THE WIZARD OF FORCE:

the twilit rise and fall   

of George Lucas

 

by Gary W. Wright

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Renee Chen, Myca Le and Vic Morrow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All things are different though nothin’ has changed

 

from “Hollywood Hills”

lyrics by Paul Kamanski

performed by the Beat Farmers

from their allegorical recording

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINES (1987)

 

 

 

He was suddenly sure all this was illusion, that the man in black had spun a spell and was trying to tell him something in a maddeningly obtuse, symbolic way.

 

 from The Dark Tower I: the gunslinger (1982)

by Screamin’ Stephen King (p.19)

 

 

Online information can come from official and sanctioned websites supervised by the studios or from unofficial sites run by fans.  Fan webmasters and their collaborators are willing to pour astonishing amounts of their own time and money into sites that publicize the products of big Hollywood studios-even in the face of secrecy or downright opposition from the studios themselves…(for) fans may provide extensive publicity, but they can also ferret out secrets and post them in cyberspace.

 

from The Frodo Franchise:

THE LORD OF THE RINGS and modern Hollywood (2007)

by Kristin Thomson (pp.133-4)

 

 

 

 

 

 

But if you share something with people, they teach you to keep your eyes open, and when your eyes open, you can see a lot of things, visible and invisible.

 

Rithy Panh

from “On a Morality of Filming: a conversation

between Rithy Panh and Deirdre Boyle”

p. 43 of issue 97, 2016 of cineaction

 

 

You ask me why I’m weary, why I can’t speak to you

You blame me for my silence

Say it’s time I changed and grew

But the war’s still going on dear

And there’s no end that I know

And I can’t say if we’re ever…

I can’t say if we’re ever going to be free

 

 from “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”

lyrics by Eric Bloom and Michael Moorcock

performed by Blue Oyster Cult

from the allegorical Gerald Potterton film

HEAVY METAL: THE MOVIE (1981)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Mrs. Featherstone and Mrs. Olsen and the other helpful, encouraging and indomitable staff of George Mackie Library in Delta, BC; Ms. Bonner, the Teacher Librarian at Hellings Elementary school in Delta, BC aka North Delta or just plain old ND; the equally indomitable and long suffering Mr. Murphy, Librarian extraordinaire at the one-time Delview Junior Secondary School in ND; my fellow Library Technicians in the Secondary Schools of the Peel District School Board; and to Maestro Gregory Dettweiler for listening and to all of his insights into music.  Thanks also to the equally long suffering and sympathetic staff of the Huron Heights Secondary School and North Delta Senior Secondary School Libraries, and of the Guildford, Ocean Park and White Rock branches of the Fraser Valley Regional Library system; the Kwantlen College, University of British Columbia and Vancouver Community College libraries; the Streetsville branch of the Mississauga Public Library; and the Brighton Public Library. 

 

Thanks as well to the owners, managers and staff of such bookstores as North Delta New and Used Books, Black Bond Books, the Book Bin/Bookaneer, Coles, White Dwarf Books, Granville Mall Book Company, Macleod’s, the Haunted Bookstore, Munro’s, Jane Ross Books, Read and Green Books,

J & B Books, Professor Bookies, HMB and Chapters for their help and support over the years.  Thanks also to the owners, managers and staff of the Mac’s and 7-11 at 84^th and 112^th and the Silver Moon in ND, Golden Age Collectibles in New Westminster and the Comic Wizard in Newmarket, ON in the Seventies and Eighties, and of Image Collections in Streetsville, ON in the new millenium, for their Superheroic inspiration.  In addition, thanks to the Steel Eye for all of those awesome games of Galaxian and Galaga in ND in the Seventies, and to Bay Street Video and Refried Beats in Toronto, and Starstruck Entertainment at Square One, for all of the great CDs and DVDs over the years in the new millenium. 

 

Last but not least, thanks to the cinemas at Guildford, Lougheed and New Westminster malls in the Seventies and Eighties and to the Studio and Vogue theatres, and special thanks to the Studio art cinema and the Stanley Theatre, my favourite theatres in Vancouver when I was growing up, and to the Suzuki Theatre, my favourite cinema in ND.  Special thanks also to Kenny Baker, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Carrie Fisher, Frank Herbert, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Matheson, Peter Mayhew, Ralph McQuarrie, David Prowse and Al Williamson, gone but not forgotten.

 

Thanks also to Miss Tyson, Visual Arts teacher, and my high school English teachers Mr. and Mrs. Hillman, Commander “Buck” Parsons, and Mr. Alexander at Delview Junior Secondary School; Mr. Macdonald at Huron Heights Secondary School in Newmarket, Ontario; and Mr. Miley and my English 12 Creative Writing teacher whose name I have unfortunately forgotten at North Delta Senior Secondary School.  You watched over, nurtured, criticized and praised my “writing” and taught me the secrets of the allegory, turning me into the shrewd, knowing, quasi-literate and righteously ranting Gardevil, and always quixotically crazy Canuck, that I am today.

 

Last but not least, thanks also to the Canadian Constitution of 1982, the moody and Muse inspiring Moon, Sheba the always luving wonder dog and God for giving me strength, courage, guidance and insight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

        As a boy in Kindergarten, I had a sudden intuitive flash that the tale of King Midas, the fairy tale my teacher was reading the class one day, was telling us that there was more to life than money.  Sure enough, the teacher soon confirmed that there was a story hidden within the story and a meaning hidden within the meaning of the tale soon after she finished reading it aloud.  This confirmation of my intuitive flash had me looking for the true meaning of fairy and folk tales for years after, eager to figure them out.  Initially, I thought that only fairy and folk tales had a hidden meaning.  Imagine my surprised interest when Mrs. Hillman, my second high school English teacher, pointed out in my second semester of high school in 1981 that most written works-whether comics, short stories, novellas, novels, poems, plays and songs-also had a hidden story within the story and a hidden meaning within the meaning put there by the author, that the hidden meaning was called an allegory and that it could be determined by deciphering the allusions, metaphors, signs and symbols in the work of literary art.  This was quite an overwhelming and life changing revelation for me, and I immediately began to try to decipher and understand the hidden meaning of everything I read from that point on, and still do. 

 

A year later, while watching the eerily and presciently twilit, allegorical and Ozian themed Richard Rush indie docufeature film THE STUNTMAN (1980) on videocassette, I was startled to see and hear the implicitly Great Oz linked director Eli Cross and the implicitly Tin Man linked screenwriter Sam Baum-played by Peter O’Toole and Allen Garfield, respectively-argue about the allegorical point of DEVIL’S SQUADRON, the World War I film within the film, while screening dailies.  Suddenly realizing that films and their screenplays were just as allegorical as comics, fairy tales, folk tales, novels, novellas, poems, plays, short stories and songs, I began to do my best to puzzle out the meaning of all of the films I was watching, too.  Taking a closer look at film art, I soon came to the conclusion that an implicit war had erupted between film art for art’s sake artists like David Cronenberg and David Lynch and film art for money’s sake artists like Steven Spielberg.  An implicit allegorical film war that left George Lucas and his highly successful STAR WARS films stuck somewhere in the middle, as Lucas implicitly used his creative and innovative STAR WARS film trilogy to blast Spielberg and his insidious desire to break free from the more pure film artists of New Hollywood and create a blockbuster lusting Empire, a Classic Trilogy that nonetheless had all sorts of blockbuster attributes and effects and was also a blockbuster hit at the box office. 

 

This implicit allegorical cinematic battle between film artists and film merchants became certain after the fatal helicopter crash that killed Renee Chen, Myca Le and Vic Morrow around 2:20 am in the morning of July 23, 1982 on the George Folsey jr. produced John Landis set of the twilit, allegorical, Kathleen Kennedy associate produced, Frank Marshall produced and Landis and Spielberg executive produced Landis, Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller film TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983).  For the horrific and deadly TZ disaster confirmed the worst fears of the film art for film art’s sake film artists that the blockbuster film artists like Folsey jr., Kennedy, Landis, Marshall and Spielberg and the studios that backed them had become so obsessed with money that they no longer cared how many people they killed in order to feed their insatiable lust for blockbuster profits.  Thus, it was no surprise that the film art for film art’s sake film artists rose up in righteous fury like avenging cinematic angels and roasted the main figures responsible for the TZ disaster like Folsey jr., Landis, Spielberg-who was in charge overall of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE-and Kennedy and Marshall, the luvers who produced TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, in a massive and allegorical Zone War on the big and small screens and in print. 

 

As Lucas made the fateful decision to reach out and help his friends Kennedy, Marshall and Spielberg after the TZ disaster and had them work on films with him, film artists and audiences also turned their shocked, outraged, despondent and righteous fury on him.  This book looks at the life, times and allegorical film and telefilm art of Lucas and does its best to decipher that allegorical film and telefilm art in order to better understand his film art before the TZ disaster, his role in the dread allegorical Zone Wars, and his response to the fury directed at him after 1982.  Far from being an unusual way to approach the film art of Lucas or other film artists, studying and deciphering their underlying allegorical intent is really the only way to truly understand film art.  For Lucas has said since 1977 that Han Solo symbolized Francis Coppola and Luke Skywalker himself, implying that their victory over the Evil Empire in the Classic Trilogy symbolized and meant something definite.  Of course, if the Classic Trilogy meant something, the Indy Trilogy and the Tragic Trilogy also meant something, as well as all of the other allegorical film and telefilm art Lucas directed or produced before, in between and after his three major allegorical film trilogies. 

 

As Cronenberg, Lynch, Spielberg and Stephen King have also insisted that such allegorical fiction and films as THE BROOD (1979), MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and Misery (1987) are also allegories, the implication is also that all of their work before and after these creations are allegorical, as well.  Since Cronenberg, King, Lucas, Lynch and Spielberg have had such an enormous impact on the world of fiction and film art since the Seventies, the implication is that the films and fictions of other artists must be allegorical, as well.  Indeed, they must be, given that Cronenberg, King, Lucas, Lynch and Spielberg reply to the other fiction and film artists in their work.  This book attempts to advance the study of cineotics and semiotics by working out the true meaning of fiction and film in order to achieve a greater understanding of both warfare in allegorical art and the art of allegorical war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One:

!WIZARD!

 

 

        No other New Hollywood film artist was more synonymous with Ozian themed film art than George Lucas.  Indeed, Ozian linked characters and healing Ozian storylines played a prominent part in his allegorical and computer generated imagery (CGI) enhanced indie films from THX 1138 (1971) to STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005).  However, in spite of this healing Ozian structure, the film art of Lucas prior to 1982 also showed implicitly ominous “memory of the future” forebodings of the fatal UH-1B “Huey” helicopter crash that killed actor/director/writer Vic Morrow and child extras Renee Chen and Myca Le at 2:20 am in the morning of July 23, 1982 on the Vietnam War village set of the George Folsey jr. produced John David Landis episode of the twilit, allegorical, Kathleen Kennedy associate produced, Frank Wilton Marshall executive produced and Landis and Steven Allan Spielberg executive produced Landis, Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller film TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983).  Not surprisingly, as he was just as shattered by the TZ disaster as most film artists and audiences at the time, the post-1982 films of Lucas also implicitly confirmed that he was meditating glumly on the TZ disaster.  These sombre twilit meditations were fused uneasily with the healing Ozian structure of his films, a structure inspired by the allegorical and implicitly Prime Minister William King and Wicked Third Reich bashing Victor Fleming film THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939).

 

Curiously, George Walton “Georgie” Lucas jr. was born on May 14, 1944.  Fittingly, given that his film art would be famous for their Ozian theme and structure, this birthday was a day before the May 15^th birthday of L. Frank Baum, author of the allegorical and implicitly Wicked Queen Victoria bashing children of all ages classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).  His birth gave George and the fittingly named Dorothy Lucas a third child and only big eared son in a brood of three daughters.  The modest future film artist fittingly grew up in a small town called Modesto, located several hours southeast of San Francisco.  Back then it was a quiet place with little to do, home to several walnut farms and the Gallo winery.  The lonely nature of life in Modesto was enhanced by the Lucas family life, for Mrs. Lucas was often ill and bedridden and the stern and uncompromisingly religious and Republican Mr. Lucas was usually away working long hours as owner/manager of the local stationery store.  This left Lucas to his own devices, usually in the company of his younger sister, Wendy.

 

        The quiet boy became an introverted young fellow, devoted to comic books and fantastic shows on television like Adventure Theatre’s Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and no doubt healing feature films like THE WIZARD OF OZ-where it became a huge hit with boomer audiences on its appearance in the mid-Fifites-and to feature films at the local cinema.  He also developed an interest in drawing, modelmaking, photography and, as he got older, cars.  Cars led Lucas away from good marks at Thomas Downey High School and to stock car racing.  Cars also led Lucas to a pivotal and life changing car accident shortly before the end of his final year of high school in the spring of 1962.  On his way home from studying at the local library for his final exams, Lucas forgot to check his rear view mirror while turning left into his parent’s driveway and hit his friend Frank Ferreira as Ferreira passed Lucas in his Chevy Impala.  The impact of the collision rolled his souped up Fiat Bianchina racer end over end and wrapped the car around a nearby walnut tree.  Luckily, Lucas was thrown from the car to injured safety when his regulation steel plated stock car racing seat belt miraculously snapped, against all odds.  Fittingly given his interest in Ozian themed film, this Great Crash of 1962 was his own Kansas gale that threw Lucas grievously injured from his car and out of his underachieving teenage dreamworld forever. 

 

Indeed, the sudden and unexpected crash left him in the local hospital’s emergency room fighting for his life in an inner Ozian spiritworld midway between life and death like that experienced by the injured Dorothy Gale-played by Judy Garland-in THE WIZARD OF OZ.  When he finally and successfully emerged from his spiritworld journey after weeks of recuperation in hospital, this sobering and unanticipated brush with mortality left him determined to do something with the gift of life that had been returned to him.  Indeed, Lucas surprised everyone-particularly himself!-by turning his back on his stock car speed racer dreams and heading to a local community college on the strength of the High School Diploma given him by a sympathetic Thomas Downey High School while he was still recuperating in the hospital.  Two years of majoring in Social Sciences at Modesto Junior College led Lucas to the University of Southern California film studies program. 

 

Here Lucas showcased his drawing and photography skills in a number of short indie films, starting with the allegorical short indie docufeature film LOOK AT LIFE (1965), which began with an opening title that thoughtfully pointed out that it was “…a short film by George Lucas” and then became a mostly wordless montage of still photographs beginning with what appeared to be a still photo of the distraught face of a young Lucas that then shifted to major events of the day like the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War plus a few film stars like Jane Fonda and Bela Lugosi all jumbled together with every frame a different image so a different image blasted into and overloaded the brain of the audience member one after the other bam! bang! pow! like a photographic avalanche all to the fittingly intense, driving and pounding sound of non-stop drumming to increase the effect of the barrage, all of which implied that the small town Modesto boy attending USC in Los Angeles was just as overwhelmed by his daily barrage of experiences in the big city as implied by that initial distraught still photo of him as the audience member was after experiencing LOOK AT LIFE.

 

Curiously, young Lucas continued his interest in montage but tuned in and tuned out the daily barrage of experiences that were implicitly overwhelming him in L.A. and got into a cool groove with a nighttime montage of reflections of the lights of stores and passing cars on the headlights, bumpers, doors, trunks, windows and taillights of parked cars all to the mostly wordless and jazzy sound of Herbie Hancock ticklin’ the keys in the allegorical short indie docufeature film HERBIE (1966), in the first intimation that the Afro-mojo Force would be important in the life and film art of Lucas.  Next up saw “…a film by Lucas” made with what appeared to be a blue filter on the camera lens that fittingly gave a blue mood to the piece, a blue mood accentuated by the ominous martial music that kicked off the film and reaffirmed by the sight of a clean cut, baby faced, conservatively dressed and despondent Randall Kleiser frantically strive to free himself from his squareness and his horn rim glasses by running desperately through a wooded area and then across a small clearing to a border marker that would implicitly lead to a happier life in a more loose and groovin’ hip and happenin’ country only to be scythed down in a hail of bullets inches from the border post by a border guard who appeared to be played by Lucas in his first cameo in one of his films at which point voices-which sounded like those of staff and students of USC-ironically discussed the importance of freedom-“…freedom is definitely worth dying for.  It’s the only thing worth dying for…without freedom, there’s no reason to live…anything that restricts or anyway hampers freedom, in a way causes man’s death”-at the end of the allegorical short indie docufeature film FREIHEIT (1966)-a title fittingly taken from the German word for “freedom”-all of which may have been the young Lucas way of both affirming how important freedom was to him and of mocking the uptight squares with horn rim glasses in the student body and faculty at USC in general and in the film studies programme in particular and how he wished they could escape their squareness and get into the cosmic Afro-mojo Force groove.

 

Then it was time to blast off in a Yellow Brick Road coloured and futuristic looking car driven by Pete Brock and rocket around a race track in the semi-desert California countryside in one minute, forty-two seconds and eight tenths of a second in the allegorical short indie docufeature film 1:42:08 (1966), a completely wordless and full colour short film that was the biggest production of young Lucas yet and one that began with a sunrise in the first intimation that sunrises and sunsets would be as important as Afro-mojo Force and freedom in the allegorical feature film art of Lucas.  Next up, young Lucas put all he had learned so far together to create his award winning and eerily twilit and allegorical short indie docufeature film ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH THX 1138 4EB (1967). 

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

Significantly, the final USC short film was an eerily twilit film, as it was noticeable that the desperate and ultimately successful escape of Class 4 Erosbod THX 1138-played by Don Natchsheim-from the endless sterile, soulless and fluorescent lit hallways of a futuristic society not only evoked the young square’s desperate flight for freedom in FREIHEIT but was linked throughout the short film to the July 23, 1982 date of the TZ disaster via dates, time and numbers like 05/14/2187, 2:43:38 and level 7932.  These ominous numerical links implied that Lucas was already subconsciously trying to use an allegorical cinematic memory of the future to escape from the TZ disaster.  It was also noticeable that the successfully escaping THX 1138 resembled and was implicitly linked to Stanley Kubrick, implying that Lucas was also using the short film to celebrate Kubrick’s escape from the confines of mainstream Hollywood film art with his MADcap allegorical indie docufeature film DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964). 

 

Indeed, the desperate attempt by the underground establishment of ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH THX 1138 4EB to track and stop the fleeing THX 1138 constantly evoked the desperate attempt of the American and Russian establishments to stop the wayward American bomber from dropping its nuclear payload in an open nod to DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, affirming the implicit intent of the short film.  Or was Lucas sending an allegorical message to Kubrick that he should break his film art free from the underground world that he consigned humanity to at the end of DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB? 

 

Curiously, the successful escape of THX 1138 also broke him free from a mate named YYO 7117-played by Joy Carmichael, curiously anticipating the Great Divorce of George and Marcia Lucas nee Griffin in 1983, who met and married during this USC period, in another memory of the future.  Significantly, after creating ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH THX 1138 4EB, Lucas then completed three more allegorical short indie docufeature films at USC-THE EMPEROR (1967), which was created with Paul Golding, who helped Lucas on HERBIE, co-starred fellow USC film studies students John Milius and Walter Murch, and was about Burbank based KBLA DJ Beautiful Bob Hudson aka “the Emperor”, who was “…the nucleus of everything that’s happenin’’’, which fittingly featured a rock and roll soundtrack supplied by the all knowin’ Emperor Hudson and was perhaps a wry allegorical dig at Burbank based Uncle Walt Disney-ANYONE WHO LIVED IN A PRETTY (HOW) TOWN (1967)-a completely wordless short film inspired by the allegorical e.e. cummings poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (1940), that was created again with the help of Golding, began again at sunrise like 1:42:08, was accompanied by a jazzy instrumental duet between flute and piano and that featured a photographer (played by either John Strawbridge or Lance Larson) who had a “magic” still photography camera on a tripod that caused its subjects (like one implicitly linked to Kubrick and played again by Natschsheim) to disap…-and 6-18-67 (1967)-which was a mostly wordless look at a day on the big sky desert set of the allegorical and implicitly Kubrick addressing J. Lee Thompson docufeature film MACKENNA’S GOLD (1969), a day that began at sunrise again, was at one with the desertscape and its sounds, weathered the sunshine and the thundering rainstorm equably, and ended with the first sunset in a Lucas film. 

