Search - Seconds on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Nudity, Adult Situations, Not For Children Movie Release: 1966 DVD Release: 01/08/2002 Format: DVD - Black and White,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Edition: Special Collection Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 47 mins Studio: Paramount Members Wishing: 20 Genres: Science Fiction, Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Paranoid Thriller, Psychological Sci-Fi

Arthur Hamilton ({$John Randolph) is a listless Manhattan businessman who lives with his wife in the New York suburbs. One day, he runs into an old friend (Murray Hamilton) whom he thought had died. The friend leads him to The Company, a secretive operation run by The Old Man (Will Geer). The Company is a high-tech service which, for a price, provides older men with plastic surgery, a beefed-up body, and a fresh start in life. To cover the "disappearance," a middle-aged male cadaver is "killed" in a hotel fire. Hamilton submits to the operation that will turn him into a "Second," and when the bandages are removed, he's shed twenty years, renamed Tony Wilson and is portrayed by Rock Hudson. The Company creates a new identity for Hamilton, relocating him in a hedonistic California beach community with an identity as a painter. Celebrating during a local wine festival, Hamilton has his revelry cut short when he learns that all his new young friends are Seconds like himself and suddenly feels trapped in these surroundings. Unfortunately, finding a way out isn't nearly as easy as it was to find a way in. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rock Hudson - Antiochus "Tony" Wilson
Salome Jens - Norma Marcus
John Randolph - Arthur Hamilton
Will Geer - Boss
Jeff Corey - Mr. Ruby

Director John Frankenheimer's psychological thriller Seconds was groundbreaking in a number of ways, not the least of which was brief nudity in a mainstream movie and the casting of several actors who had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment for supposed Communist activities. Not to mention the casting of star Rock Hudson in a role that depicted him as anything but a cinema sex idol. Frankenheimer points out all of this and much more in his generous commentary on the DVD's alternate audio track, wherein he also explains how he and his crew achieved the eerie effects (some of the sets were built with trompe l'oeil distortions). The man seems to have recalled every shot in the film. The anamorphic 1.85:1 image is a vast improvement over the VHS pan-and-scan version as the composition of the photography, as Frankenheimer points out, relies on extreme depth of field and wide angles to subliminally intensify the dialogue; the digital transfer adequately highlights the dramatic whites and grays of the lighting scheme (although, apparently, little could be done to sharpen the bizarre bacchanalia sequence). The disc includes the theatrical trailer, but it's missing the photo gallery that Frankenheimer references that would have shown a picture as to how the actors were mounted with cameras in order to get the film's unsettling tracking shots. ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide