts from his arm’s fake skin: one red pill to fight the side effects of the treatment, one mini-transmitter and a tool to pick the lock on.
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| Lisa Casey |
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Casey poses as call-girl and writer Susan Miller, sent by an agency, with a leaning for art.
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| Willy Armitage |
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Willy poses as a “Superior Linen Supply” driver and delivers Jim inside a bag of dirty linen in the building, in the tradition of the Trojan horse.
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| Act 1 |
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“I hear prison life gets pretty rough. Tell me the truth. Haven’t you ever wanted to lean on someone? Maybe somebody that crossed you? Rough him up a little? Kill him?”
—Dr. Thomas Burke to Barney.
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Dr. Burke gives a glass of drugged whisky to Barney as Hawkins | Barney absorbs the theta waves
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Extreme close-up of Barney's wide and tense eye
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| Act 2 |
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“The time analysis on subject Hawkins markedly different from previous subjects owing to Theta bombardment. Preparation, 40 hours. Release time calculated 9:00 A.M. second day. Requisite execution time is 2:00 P.M. same date. The curious thing about this subject apart from the others is an extraordinary…”
—Dr. Thomas Burke report on the cassette.
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Barney is rehearsing his suicide | Dr. Burke gives the last orders to Barney while Stan loads the gun
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Extreme close-up of Dr. Burke's look: notice his dilated pupils that show his insanity
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| Act 3 |
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“Something’s gone wrong or Barney would have contacted us by now.”
—Jim to the team.
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Jim infiltrates the factory on the conveyer belt | Jim sneaks into the corridors of the secret lab
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Brainwashed Barney: a stone-cold killer released in the crowd
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| Act 4 |
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“No, Alex, this cannot be. What I’ve done is absolutely foolproof. Come, check it. Check it yourself. You’ll see. (…) Alex, it’s a frame.”
—Dr. Thomas Burke to Alex Pierson.
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Gangster Pierson discovers the "phony" set-up of his assassination | Dr. Burke is about to be grilled by Pete
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Brainwashed Barney is on his way to gun down Deputy Mayor Harold Watson
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Comments
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English actor Donald Moffat is known for his part as android REM in the 1977 sci-fi series Logan’s Run. Both foes are driven by obsession and perfection but have opposite social backgrounds: wealthy art collector Pierson (Moffat) is surrounded by beauty and chases every forms of it from Casey’s physical appearance (that he compares as a Botticelli model) to her necklace and ex-convict Dr. Burke (Frey) is surrounded by the scums of the earth that he catches for his experiments as a body snatcher and work in a secret lab hidden inside a working class linen factory. As in “Blind” and “The Tram, henchmen have no names and no credits and in the episode, these are Pierson’s three bodyguards who take orders from Pete and a medic who takes orders from Stan. The neuro-psycho torture is related to a crude method to make the subject regress to a primitive state (drug, wave machines, intense light show and raw slides projection) and to the eyeballs iconography: Barney's super fast blinking of the eyes, extreme close-up of Barney’s eye, extreme close-up of Dr. Burke's dilated pupils, extreme close-ups of bat and nightbirds’ eyes combined with spider and micro-organism. The brainwashing tapestry (a guinea pig who is sat on a chair and tortured and responds to order to kill Officials figures) comes from a first season episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea entitled “The Saboteur”, co-written by William Read Woodfield and supervised by associate producer Joseph Gantman and the detail of committing suicide by handgun after the assignment comes from “The Blizzard Makers”, supervised by associate producer Allan Balter. The opening titles’ vignette of Barney comes from this apartment scene and above all, this third one renews Barney’s picture since season 3. During the apartment scene, Casey shows the team her technical achievement: the dummy of Barney and this is the second dummy made at the image of Barney after “The Killer”. The season 5 concept of human failure is again present through Barney’s near fatal ordeal. To show the audience that Barney is a stiff robot-killer wandering in the streets during hours, from Act 3, cinematographer Ronald W. Browne plants his camera on a tripod and asks Greg Morris to move closer to it in a straight line. As in “Blind” and “The Tram”, cinematographer Ronald W. Browne composes a wide angle lens-oriented work: the gimmick of the scale of shots in the same frame to suggest a threat: during Act 4, Dr. Thomas Burke is given the third degree. Don’t miss the tough prologue with the racial and social contrast: a white hood gunning down a black politician. The tape scene in the lightouse-like observation tower will be shown in its original length in “Casino”—the same process happens in the previous season between “Flip Side” and “Kitara”.
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BRAINWASHING VIDEOS
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• Captain Lee Crane is conditioned to be a People's Republic agent:
"The Saboteur" (1965) from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
• Hood Stambler is conditioned to be a politician killer:
"Mindbend" (1971) from Mission: Impossible.
• Delinquent Alex DeLarge is conditioned to be a good citizen:
A Clockwork Orange (1971).
• Reporter Joseph Frady is conditioned to be a politician killer:
The Parallax View (1974).
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Extreme close-ups of nighbirds' eyes displayed on the brainwashing screen
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Extreme close-up of Deputy Mayor Harold Watson's eyes displayed on the brainwashing screen
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Review
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is one of the best of the season and a real shocker: the companion piece to the season 1 “Shock” (see the neuro-psycho torture in a third-rate camouflaged hospital and the confinement in a sealed white cell: written by Laurence Heath), "A Cube of Sugar" (see the pills' detail: the yellow to start and the red to boost the endurance) and the season 5 "My Friend, My Enemy" (one IMFer is conditioned to kill: produced by Laurence Heath) but above all, it’s producer Bruce Lansbury’s answer to his own season 4 episode of The Wild Wild West entitled “The Night of the Winged Terror” which has the same premise of brainwashed men used to kill politicians and the same scientifical technique of conditioning by drugs and machines: drops of drugs instilled in the eyes, psychedelic kinetoscope, cries of a raven as a signal and orange spectacles in The Wild Wild West and drugged food, a theta wave machine combined with a showing of visually disturbing slides and the buzzer of a wristwatch as a signal in Mission: Impossible. Barney's situation can be linked to the brainwashing from Stanley Kubrick's 1971 A Clockwork Orange, his white bare cell reminds George Lucas' 1971 THX 1138 and the plot forestalls Alan J. Pakula's 1974 political thriller The Parallax View. Actor Greg Morris gives, here, his greatest performance because it is an expressive psycho-physical tour de force. The ending with Barney in the hospital reminds the one with Paris from the season 5 “My Friend, My Enemy”.
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Today in Film Score History:
March 19 |
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| Dimitri Tiomkin wins Oscars for High Noon score and song (1953) |
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| George Garvarentz died (1993) |
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| Jean Weiner born (1896) |
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| Jeff Alexander begins recording his score to Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) |
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