 

Significantly, MACKENNA’S GOLD implicitly addressed the blossoming film competition between the seasoned indie maverick Kubrick and the young New Hollywood upstart Francis Ford Coppola to the film long competition between the seasoned indie Marshal Sam MacKenna-played by Gregory Peck-and the brash young outlaw John Colorado-played by Omar Sharif-for a legendary lost gold hoard in an equally legendary Canon del Oro aka Gold Canyon, and affirmed its implicit allegorical intent with allusions to the eerily and presciently twilit and allegorical Coppola indie docufeature film DEMENTIA 13 (1963) and the allegorical and Ozian themed Kubrick indie docufeature artbuster 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968).  Indeed, the presence of Keenan Wynn as Colorado's tragicomic bandito partner Sanchez openly linked the film to Kubrick via his equally tragicomic character Colonel "Bat" Guano in DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRHING AND LOVE THE BOMB.  Thus, the sight and sound of Marshal MacKenna surviving the trip to Gold Canyon and leaving with the young blonde beauty Inga Bergerman-played by Camilla Sparv-and a little bit of gold while Colorado left with nothing but his life implied the belief of Thompson that Kubrick, but not Coppola, would continue to succeed as a film artist.  The sight and sound of the implicitly Jewison linked kid-played by David Garfield-the implicitly John Ford linked Mr. Weaver-played by Burgess Meredith-the implicitly John Huston linked Preacher-played by Raymond Massey-the implicitly David Lean linked older English gentleman-played by Anthony Quayle-and the implicitly Sergio Leone linked Ben Baker-played by Eli Wallach-joining the journey to Gold Canyon but being killed along the way by the U.S. Cavalry and by the Apache also implied that Thompson believed that madcap lusts for fortune and glory had destroyed Ford, Huston, Jewison, Lean, and Leone.

 

Just as significantly, the presence of Meredith, who appeared in four episodes of the original TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series, cast a twilit pall over MCKENNA’S GOLD, making it fitting that the film warned audiences and film artists that death awaited those who lusted after fortune and glory.  Making it fitting that after completing 6-18-67, a major player in the life and film art of Lucas appeared when the young film artist met Coppola on the set of the allegorical and Fred Astaire starring docufeature film FINIAN’S RAINBOW during a post-USC internship at Warner Brothers.  Alas, however, by meeting on the set of a film overseen by Warner Brothers, Coppola and Lucas were also ominously linked to the studio that would oversee and release TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE right from the beginning.  Curiously, this was not the only twilit omen that overshadowed their initial meeting, for Coppola had begun his film art life not with FINIAN’S RAINBOW but by writing and directing DEMENTIA 13, created while also working as a film “intern” in Ireland with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and released on September 25, 1963. 

 

“Castle Haloran is…a very strange place, really.

Old and musty…

kind of a haunted castle.”

 

Curiously, the film began with the implicitly Corman linked John Haloran-played by Peter Read-rowing his wife beautiful and peroxide blonde wife Louise-played by Luana Anders-across a lake in a rowboat one dark night.  As John rowed, Louise expressed her displeasure that John’s mother was leaving all of her money to charity in the name of her deceased daughter Kathleen-her named anticipating Kathleen Kennedy, and played by the Barbara Darling anticipating Barbara Dowling.  Suddenly John suffered a heart attack and died.  Unfortunately, in a strange panic, Louise pushed John off the rowboat into the lake, rowed to shore and drove off in a car.  Significantly, as all of these scenes were filmed in a very minimal and spare way that evoked television, an evocation of television increased by the black and white film stock used for DEMENTIA 13, the implication was that John and Louise and their fight over his mother’s will was linked to television.

 

This implication that the film’s deadly prologue was linked to television increased when Louise drove home.  For home turned out to be creepy and haunted old Castle Haloran in Ireland, an old castle as haunted and creepy as Old Hollywood itself by 1963-in fact, the imposing arched gate that led to the sprawling castle grounds evoked the equally imposing arched gate of an Old Hollywood studio.  Indeed, the implicit link of Castle Haloran to Old Hollywood was affirmed not only by the fact that Haloran had the same syllable cadence as Hollywood, but by the fact that the film suddenly left behind its small and cheap tv-style prologue and opened up to fill the screen like all films should when the scene shifted to the stately and ancestral grounds of Castle Haloran.  The fact that John’s matronly Irish mother Lady Haloran-played by Ethne Dunn-was not only haunted by the death of Kathleen, whose ghostly portrait linked her to art for art’s sake and evoked an obsession with a dead woman and her portrait in the allegorical Alfred Hitchcock docufeature film VERTIGO (1958), but acted, resembled and was implicitly linked to Hitchcock reaffirmed the implicit link of Castle Haloran to Hollywood. 

 

The fact that John’s elder Irish-American brother Richard-played by William Campbell-acted, resembled and was implicitly linked to Kubrick also affirmed the implicit link of Castle Haloran to Hollywood.  Indeed, the name of Richard’s American sweetie, Kane-played by Mary Mitchel-evoked Irene Kane, who played Gloria Price in the allegorical and implicitly Hitchcock addressing Kubrick indie docufeature film KILLER’S KISS (1955), a film which was alluded to in DEMENTIA 13, reaffirming the implicit link of Richard to Kubrick.  Thus, the bloody sight and sound of the implicitly television linked and loot lusting Louise trying and failing to persuade Lady Haloran to change her will to benefit itself and being chopped down by an axe wielding and perhaps Norman Jewison linked William “Billy” Haloran-the clean cut but troubled younger Irish American brother of Richard and John, and played by Bart Patton-for her avaricious pains implied the hope of Coppola that Old Hollywood would withstand the siege of loot and power lusting television and live to see another New Hollywood day led by young and eager film artists like himself, and perhaps that Coppola also felt that Hitch should not be on television with his ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS tv programme at that time.

 

Significantly, the sight and sound of the bra and panty clad Louise being chopped down by the troubled Billy evoked the sight and sound of the equally troubled Norman Bates-played by Anthony Perkins-stabbing the equally loot lusting and naked Marion Crane-played by Janet Leigh-to death in the shower of her fugitive room in the out of the way Bates Motel in the allegorical and equally black and white Hitchcock docufeature film PSYCHO (1961), a memorable murder that was implicitly linked to Canadian film art.  For it was noticeable that when Bates put the corpse of Crane into her car and pushed both into a handy nearby swamp to hide them from sight, the license of the car read NFB 418.  As NFB was the acronym of the National Film Board of Canada whose main Anglophone star at the time was the Norman Bates resembling and Scottish born and raised film artist Norman McLaren, Hitch implicitly roasted McLaren and the Canadian taxpayer funded and non-commercial documentary film crafting NFB in PSYCHO.  Thus, as the NFB was founded in 1939 by a Canadian government inspired by Prime Minister William “Billy” King, the sight and sound of “Psycho” Billy being gunned down at the end of DEMENTIA 13 by the seasoned and knowing family doctor Justin Caleb-played by Patrick Magee, who resembled the boorish and implicitly Jack Warner linked Vincent “Vinnie” Rapallo [played by Frank Silvera] in KILLER’S KISS-a murder which saved Richard, Kane and Lady Haloran from the wrath of Billy, also implied the hope of Coppola that Old and New Hollywood would triumph over the non-commercial NFB and its star film artists as well as the infernal and uber commercial television with higher minded but commercially successful film art, in the end.

 

Alas for Coppola and Lucas, this implicitly optimistic message was ominously overshadowed by the three murders Psycho Billy was revealed to have committed over the course of the film.  For the drowning of Kathleen and the axe murders of Louise and a possibly Walt Disney linked poacher named Simon-played by Karl Schanzer-were a twilit trio of murders that eerily anticipated the deaths of Chen, Le and Morrow in the TZ murder.  Indeed, like the TZ trio, Kathleen and Louise died in water, while Simon was decapitated by the deadly axe of Psycho Billy, ominously anticipating all too well that the wild actions of Psycho Johnny on his set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE would lead to the deaths in water of Chen, Le and the decapitation of Morrow.  In fact, like Psycho Billy, Landis would also affect a clean cut and well dressed appearance after the TZ disaster in an effort to persuade people into believing that he was not Psycho Johnny, reaffirming the eerie prescience of the film.  The fact that the film was shot in the same black and white film stock as KILLER’S KISS, PSYCHO and the TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series was also eerily fitting, as it placed the film in the suburban Twilight Zone between colour and darkness, film and theatre and town and city, a link increased by the eerie Main Theme of DEMENTIA 13 by Ronald Stein that evoked the memorably eerie Main Theme of the TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series by PSYCHO composer Bernard Herrmann. 

 

And so Coppola and company kicked off the New Hollywood era with a classic creepy Corman quickie that implicitly affirmed the pragmatic commitment of Coppola to higher minded but commercially successful film art.  And so the tensions of everyday life, including the tensions between the Old World and the New, broke out into the violent horror of everyday life for the first time in a Coppola film.  And so having no money to afford constructed sets, costumes or extras meant that Coppola and co. had to take the camera into real locations filled with real people.  And so documentary film was fused with feature film to create the indie docufeature film, and art was fused with life into one inseparable art of life and life of art, characteristics of New Hollywood film art that exist amongst its stubborn practitioners to this day.  And so Coppola and Lucas were overshadowed from their first meeting by an ominous and eerie twilight.  Curiously, however, and lucky for Coppola and Lucas, their meeting at Warner Brothers wasn’t entirely overshadowed by ominously twilit memories of the future, for Coppola had also attracted the attention of Warners by writing and directing the exuberantly daylit, full colour, sunny, optimistic, genre free and allegorical student indie docufeature film YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (1966), released on December 9, 1966 and inspired by the allegorical David Benedictus novel You’re A Big Boy Now (1963).

