Scott LeBrun A young Christopher Walken brings his typically dynamic presence to this low key drama with a touch of sci-fi. He plays Private James Reese, an aggressive young soldier stationed in Germany who gets in trouble one too many times to suit his superiors. So they ship him off to a hospital in the country where Dr. Frederick (Joss Ackland), the man in charge, has come up with an experimental way to suppress hostile behaviour. Reese doesn't trust Frederick, and is suspicious of the whole set-up and location. The Army, represented by a Major (Ralph Meeker), is overseeing the whole thing and of course doesn't want anything jeopardizing their efforts.Those new to this film, such as this viewer, may be caught a little off guard with the nature of this film, which the advertising tries to sell as a horror movie. Well, there's some scary stuff in this story (based on the play by Dennis Reardon), but this is definitely not a horror movie in the traditional sense. It's quite deliberate in its pacing, and is very talky, so it may test the patience of some audience members. Still, it's often amusing, and interesting. A lot of the running time is devoted to portraying the evolving relationship between Reese and his live wire fellow patient Boford Miles (an incredible, standout performance by Ronny Cox). Miles is a very troubled individual, as we see from the kinds of things that he gets up to. It's a saddening moment for the character when he finally relents to being subjected to the experimental procedure, and you feel quite bad for him.Ultimately, the plight of these characters makes for fairly compelling material. The actors are all wonderful; Walkens' trademark personality shines through at some points, although he also gets a chance to do some really serious acting, in what was one of his earliest movie roles. Cox (who was also a relative newcomer to film, having made "Deliverance" previously) is excellent and he and Walken work well together. Ackland and Meeker are both solid as the well-meaning and not so well-meaning antagonists, character actor Marco St. John has a lively role as a jovial orderly, and Bette Henritze is touching as kindly nurse Anna Kraus.This may not be anything truly special, necessarily, but it's still potent and involving entertainment and fans of Walken and Cox will almost certainly want to give it a look.Seven out of 10.

MartinHafer soldiers with facial hair? With a name like "The Mind Snatchers", I naturally assumed this was a film about space aliens abducting and scrambling the brains of folks. However, the film has absolutely nothing to do with this but is instead a slightly paranoid but thought-provoking film about psychiatric ethics.The film begins with a VERY obnoxious and angry soldier, Pvt. Reese (Christopher Walken) bullying and mistreating everyone. He's soon arrested by the military police and incarcerated for psychiatric tests to determine what his issues are. They diagnose him with a personality disorder (no duh!) and schizophrenia--and, without his permission, they ship him off to a very strange hospital where there appear to be only three patients. One is SERIOUSLY disturbed and a total mess. Another (Ronny Cox) is a sex offender. And, the third is Reese. What is this all about? No one tells Reese and he's left to wonder. And, through the course of the film, it becomes more and more apparent that the military is planning on doing some sort of insidious mind-control experiment on them! Despite a low budget and that the film is inexplicably set in Germany (I think this was due to funding), the movie has a very compelling script and has a lot of interesting things to say about abuses within psychiatry where, it seems, the end does justify the means. A very good and unusual film to say the least--and an interesting early Walken role. Well worth seeing, though I doubt if the average person would enjoy this. Me, with my background in psychology, I loved it and thought it brought up some very interesting concerns.

MARIO GAUCI Interesting but hardly original drama with sci-fi leanings – though not quite the "horror"/"chiller" described by the ads! – involving the brain-washing of violence-prone subjects by the system (which must have seemed particularly trenchant at the time of the Vietnam war).At this juncture, however, the movie feels quite dated – if reasonably intelligent and compelling nonetheless. Being also relentlessly talky (not surprising, given its stage origins) and low-key in nature, there's a conspicuous lack of cinematic inventiveness – which doesn't really allow for a sensible comparison with Stanley Kubrick's stylized treatment of the same theme in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)! Still, it has some undeniably powerful moments – and the small cast is impressive: Christopher Walken (relatively inexperienced for this type of demanding role, but quite good in his Method approach to it); Joss Ackland (as the requisite mad scientist); Ralph Meeker (as the equally inevitable, and callous, military overseer); and Ronny Cox (as a fellow inmate of Walken's who, after much soul-searching, willingly submits to the dehumanizing experiment).Incidentally, the play was filmed under its original title – THE HAPPINESS CAGE – but this got changed (in case it was mistaken for an ode to hippiedom) first to the sci-fi friendly and, in retrospect, more appropriate THE MIND SNATCHERS and eventually to the horror-oriented (and, consequently, wholly misleading) THE DEMON WITHIN!

