This week MCR takes on a soapy melodrama disguised as a mad-scientist sci-fi B-flick.
***/****
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A Brit- German coproduction from 1964, Frozen Alive is a dialogue-heavy, character-driven romance thriller. Despite the name and cover art, its sci-fi only very loosely. In its US release Frozen Alive suffered at the hands of anxious distributors who marketed it as a mad scientist horror flick to try and sell a few more tickets. Unfortunately, this cynical gaffe has made posterity a little unfair to Frozen Alive. Viewers understandably come in expecting a flesh-eating deep-freeze creature a la Thing From Another World, and are frustrated to be treated to a talky drama instead. But lets ignore the marketing and try to look at Frozen Alive on its own merits.
At the descriptively named Low Temperature Unit research facility in West Berlin, earnest scientists Frank Overton and Helen Wieland are freezing experimental primates and trying to wake them up again. We thrill as they negotiate with staid administrators for project funding and give presentations about the long-term benefits of cryogenics in lengthening human life, promoting deep space travel and the like. But the first thing we at home notice is the palpable romantic tension between Frank and Helen. The second thing we notice is that they seem themselves not to have noticed. That is, when they claim their own relationships strictly professional, they act like they really believe it.
Not so easily fooled is Franks wife Joan, who responds to this threat to her marriage by turning to drink and cultivating an ambivalent affair with Tony, a dashing ex-flame. Largely oblivious to Joans troubles and reckless in his desire for research funding, Frank decides to try the freezing process on himself. But just as, with Helens help, he does so, Joans addiction and jealousy spiral into disaster. The law suspects absurdly, to my mind that Frank planned to freeze himself to evade legal inquiry and now Helen must deal not only with the police but also with the possibility that she might botch the complicated resuscitation technique. If she does, Frank will die at her hand.
Setting aside the irate comments of those expecting The Thing From Another World Part 2, Frozen Alive actually has a few things going for it. Not least that its directed by Bernard Knowles. His most notable gig was as Alfred Hitchcocks cinematographer on The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, and Sabotage. He also lensed the gothic masterpiece Gaslight.
For Frozen Alive Knowles alternates between two major moods: Helen and Franks bright, clinical lab with its harsh fluorescent lights, contrasted with Tonys modest but tasteful, elegant flat. But the visual cues Knowles gives us are misleading. The lab may seem lifeless but Frank and Helens love flourishes there. Life does too, in the resurrections they perform. On the other hand, Tonys apparently warm, lively apartment is really a place of dwindle, decay, and death.
Knowles and writer Evelyn Fraser seem to be after a similar irony as they navigate Frozen Alives sci-fi subplot. (And make no mistake, the love quadrangle is always the movies main concern.) Clearly in love, Frank and Helen sublimate their passion so thoroughly that they dont even know its there. Their selfless devotion to a greater cause gives them the strength to be fiercely Stoic as they work. This love, though, is stronger than the bond between Joan and Tony. Their frank and passionate indulgences might seem like a quicker path to love, but the opposite proves true.
All this takes on another layer of irony when you consider the fascination that brings Frank and Helen together cryogenics, this desire to enhance lifes abundance tomorrow by packing it in ice today. What warms their relationship, in other words, is frigidness, and the cryogenics subplot seems mostly to be a way of delivering this final irony. If Knowles shows questionable skills as a sci-fi master, so be it; in Frozen Alive he seems to be more about divorcing ideas from their appearances and conventions in the context of human relationships. And I think he does this really well.
Information about scriptwriter Evelyn Fraser is hard to come by these days but she wrote several teleplays in the 50s and 60s for largely respected programs like Suspense and The BBC Sunday Night Play. One such is The Critical Point, a thriller about a murderer who agrees to be frozen in a cryogenic experiment. The story was important enough to be produced twice: once in 1957 and then again in a 1960 remake. Critical Points premise seems awfully similar to Frozen Alives, of course, but since the episode isnt available anymore, and Fraser seems to be unavailable to ask, the reasons for her fascination with cryogenics and murder are likely to remain forever a mystery.
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Cryonicsby jefffox212115,755 views
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