 

“Here it is, big boy,

straight and to the point:

grow up!”

 

Significantly, the film was another implicit and exuberant roast of Canada, this time for its then recent, shocking and better late than never arrival on the world scene with its own bilingual anthems, its own flag and its own feature film art, including the allegorical Don Owen indie docufeature film NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE (1964).  Indeed, the appearance of Peter Kastner as the bored, restless, puckish and Pierre Trudeau evoking bachelor, Bernard Chanticleer, affirmed the link, for Kastner had played the equally bored, restless, puckish and equally Pierre Trudeau evoking Peter in NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE.  Bernard’s stuffy, suffocating and Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip resembling and implicitly linked parents Margery and I.H. “Curator of Incunabula” Chanticleer-played by Geraldine Page and Rip Torn, respectively-reaffirmed the film’s implicit Canada roasting intent.  The scenes set inside the Central Branch of the New York Public Library also affirmed the film’s Canada roasting intent, for the interiors of the Central Branch evoked the interiors of the Parliament Buildings of Canada in Ottawa. 

 

In addition, the appearance of Karen Black as Bernard’s despairing and Margaret Atwood evoking girlfriend Amy Partlett, Elizabeth Hartman as the heartbreaking and bewitching actress Barbara Darling and Dolph Sweet as the Raymond Burr evoking NYPD officer Francis Graf also affirmed the implicit Canada and Trudeau roasting intent of YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW.  Thus, the sight and sound of Bernard allowing himself to be led away from the beautiful and beguiling Barbara by the dowdy but down to Earth Amy, in the end, implied either that Coppola hoped that Canadian film artists would also create higher minded but grounded and commercially successful film art instead of acommercial NFB film art, or that Canadians would give up on feature film art entirely and stick to allegorical literary art, given Amy’s resemblance and implicit link to Atwood. 

 

Significantly, the popularity and success of YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW implicitly caused Steve Nichols to implicitly urge Coppola too late to avoid being seduced away from his seminal New Hollywood film art by attractive offers from Old Hollywood like the young and Bernard Chanticleer evoking and implicitly linked Benjamin Braddock-played by Dustin Hoffman-avoided being led away from beautiful young Elaine Robinson-played by Katharine Ross-by her mother, the cynically duplicitous and adulterous Mrs. Robinson-played by Anne Bancroft-in the allegorical film THE GRADUATE (1967), released on December 20, 1967.  As for Kubrick, the following year he implied that he was on the same wavelength as Lucas, for the sterile futuristic sets, fluorescent lighting, costumes and computer graphics of ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH THX 1138 4EB returned on a bigger and more expensive scale in the futuristic sets, lighting, costumes, and computer graphics in spaceship cockpits and the hallways and rooms of a spinning space station and on a fateful Mission to Jupiter in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which was co-written with Arthur C. Clarke and premiered in Washington, DC, on April 2, 1968.

 

“Eighteen months ago,

the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth

was discovered.”

 

Indeed, one of the opening images of the film was of a sunrise over a desolate African landscape that recalled the sunrise that began 1:42:08, ANYONE WHO LIVED IN A PRETTY (HOW) TOWN, 6-18-67 and the closing image of a sunrise at the end of ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH THX 1138 4EB, immediately and implicitly affirming that Kubrick was in psychic tune with Lucas and perhaps even addressing the award winning student filmmaker.  This link also implied that the opening, Earth and implicitly Scarecrow linked Dawn of Man segment symbolized the dawn of a new era of artbuster film art, as the speechless early humans who were perhaps rebuilding the world after the nuclear destruction of Earth at the end of DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, and the silent and UN headquarters resembling Sentinel monolith that they discovered-whose discovery was accompanied by an innovative and atmospheric composition by Gyorgy Ligeti-reminded us that the age of film art began with the silent era. 

 

Curiously, the bone weapon thrown into the sky by Daniel Richter’s Moonwatcher-a weapon as powerful as a pencil, pen, paintbrush, camera, film camera or even just the scissors necessary to cut film and splice them in the rapid montage of cuts that accompanied Moonwatcher’s discovery of the power of his bone weapon-that merged into an orbiting weapons satellite linked the two parts of the opening segment together, implying that they were two halves of one segment.  A hi-tech and silvery-grey world that was implicitly linked to Old Hollywood as well as the Tin Man, given that its main character was William Sylvester’s resigned moon explorer Doctor Heywood Floyd, was not only Hollywood cadenced, but looked and sounded like “Hollywood Old”, that is to say, Old Hollywood.  Indeed, Floyd’s journey from Earth to the giant orbiting satellite was accompanied by the allegorical Johann Strauss waltz “The Blue Danube” (1866), music from an older era that affirmed the implicit link of Floyd to an older era of Hollywood.  The vidphone call that Floyd had with Kubrick’s young daughter Vivian-playing Floyd’s daughter, affectionately nicknamed Squirt-openly linked Floyd to Kubrick, affirming his implicit link to Old Hollywood-although it did not explain why the daughter of an American space official had an English accent. 

 

Significantly, the vidphone call also linked the satellite segment to the talkie era of film, and to Lucas.  For soon after Floyd stepped into the vidphone booth, an astronaut extra who looked like the twin brother of Lucas at the time strolled by the camera with a companion who was perhaps linked to Coppola.  Soon after, the pilot and co-pilot who “flew” Floyd from the satellite to a base on the moon also resembled and evoked Coppola and Lucas.  Significantly, Floyd and some other American astronauts soon inspected another Sentinel, Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1 aka TMA-1, discovered buried underneath Tycho Crater, an inspection accompanied by the atmospheric Ligeti composition heard earlier.  This Sentinel responded to sunlight falling on it by sending a message to another Sentinel, TMA-2, orbiting Jupiter, leading to the third Mission to Jupiter segment of the film on board the American spacecraft Discovery I. 

 

Significantly, this thoughtful, television screen filled and artsy segment-with its orange spacesuits to affirm its implicit link to the Cowardly Lion-symbolized not just the thoughtful and mise-en-scene art cinema that dominated the film world after the Second World War and the television screens the big screen competed with, but the young American film artists like Lucas who had taken up the cause of thoughtful art cinema.  Indeed, Keir Dullea’s Astaire resembling but perhaps Lucas linked mission commander, Doctor David Bowman and Gary Lockwood’s Coppola resembling and implicitly linked Dr. Frank Poole affirmed the film’s implicit interest in Lucas and Coppola, a dynamic duo Kubrick would have been aware of by 1967 as a result of interviews with them concerning their early film art.  A mostly cheaper and twilit black and white art film era that competed with the increasingly colour Hollywood film art era, an allegorical colour film art era on graphic display in the final Jupiter and Beyond segment of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY after Floyd and his scientific colleagues explored the monolith found in Tycho crater on the moon.  

 

Before climaxing this voyage to Jupiter, Commander Bowman had to defeat the Douglas Rain voiced Heuristic Algorithm 9000 (HAL 9000) onboard computer, which implicitly symbolized the blockbuster machinations of Hallywood, in a literal David versus Goliath battle that saw a fully formed humanity triumph over the blockbuster machine.  A segment linked to the Great Oz, implicitly affirmed by the sight of Captain Bowman drifting away from the Discovery I in a tiny pod that evoked the sight of Henry Morgan’s Great Oz drifting away in a hot air balloon at the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ.  Only to be caught up in a rocketing and psychedelic tornado of a hyperspace journey across the cosmos accompanied by the new music heard earlier, a psychedelic cosmic journey occasionally broken up by still photos of the distraught face of young Bowman that evoked the still photo of the distraught face of a young Lucas that began LOOK AT LIFE to affirm the possible implicit link of Bowman to Lucas, a hyperspace journey set off by TMA-2, the final Sentinel monolith in orbit around Jupiter, a final huge Sentinel as rectangular in shape as the door to the Twilight Zone unlocked by the key to the imagination at the beginning of every original episode of the TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series.  A cosmic journey that transformed and evolved and returned Bowman home to Earth like a Starchild Dorothy, possibly implying the hope of Kubrick that Lucas would be instrumental in creating a new era of allegorical artbuster film that would combine thoughtful art film with blockbuster budgets, sets, costume and effects to lure audiences away from their infernal television sets and back to the Temple Theatres to the year 2001-and beyond.

 

Curiously, while no doubt impressed by being possibly implicitly addressed in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Coppola and Lucas had other things on their mind during their collaboration at Warners.  A collaboration that resulted when, after watching DEMENTIA 13 and YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW and enjoying the latter film’s implicit Canada roasting intent, Warner Brothers, a Hollywood studio founded by brothers from Montreal, contacted and persuaded Coppola to team up again with Sweet and Ron Colby-who acted in a play in YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW-and merge the Ireland of DEMENTIA 13 with the daylit and full colour exuberance and high spirits of YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW in the allegorical docufeature film FINIAN’S RAINBOW (1968), released on October 9, 1968. 

 

“Follow the fellow who follows the dream.”