Matthew Janovic "Mindsnatchers" is a really scary-film. Why? Because it is a fictional story of a scenario that was and is real. Beginning in the 1950s, with the CIA's successful MKULTRA program of hypno-assassins, we can assume that is has continued into-the-present. Why do it? Our political, economic and military leadership seemed to feel the answer was "why not?" America was unchallenged in power after WWII (the only man standing), an almost supreme force in the immediate aftermath of war. The situation is similar today, but with a few key-differences, mainly that we are a declining-power.With our present "rendition" of suspected-terrorists in secret, illegal-prisons throughout the world, one has to wonder if any of these individuals are being brainwashed too. One also has to wonder if so-called "terrorism" has any direct-connection to mind-control programs that have backfired. The legendary Muslim heretic, Hassaan I Sabah, utilized drugs and a form of hypnosis in creating the world's first-known assassins ("Hashishins" being the root-word), and some historians note there were accounts that his reach extended as far as Paris. You could say he was the Osama Bin Laden of his time. But we do assassination too, to our shame. We are virtually alone in this practice, internationally.From 1957-1961, the CIA conducted mind-control experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, with the aid of the Canadian government (surely, noticed by David Cronenberg). We know all of this from the aftermath of Watergate, which caused the creation of the Church Committee (1975-1978). The Church committee investigated illegal-activities of the American intelligence community, which released a flood of formerly classified-documents. MKULTRA is indisputable, it happened, and bits of the story leaked-out before the Church committee (and the NSA, CIA & our press) could bury them. It should be noted that there was also intense-cooperation with the Pentagon, and this is where the story of Mindsnatchers takes-place.It's a really engaging-film, and you really care about the characters, even when they do horrible things. Of course, this is Christopher Walken's film, he is both hilarious and believable as a non-conformist G.I. with a bad-temper. The comparison between the film and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", and "A Clockwork Orange" are apt, but the film stands-on-its-own as being very original and disturbing. It is not a copy of either movie, as "Cuckoo's Nest" came-out in 1975, and "A Clockwork Orange" and Mindsnatchers were definitely in-production simultaneously.Also chewing-scenes in this film is a younger Ronny Cox (Robocop), who is excellent as a crazy redneck inmate of the secret facility in Germany. An interesting-twist is the film's connection with other experiments in free-will and obedience-to-authority (the Milgram experiment), and the applications of electroshock for-compliance.Yes, we have brain-implants, even ones that induce-pleasure in the test-subjects. To say these scenes are depraved and disturbing is an understatement, especially knowing that they happened. On top of this is the character of the controller/Doctor: he justifies his experiments as "voluntary", and "for the greater-good", so this is also a tale of medical and scientific-ethics. Interestingly, the Doctor also has a "controller" in the character of "the Major"--it appears the Major has lied-to the Doctor about how "voluntary" the program really is. So, this is also a tale of medical and scientific-ethics.All-in-all, a very good film that is oddly-entertaining, while being absolutely unsettling. It is strangely informative, too. "Mindsnatchers" delivers, and-then-some. Image entertainment has a very-good DVD available, and it has some great extras too. The transfer is not perfect, but appears to be from the best available-sources, just not the original-negative. This was an extremely-cheap film, but it rises-above this fact by some really assured directing, acting, and writing. The score is a little cheesy at-times, but it has some excellent electronic-cues that are effective for the time. You could do-worse, like watching the Final Destination franchise, or Snakes on a Plane. Depraved.