 

Significantly, FINIAN’S RAINBOW implicitly saw young and idealistic New Hollywood triumph over crass and cynical Old Hollywood in the symbolic form of a triumph of a small but exuberant, peaceful and harmonious Southern community called Rainbow Valley that was comprised of young and idealistic men and women of Afro and Euro descent inspired by the indomitable Irish American Woody Mahoney-played by Don Francks-over the old and gold obsessed male establishment who tried to nip their optimistic dreams in the bud led by the tragicomically greedy and Jack Warner resembling and implicitly linked Senator “Billboard” Rawkins-who summed up his stiffed neck intransigence with the cynical cry of “…forward, to yesterday”, and was played by Keenan Wynn-and his Kubrick resembling and implicitly linked stooge Buzz-played by Colby.  Indeed, the crumbling old Southern Plantation that Sen. Rawkins lived in, which was as old and as crumbling as the Old Hollywood studios by ’68, and the sight and sound of the blockbuster loot lusting Finian McLonergan-played by Astaire-leaving Rainbow Valley and rambling out of sight, in the end, affirmed Coppola’s implicit New Hollywood triumphing and Old Hollywood toppling aspirations in FINIAN’S RAINBOW.  An aspiration implicitly mocked by Martin Ritt when he implicitly had the younger and implicitly Coppola linked Vietnam War veteran brother Vince Ginetta-played by Alex Cord-hunt down and kill his older and implicitly Warner linked brother Frank Ginetta-played by Kirk Douglas-in Sicily at the end of the allegorical docufeature film THE BROTHERHOOD [1968], thoughtfully released on December 25, 1968.

 

Significantly, Coppola also made clear that he was impressed enough with Lucas in their first meeting, for he asked him to become co-head of their own San Francisco based independent film production company American Zoetrope, despite being depressed enough with his new partner’s sour outlook on life and film art that he promptly dubbed him “…the Stinky Kid”.  Curiously, the San Francisco location of American Zoetrope was fitting, for it had the same syllable cadence as Rainbow Valley in FINIAN’S RAINBOW.  At any rate, given that Coppola had made DEMENTIA 13 as well as FINIAN’S RAINBOW and YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW, it was an ominously twilit and significant decision indeed for Lucas to partner up with Coppola as co-head of American Zoetrope, despite being a fussy and introverted Felix to Coppola’s gregarious and extroverted Oscar.  Ominously twilit, indeed, for an ominous twilight again overshadowed Coppola and Lucas when they teamed up with Marcia, Colby, Murch, Patton and Howard Kazanjian-assistant director on FINIAN’S RAINBOW-on American Zoetrope’s first film, the twilit, DEMENTIA 13 evoking but genre free and allegorical Coppola indie docufeature film THE RAIN PEOPLE (1969), released on August 27, 1969 and openly linked to DEMENTIA 13 by the return of that film’s composer, Ronald Steiner.   

 

“I just had to get away for awhile.”

                                                                                                                             

Curiously, the film began with confused and restless young wife Natalie Ravenna-played by Shirley Knight-leaving her John Cassavetes and Martin Landau resembling husband Vinny-played by Robert Modica-and stifling marriage and driving from Long Island, New York across the U.S. to find herself.  This evoked Crane’s desperate flight from Phoenix, AZ in her car with the forty thousand dollars stolen from the realtor she worked for as a secretary in PSYCHO and McLonergan’s even more peripatetic travels with his daughter Sharon-played by Petula Clark-across the U.S. in search of Rainbow Valley at the beginning of FINIAN’S RAINBOW.  Indeed, Ravenna’s tragicomic run-in with Mr. Alfred-played by Tom Aldredge-the gleefully unscrupulous proprietor of the Nebraska Reptile Ranch, affirmed the implication that Hitchcock was being addressed on one level in THE RAIN PEOPLE.

 

At one point in her journey, however, the Coppola and Hollywood cadenced Ravenna picked up the hitchhiking Jimmy “Killer” Kilgannon-played by James Caan-an ex-college football star forced out of the game due to a head injury.  At this point, the film came across as a kinder, gentler and more tragicomic version of the allegorical and implicitly Kubrick roasting Arthur Penn docufeature film BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967), implying that Coppola and Lucas were also addressing Penn on one level in the implicit form of Kilgannon in THE RAIN PEOPLE.  Indeed, Coppola implied that Penn understood film art as little as the implicitly Penn linked drive-in movie owner/manager Arthur “Artie” Brook-BONNIE AND CLYDE playing at his drive-in to openly link him to Penn, and played by Andrew Duncan-the father of his ex-college sweetie, understood how seriously Kilgannon had been injured.

 

Significantly, at this point, the film also evoked the allegorical Alvin Ganzer telefilm “The Hitch-Hiker” (1960) from the first season of the TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series, which saw restless Nan Adams-played by Inger Stevens-haunted by a mysterious and all too knowing and patient hitch-hiker-played by Leonard Strong-as she drove west from Manhattan across the U.S. to California in a car with the eerily twilit license plate 2D-7876, linking the film to the Twilight Zone in another eerily twilit memory of the disastrous future.  And openly linking with the arrival of Robert Duvall as the lonely and amorous highway motorcycle cop “Flash” Gordon, for Duvall played the equally lonely Charley Parkes in the allegorical Walter E. Grauman telefilm “Miniature” (1963) in the fourth season of the original TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series. 

 

Significantly, the sight and sound of Gordon stopping Ravenna on the highway and talking to her evoked the sight and sound of a highway motorcycle cop-played by Mort Mills-stopping Crane on the highway and talking to her, implicitly linking Gordon to Hitchcock.  Thus, the sight and sound of Kilgannon being shot dead by Gordon’s daughter Rosalie-played by Marya Zimmet-while struggling to protect Ravenna from a sexual assault by Gordon in Gordon’s trailer, in the end, implied the hope that Hitchcock would soon defeat Penn and BONNIE AND CLYDE with another memorable film.  It was a bleak ending that was in complete contrast to the more hopeful and upbeat endings of FINIAN’S RAINBOW and YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW but which evoked the sight and sound of Psycho Billy being gunned down by Doctor Caleb at the end of DEMENTIA 13 as he tried to chop down Kane with his favourite axe.  Curiously, the brawl between Gordon and Kilgannon also anticipated the increasing acrimony between the older Coppola and the younger Lucas over the direction of American Zoetrope that would lead the two to part ways in 1973-indeed, the film’s fondness for sunsets and the reflections of passing life on Ravenna’s rolling station wagon implied that Lucas also put his distinct stamp on THE RAIN PEOPLE.  Last but not least, the young and deadly Rosalie fittingly anticipated the birth of a Coppola daughter who grew up to be an equally deadly cinematic assassin.  At any rate, this one way ticket to twilight impressed Warner Brothers enough that they signed a five picture deal with American Zoetrope. 

 

        Significantly, the cinematic Odd Couple also implicitly impressed enough film artists that they began singling the unlikely pair out for implicit cinematic assaults.  Indeed, soon after the release of THE RAIN PEOPLE, George Roy Hill implicitly linked Frank Coppola and the Stinky Kid to Butch Cassidy and the Sunshine Kid-played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, respectively-in the allegorical docufeature film BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNSHINE KID (1969), released on September 24, 1969.  As Cassidy and the Kid were gunned down by the Bolivian army at the end of the film, Hill was clearly warning Coppola and Lucas to be careful and not get too out of control and obsessed with fame and fortune, lest their dreams to succeed as young and independent San Francisco film artists be also shot down by audiences, critics and the studios.  The fact that Cassidy and the Kid embarked at San Francisco for their fateful voyage to Bolivia made that implication clear.  Curiously, the choice of Redford to play the Sunshine Kid also brought the Stinky Kid closer to his lengthy sojourn in the Twilight Zone.  For Redford played the personification of Death in the allegorical Lamont Johnson telefilm “Nothing in the Dark” (1962), from the third season of the original TWILIGHT ZONE television series. 

 

        Significantly, Hill was not the only film artist to implicitly address Coppola and the Stinky Kid that year.  For it was also possible that Captain America and Billy the Kid-played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, respectively-symbolized Captain Coppola and the Stinky the Kid in the allegorical Hopper indie docufeature film EASY RIDER (1969), released on May 12^th, 1969.  For the presence of Karen Black as Karen linked the film to YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW via her character Amy Partlett in that film.  The implication that EASY RIDER was an allegorical meditation on Coppola and Lucas was increased by the presence of Jack Nicholson in the film as George Hanson.  For Nicholson linked all three main male characters to film artists, as he had-like Coppola-already co-directed a low budget allegorical indie film Corman called THE TERROR (1963).  At any rate, Hopper definitely brought New Hollywood closer to a fateful rendezvous with the Twilight Zone, for he had appeared as the troubled and Hitler haunted youth Peter Vollmer in the allegorical Stuart Rosenberg telefilm “He’s Alive” (1963), from season four of the original TWILIGHT ZONE series. 

 

It was also possible that the tragicomic attempt of the small town Texas boy Joe Buck-played by Jon Voigt-to make it in New York City with his newfound pickpocket/pimp friend Ratso Rizzo-played by Hoffman-in the allegorical John Schlesinger indie docufeature film MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969), released on the fateful 25^th of May, 1969 also roasted the attempt of the small town Lucas to make it in San Francisco at American Zoetrope with his newfound New York City pal, Coppola.  Indeed, the fact that one of the failed attempts by the two “entrepreneurs” to hustle up some money at the Hotel Berkeley linked Buck and Rizzo to the Bay area implicitly affirmed the Coppola and Lucas roasting intent of the film.  At any rate, Sydney Pollack closed out the tumultuous and momentous Sixties on a sobering note by implicitly summing up the battle between Old and New Hollywood all too knowingly in his allegorical and Ozian themed docufeature film THEY KILL HORSES, DON’T THEY? (1969), released on December 10, 1969. 

 

For Pollack implicitly and all too presciently predicted that Penn and his film art would fail to go the distance like the implicitly Penn and Scarecrow linked Robert Siverton and the implicitly Dorothy linked Gloria Beatty-played by Michael Sarrazin and Jane Fonda, respectively-failed to go the distance and win a Dirty Thirties dance-to-you-drop marathon over the course of the film.  In fact, given that Siverton shot and killed Beatty, in the end, Pollack implied that Penn might destroy himself and his film art in his attempt to usher in a New Hollywood.  Eerily, the sight and sound of Siverton killing Beatty also ominously anticipated Landis killing off the New Hollywood era with the deaths of Chen, Le and Morrow in the TZ disaster, an eerie twilit prescience reaffirmed by the fact that Pollack played young Southern theatre director Arthur “Art” Willis in the allegorical Buzz Kulik telefilm “The Trouble With Templeton” (1960), from the second season of the original TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series.

 

Intriguingly, the film also correctly predicted that far from being swept away by New Hollywood, Old Hollywood would shrewdly and cynically use the earnest competition of New Hollywood film artists to draw in audiences so as to still be standing when New Hollywood rose and fell like the older and JFK and LBJ evoking organizers of the “dance of destiny” marathon used the earnest competition between the poor and desperate young dancers to draw in audiences to watch the dancers slowly wear themselves out and collapse over the course of the marathon.  Thus, it was presciently fitting that couple number 78 was the first to collapse, given that New Hollywood begin to collapse and fade in the late Seventies, allowing a financially and spiritually rejuvenated Old Hollywood to reassert its control.

 

And so, on that cheery note, the seismic Sixties ended, and the Skyrocking Seventies began, and Nixon and Kissinger were still in the White House and Trudeau sr. at Sussex Drive, and the Vietnam War and civil rights and women’s lib struggles still raged, and the poor ol’ Gardevil was two and half years old, and, on April 2^nd, 1970, Coppola helped kick off a new decade of confident and Old Hollywood toppling film art by co-writing with Edmund H. North the Oscar winning screenplay for the embattled and indomitable allegorical Franklin J. Schaffner docuffeature film PATTON (1970), which saw the possibly Cecil B. DeMille linked General George C. Patton jr.-played by George C. Scott-triumph in battle in the Second World War-and, curiously, be linked to DEMENTIA 13 via Bart Patton, who played Psycho Billy Haloran.  Alas, PATTON eerily anticipated the TZ disaster again, for Patton’s opening address to the camera anticipated the fourth wall crashing films of Landis, linking the violence and war luving Patton to the irreverence and chaos loving Landis three years before he arrived on the scene with his first allegorical feature film.  The recreated Good War battles also ominously anticipated the recreated and fateful Vietnam War battle that would capture real death live on camera on the Landis set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, a link to the latter film reaffirmed by composer Jerry Goldsmith, who would also be the composer for TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE.

 

Thus, it was fortunate for audiences that after a decade in the background perfecting his craft making low budget indie exploitation films, Richard Rush kicked off the bold and brash new decade of allegorical film art on May 13, 1970 by implicitly likening and roasting Coppola’s tragicomic decision to abandon indie docufeature film art in order to create FINIAN’S RAINBOW for Warner Brothers and perhaps even his implicit support for Hitch over Penn in THE RAIN PEOPLE to the equally tragicomic sight and sound of the implicitly Coppola linked ex-civil rights campaigner and Vietnam War vet Harry Bailey-played by Elliot Gould-giving up his indie rebel life to attend university and get trained to become a mainstream high school English teacher in the allegorical indie docufeature film GETTING STRAIGHT (1970), an implication affirmed by the film’s allusions to DEMENTIA 13, FINIAN’S RAINBOW and YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW.  How fitting that a poster declaiming “…Man-slow, slovenly, brilliant” and “…Computer-fast, accurate, stupid” was also seen on a wall of a room in the university at one point in the film, as the poster anticipated the battles between slow but brilliant human film artists and fast but stupid computers in the CGI enhanced film art era to come.  Curiously, kooky, quirky and quixotic Canada also helped kick off the new decade of Seventies film art with another implicit and memorable roast of Coppola and Lucas in the allegorical Don Shebib indie docufeature film GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD (1970), which arrived in the Temple Theatre on July 2, 1970. 

 

For Shebib implied that Coppola, his old UCLA film school classmate, and Lucas would crash and burn in their attempt to take on Hollywood with American Zoetrope like the implicitly Coppola and Lucas linked Pete and Joey-played by Doug McGrath and Paul Bradley, respectively-crashed and burned in Toronto.  Indeed, GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD was shot in the same neonlit docufeature style of YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW, implicitly affirming the allegorical intent of Shebib.  Allusions to YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW also implied that Bernardo Bertolucci was roasting Coppola and Lucas in the form of Italian fascist secret agent Marcello Clerici and the Lucas resembling homosexual Pasqualino “Lino” Semirama-played by Jean Louis Trintignant and Pierre Clementi, respectively-in the allegorical indie docufeature film IL CONFORMISTA/THE CONFORMIST (1970), released in late October of ‘70. 

 

And in the decision of Clerici to marry the vacuous middle class girl Giulia-played by Stefania Sandrelli-and join the fascist establishment of Mussolini’s Italy, Bertolucci also implied that he felt that Coppola’s decision to marry into middle class Anglo-American respectability by marrying Eleanor Neil rather than a saucy Italian actress and make tepid films like FINIAN’S RAINBOW for Hollywood rather than more bold and creative indie film art branded Coppola as much as a conformist sell out as Clerici.  A spineless conformist sell out whose willingness to make films like FINIAN’S RAINBOW might lead him to preside over the death rather than the birth of a brave new world of film art like Clerici presided over the murders of the beautiful and beguiling blonde Anna and her Pollack resembling and possibly linked anti-fascist Italian husband Professor Luca Quadri-played by Domonique Sanda and Enzo Tarascio, respectively-in the ambush at the end of the film that evoked the ambush that killed violent Dirty Thirties outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker-implicitly linked to Kubrick and his film art, and played by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, respectively-at the end of BONNIE AND CLYDE.

 

And, last but not least, given that the allegorical David Lean docufeature film RYAN’S DAUGHTER (1970) was implicitly set in a Hollywood linked Irish town that evoked the implicitly Hollywood linked Rainbow Valley in FINIAN’S RAINBOW, the implication was that Lean also addressed Coppola and Lucas in RYAN’S DAUGHTER in the implicit form of Barry Foster’s young Irish revolutionary leader Tim O’Leary and his second in command Paddy-played by Philip O’Flynn-when the film arrived in the Temple Theatre in early November of 1970.  Significantly and presciently, the tragicomic and failed attempt of O’Leary and Paddy to lead a group of eager and frustrated young men to a triumph over the occupying English Imperial forces in Ireland after the Great War anticipated Coppola’s equally doomed attempt to lead Lucas and the other eager and frustrated young men of American Zoetrope and the rest of New Hollywood to triumph over Old Hollywood.  As the boys also failed to topple pub owner Thomas Ryan and his attractive young daughter Rose-played by Leo McKern and Sarah Miles, respectively-who were implicitly linked to Kubrick and the blonde, L.A. haze and implicitly Hollywood linked teen Dolores “Lolita” Haze-played by Sue Lyons-of the allegorical and implicitly Hitchcock roasting Kubrick indie docufeature film LOLITA (1962) throughout the film, Lean also implied his conviction that Kubrick and his film art would triumph over the film art and film artists of New Hollywood in RYAN’S DAUGHTER. 

 

Alas for Coppola and Lucas, Warner Brothers agreed with Lean.  For on Thursday, November 19, 1970, a day known forever after as Black Thursday to Coppola and Lucas, the studio furiously cancelled their five film deal with American Zoetrope after seeing the first film in that deal, the allegorical, Coppola executive produced, implicitly Kubrick and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY addressing and CGI enhanced Lucas indie docufeature film THX 1138 (1971), a film made in co-operation with Marcia, Colby, Duvall and co-writer/sound designer Murch.  Significantly, Warner Brothers also asked for all of their development money back, money that had already been spent buying equipment for American Zoetrope, making THX 1138 and developing the four other films in the deal.  Thus, Coppola and Lucas found themselves not only not successful and without the nurturing support of Warner Brothers, but in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt at the beginning of the new decade, trouble with Warner Brothers that again forewarned of bigger and more nightmarish and twilit trouble ahead with the TZ disaster. 

 

Curiously, Lucas soon affirmed that he was doing what he could to make money in the eerily and presciently twilit and allegorical Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin indie documentary film GIMME SHELTER (1970), released on December 6, 1970.  For the film’s credits listed Lucas as a cameraman and THE RAIN PEOPLE sound designer Murch as a sound man meaning Lucas could have been the cameraman who captured the murder of a concertgoer by a Hell’s Angel “security guard” during the performance of the Rolling Stones at free concert at the Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco at the end of the film, linking Lucas and Murch to real death captured on film twelve years before the TZ disaster.  In fact, as at one point early in the day of the fateful Stones performance, a young man who resembled Coppola was seen being clubbed by an irate Hell’s Angel “security guard”, it was possible that Coppola was also linked to real death captured on film in GIMME SHELTER.  Making for a very twilit and gloomy atmosphere, indeed, that was not much alleviated by the reluctant release of THX 1138 in the Temple Theatre on March 11, 1971 (Maxford 11-22, Pollock xiii-xvii and 1-106 and Baxter 1-46).   

 

“We need a new unity.

Not a unity that discourages dissent.

We need a creative dissent…

Our voices are not raised in any harmonious chorus.

But our differences are differences of emphasis,

rather than of fundamentals.”

 

Significantly, the clean, shiny sweet, innocent and exuberant black and white trailer for Chapter Two of the allegorical Ford Beebe film BUCK ROGERS (1939) that unexpectedly kicked off THX 1138 implicitly affirmed the film’s interest in Kubrick.  For not only did the BUCK ROGERS trailer of the “…wonderful world of the future” present a vision of the future that resembled the wondrous world of the future of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the trailer would have been seen in theatres by Kubrick as a kid in the Thirties.  The ironic contrast between the incredible world of the future twentieth century of the handsome and healthy Buck Rogers-played by Clarence “Buster” Crabbe-and the bleak, diseased and drugged up underworld dystopia of THX 1138 that followed was also obvious and enormous, making it implicitly clear how much Lucas disliked 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and how eager he was to sarcastically and satirically roast the clean and anti-septic film and Kubrick in THX 1138.  Indeed, the unusual retro Warner Brothers logo that preceded the film evoked the unusual retro MGM logo that preceded 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, implicitly affirming that Kubrick and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY were the satirical targets of Lucas in THX 1138. 

 

Then the film began with sickly green opening credits that drifted quickly and inexorably downwards into the abyss, sinking green credits which not only established the sinking and despondent mood of the film, but also evoked the first sinking credits at the beginning of the allegorical Jean-Luc Godard indie docufeature film ALPHAVILLE (1965), whose absurdist humour, docufeature style, surrealism and soulless and labyrinthine hallways of rebuilt futuristic buildings of post-war Paris implicitly influenced the equally absurdist humour, docufeature style, surrealism and fondness for the soulless and labyrinthine hallways of the buildings of post-war San Francisco in THX 1138.  Significantly, THX 1138 also contained the first implicit hints that the healing and centring Force of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz and THE WIZARD OF OZ would feature prominently in the film art of Lucas. 

 

For these sinking green credits not only immediately established a low and despondent mood, they also evoked the sickly green skin of the Wicked Witch of the West.  These sinking credits also reminded us that after Judy Garland’s Dorothy Gale was knocked out by flying debris at the beginning of THE WIZARD OF OZ, her farmhouse, Toto and herself were symbolically carried up and away by the tornado and down into the inner healing Ozian dreamworld.  The descent brought the viewer down with her and Toto, down into the healing dreamworld in an innovative visual variation on the falling house of Dorothy.  How fitting that an Associate Producer named Ed Folger was listed in these sinking opening credits, for his name evoked that of Scarecrow actor Ray Bolger in THE WIZARD OF OZ. 

 

With the Ozian credits over, the film revolved around the desperate and determined escape of a human robot worker designated THX 1138-played by Duvall-from an underground society and its constant electronic surveillance, enforced drug addiction and shaven heads, lookalike clothing, mindless consumerism, robotic work and robocops, sexual abstinence and worship of a bearded and Kubrick resembling and implicitly linked deity named OMMRICK-voiced by James Wheaton-with the help of the lovely LUH 3417-played by Maggie McOmie-a desperate escape that was implicitly linked by Lucas to an equally desperate and determined escape from drug addicted and mindless everyday society and the worship of Kubrick throughout the film.  The clean, shiny, soulless and fluorescent lit hallways of the underground society affirmed that implication, as they evoked the equally clean, shiny and soulless hallways of the spinning space station in Earth orbit and the Discovery I seen in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.  Significantly, THX 1138 was helped along in his desperate and tragicomic quest by the creepy and Hitchcock evoking SEN 5241-played by Donald Pleasence-who worked with LUH 3417 in the underworld’s 247 electronic surveillance centre and who affirmed the film’s implicit allegorical intent, reminding us that Kubrick was fond of roasting Hitchcock in his film art.  Indeed, the tv monitor filled control centre evoked the main tv monitor control filled centre overseen by HAL on the Discovery I in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, whose screens were often filled with three letter combinations like NAV for navigation and HIB for hibernation which combined with HAL to anticipate the three letter prefixes of the subterranean inmates of THX 1138, reaffirming the film’s implicit interest in roasting Kubrick.

 

Signficantly, shortly after the film began some co-workers of THX 1138 were killed in the explosion in Red Section L-14 while he was on his first robotic shift assembling robocops.  Significantly, these deaths evoked the underground workers who were also injured or killed at the beginning of the allegorical Fritz Lang film METROPOLIS (1927).  A fitting allusion, as Lang implicitly hoped for a film art era finally free from the Evil machinations of film inventor Thomas A. Edison given that the film saw the implicitly D.W. Griffith linked leader of the city of the future, Joh Frederson-played by Alfred Abel-and his implicitly Douglas Fairbanks jr. linked son Joh-played by Gustav Frohlich-triumph over the implicitly Edison linked mad scientist Rotwang-played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge-in the end, an implicit hope that fit in well with the implicit hope of Lucas to free audiences, film art, film artists and the Temple Theatre from Kubrick.  Soon after the deaths of these workers, the film’s implicit interest in the healing spirit of THE WIZARD OF OZ was reaffirmed.  For on his way home from this dreary but deadly first shift, THX 1138 received a ruby red polygon that reminded us of the ruby red high heels Dorothy received after the death of the Wicked Witch of the East, implicitly linking the deaths of the workers to the death of the Wicked Witch of the East and opening the gates of the healing spiritworld dream.  This also implied that the ruby red polygon was the film’s physically, psychologically and even sexually invigorating power object.  Ironically, however, the drugged up THX 1138 took the red polygon home after another robotic shift at work, and unwittingly allowed it to be sucked up a vacuum trash chute back at his apartment. 

 

This banished the ruby red power object, preventing THX 1138 from using its emboldening power to aid his liberation.  While humourous, this incident was also the first reference to garbage and garbage chutes in the film art of Lucas.  Indeed, garbage and garbage chutes would be a popular and recurring theme in his movies, climaxing in the liberating toss of the insidiously Evil Emperor-played by Ian McDiarmid-down the garbage chute at the end of the twilit, allegorical, CGI enhanced, Ozian themed, Lucas executive produced and implicitly Spielberg bashing Richard Marquand indie docufeature film STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983).  After unknowingly getting rid of this ruby red power object, THX 1138 then returned to his apartment and his lovely shaven headed roommate LUH 3417. 

 

LUH 3417 was a mysterious female character, for the viewer never found out if she was THX 1138’s cousin, girlfriend, sister, or wife.  Girlfriend seemed likely, for LUH 3417 soon introduced the listless and doped up Adam to the forbidden knowledge of love and sexuality like a bald Eve.  Indeed, to increase THX 1138’s libido, LUH 3417 changed his supper medication, substituting a virile ruby red pill for a blue pill that apparently had laid THX 1138 low with a bad case of the listless and impotent blues.  This red pill substitution evoked the ruby red slippers of the Wicked Witch of the East again and the ruby red polygon.  The pill substitution also evoked Glinda and the help she provided the heroes throughout their healing Ozian journey, linking LUH 3417 to Glinda rather than Dorothy.  The pill change also occurred while THX 1138 was watching naked male and female Afro-American dancers-played by Mello Alexandria and Barbara J. Artis, respectively-gyrate erotically to primal rhythms on holocast television.  These two dancers implicitly reaffirmed the importance of Afro-American virility in the life and the film art of Lucas, an important infusion that prepared us for the arrival of an Afro-American Cowardly Lion later in THX 1138 and for more Afro-American mojo in all of the later film art of Lucas.

 

Significantly, the aphrodisiac infusion combined well with the pill substitution, increasing THX 1138’s virility like Dorothy’s ruby red high heels and negating the earlier loss of the ruby red polygon.  Indeed, the two combined to free THX 1138’s mind and awaken his virility and his love for lovely LUH, leading to illegal sex between the two roommates, sex that exoked the illegal sex of Winston Smith and Julia in the allegorical George Orwell indie docufiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and perhaps also symbolized the sexual solace George and Marcia found in each other’s arms.  However, this love scene was strange, intensifying the mystery surrounding the staus of LUH 3417.  For the shaven heads of the two lovers made the scene curiously androgynous and hard to tell if THX 1138 and LUH 3417 were of the same sex, were of the opposite sex, or were twin Jedi siblings.  However, despite this ambiguous sexual awakening, THX 1138 left behind the mind control of the hologram priests of OMMRICK-holograms that anticipated the holograms of the STAR WARS Classic Trilogy-and his impotent and roboman state and moved into a more aware, assertive, fully human and sexually potent stage.  This effectively transformed him from an old, frozen and impotent Tin Man into a virile young Scarecrow, despite later attempts by the subterranean state to refreeze him with mind blocks and electro staffs. 

 

This transformation was important, for it was the first time that an intellectual, physical, psychological and spiritual transformation from one Ozian elemental character to another occurred in the same character in a Lucas film.  Indeed, this transformation became the idiosyncratic hallmark of the early film art of Lucas, and the major innovation Lucas brought to the static characters of THE WIZARD OF OZ.  In fact, this transformation anticipated the virile transformations of psychologically frozen Tin Men Luke and Anakin Skywalker, and the carbon frozen Han Solo-played by Mark Hamill, Sebastian Shaw and Harrison Ford, respectively-in STAR WAR EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI.  Little wonder that Keanu the similarly frozen and impotent young X gang member Thomas A. Anderson-played by Keanu Reeves-preferred the ruby red pill over the TZ disaster blues pill when offered up both at his first meeting with the mysterious and Great Oz linked Morpheus-played by Laurence Fishburne-in the twilit, allegorical, CGI enhanced and Ozian themed Wachowski Sisters indie animaction film THE MATRIX (1999).  For, clearly, Anderson had seen THX 1138 and knew the transformative power of the ruby red pill, turning THE MATRIX into THE MATRHX.

 

        With his ruby red virility regained, his emotional heart fired up, his inquiring mind reawakened and his spirit eager for flight, THX 1138 suddenly realized that he was not living in the pristine Emerald City but in an underworld similar to Sogo, the drugged out subterranean labyrinth beneath the Black Castle of the Wicked Tyrant of the West-played by Anita Pallenberg-on planet 16 of the Tau Ceti system in the allegorical and Ozian themed Roger Vadim indie film BARBARELLA (1968), implying that Lucas was satirizing his drug obsessed and underground counter-cultural generation in darker but still absurdist fashion on one level in THX 1138 like Vadim had done in BARBARELLA.  Indeed, for the crimes of drug evasion, monogamous sexuality and breaking free from the control of OMMRICK, THX 1138 and LUH 3417 were soon solemnly branded enemies of the state at a mock trial that underlined that the film’s subterranean future state actually symbolized the youthful, drug obsessed and free loving underground of the counter-cultural rebels of the Sixties, a mock trial that ironically reversed the absurd grilling Charlton Heston’s bearded and New Hollywood evoking Taylor received from the clean shaven and Old Hollywood evoking orangutans of the allegorical Schaffner docufeature film PLANET OF THE APES (1968). 

 

After being found guilty, the tall robocops-their black uniforms with silver faces making them look like kind of a cross between Darth Vader-played by David Prowse and the Imperial Stormtroopers (most commonly referred to as Imps) of the STAR WARS Classic Trilogy as well as the Black Guards of the Wicked Tyrant and the Castle Soldiers of THE WIZARD OF OZ-took THX 1138 away for reprogramming and conditioning in detention.  These robot officers initially carried white batons on hip loops.  Later these batons were exchanged for long black humming electro-shock staffs, that were used by an eerily twilit trio of robocops to stun THX 1138 into submission for reprogramming.  Significantly, these proto-lightsabers recalled the samurai swords of the films of Akira Kurosawa, a link affirmed by the lonely and haunting notes of a Japanese-like flute that were heard intermittently in the soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin, an organic flute that contrasted hopefully with the inorganic, sterile and hi-tech environment of THX 1138.

 

Significantly, prior to reprogramming, THX 1138 was probed by impersonal machines in a way that anticipated the robotic medical treatment Luke Skywalker received on Hoth after escaping the blockbuster wampa beast in the eerily and presciently twilit, allegorical, CGI enhanced, Ozian themed, Lucas executive produced and implicitly Spielberg bashing Irvin Kershner indie docufeature film STAR WARS EPISODE V:THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980), and the later and machine aided dark transformation of Hayden Christensen’s implicitly James Cameron linked Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader at the end of the twilit, allegorical, CGI enhanced, Ozian themed and implicitly Cameron and Spielberg bashing Lucas indie animaction film STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH.  This impersonal medical machine attention reminded us of the thorough medical treatment Lucas received after his near fatal car accident in 1962.  In fact, this link to the real life hospital treatment of Lucas was underlined when THX 1138 was taken after his medical examination to the detention area, a surreal and ghostly white sensory deprived lunar landscape.  For with its eerie and surreal whiteness and its white smocked inmates debating the cosmic order, the detention area evoked a hospital lounge full of quietly recuperating and commiserating patients.  This hospital lounge quality was underlined by the fact that THX 1138 realized here how much he wanted to live and be with LUH 3417 and do something more with his life than be a roboman.  For this realization reminded us of the teenaged Lucas, and how he decided to leave stock car racing behind and do something more with his life after recovering in hospital from his near fatal car crash.  Thus, it was fitting that the lunar detention area also suggested a student lounge full of commiserating film students at USC. 

 

Significantly, the detention area also evoked the Roman Senate in the allegorical Kubrick docufeature film SPARTACUS (1960), affirming the implicit Kubrick roasting intent of THX 1138.  Thus it was fitting that one of the detention area denizens, a bearded little man called a shell dweller-played by Mark Lawhead-resembled Kubrick enough to implicitly reaffirm the Kubrick roasting intent of the film and to imply that Lucas thought Kubrick was not a major film artist but a tiny little fellow lost in sentimental reveries of his Buck Rogers luving childhood in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.  The little fellow also looked like and anticipated a mysterious and lupine DJ in an allegorical and more exuberantly and openly Ozian themed Lucas film to come.  This lunar Twilight Zone also anticipated the post-apocalyptic, Cold War desert wastes of Tatooine and the equally white lunar snowscape of Hoth in the STAR WARS films.  And, while ominous, this lunar area was also a positive omen for THX 1138, for it reminded us that the Wicked Witch of the West melted like the Winter snow at the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ, leading to the whole and harmonious Springing escape of Dorothy from Oz and back to health in harmony in Kansas. 

 

        In this detention area THX 1138 renewed his acquaintance with SEN 5241, which was somehow appropriate, given that Pleasence’s character Parsons joined Edmond O’Brien’s Winston Smith in a similar detention/reprogramming area in the allegorical Michael Anderson docufeature film “1984” (1956).  Significantly, SEN 5241 was a sentient and crazed character who was part grandiose Great Oz-played by Frank Morgan-in THE WIZARD OF OZ and part ludicrously and presciently sinister Vader.  In Vader mode, he tried to convince THX 1138 to join him on a break for freedom where they would form a New Republic-style “…new alignment”, recalling Coppola’s success in persuading Lucas to join him in San Francisco at American Zoetrope and anticipating Vader’s efforts to persuade Luke to join him at the end of STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. 

 

Curiously, SEN 5241 had revealed an insen plot to have his onanistic roommate ONA replaced with THX 1138 earlier in the film, in a scene where an extra had said “…twenty-three hunter portapads” in an ominously twilit memory of the future.  This strange revelation suggested that SEN 5241 was eager to leave onanism behind and begin a sexual relationship with THX 1138.  This raised the spectre of homosexuality for the first time in a Lucas film, anticipating the dire and implicitly sodomistic threats of Darth Vader and the Emperor to turn Luke and Leia Skywalker-played by Carrie Fisher-to the Dark Side in the Classic Trilogy.  In fact, a sexual assault by an older male on a sleeping younger male in the detention area openly underlined that dark and diseased sexual forces were at work in the feature films of Lucas starting with THX 1138.

 

Significantly, the ruby red virility of THX 1138 was rebooted by an unexpected encounter he had with LUH 3417 in the detention area.  At this meeting LUH 3417 quickly revealed that she was pregnant, and then the two eerily similar lovers made forbidden love again.  Afterwards, and while still wrapped in each other’s arms, robocops surprised the two lovers and led them both away to their separate fates.  This dreamy encounter with LUH 3417 led to the electro-staff reprogramming for THX 1138 by the twilit trio of robocops, and finally to his escape with SEN 5241 and their attempted rescue of LUH 3417 from the Wicked OMMRICK.  They fled into the white emptiness, anticipating Luke Skywalker’s flight from the beastly blockbuster wampa’s cave in STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  However, the surreal and directionless lunar landscape did not change no matter how far they walked, neither receding nor advancing.  This was the ultimate impotent moment in this impotent underworld dream, as disorienting and frustrating for viewer as escaper-an eerie experience straight out of the Twilight Zone. 

 

After some time, a mysterious figure slowly emerged in front of SEN 5241 and THX 1138, anticipating the emergence of the figure of Han Solo on tauntaun in front of the frozen figure of Luke in the equally surreal and lunar white snowscape of Hoth in STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  This unusual figure was a huge American born man of African descent named SRT-played by Don Pedro Colley-who recalled the holo-television dancers who had earlier injected THX 1138 with their Afro mojo.  Curiously, SRT was an odd, virile and jocular character, sort of a cross between the Cowardly Lion-played by Bert Lahr-in THE WIZARD OF OZ and Chewbacca-played by Peter Mayhew-who anticipated the arrival of Lando Calrissian-played by Billy Dee Williams-in STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Jar Jar Binks and Mace Windu-played by Ahmed Best and Samuel L. Jackson, respectively-in the twilit, allegorical, CGI enhanced, Ozian themed and implicitly Cameron and Spielberg roasting indie animaction film STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)-and the arrival of Morpheus in the Matrix Trilogy.  And like Lando rescuing Luke at the end of STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, SRT casually and jovially led SEN 5241 and THX 1138 to freedom and safety. 

 

Thus, another Ozian conjunction of sorts occurred at last in THX 1138, as the Airy and garrulous Great SEN, the Earthy and virile THX-Crow, and the Fiery and imposing Cowardly SRT united to escape the lunar void and complete the healing quest by rescuing LUH 3417 and saving her and the film art of Lucas from Wicked OMMRICKs, Old Hollywood, labyrinthine underworlds, and banal television in classic Ozian fashion like the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man-played by Jack Haley-saved Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ.  The heroic threesome also evoked all of the other great heroic threesomes in the history of fantastic literature-from Bounding Elk, Great Serpent and Hawkeye tracking the lost Munro sisters and their Mingo captors in the allegorical James F. Cooper indie docufiction novel The Last Of The Mohicans (1826) and Aramis, Athos and Porthos coming to the aid of D’Artagnan in the allegorical Alexandre Dumas reply to Cooper, The Three Musketeers (1844), to Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas tracking Merry and Pippin and their Orc captors the allegorical Tolkien indie docufiction novel The Two Towers (1954).  And the Cowardly SRT led the way like a dreamworld frontier scout, pointing to a door behind the Great SEN and the THX-Crow that was in the whiteout wall of this surreal and lunar womb.  The door led to rebirth from the white womb into the maddening and crushing castle inmate crowds in the corridors of the subterranean labyrinth. 

 

Tragicomically, the Great SEN was quickly carried away by the relentless press and flow of the anonymous shaven headed inmate throngs of the underground labyrinth in the first narrative split in the films of Lucas.  A fitting sight, reminding us that the Great Oz drifted away in his phallic hot air balloon before Dorothy and Toto could ride with him in his basket at the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ.  To add to his tragicomic plight, the Great SEN soon got into trouble while lost on his solo odyssey.  In fact, the Great SEN attacked a blue and black robed holo-tv priest of OMMRICK from behind when this priest tried to contact the robocops after catching him in OMMRICK’s holocast television studio.  The wild and grandiose SEN 5241 then knocked out or even killed the priest by throwing him to the ground from behind. 

 

Significantly, this knockout not only anticipated a similar knockout of a pesky and inquiring Nazi by Ford’s Doctor Henry “Indiana” Jones jr. in the eerily and presciently twilit, allegorical, Ozian themed, implicitly William Friedkin roasting and Lucas executive produced Spielberg indie docufeature film RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), but also exactly anticipated the end of STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI.  For Darth Vader would also pick up the similarly black robed and quasi-religious Emperor from behind and throw him down the pentultimate garbage chute at the conclusion of the Classic Trilogy.  Significantly, Vader was also initially a dutiful and obedient servant of the subterranean machineworld like the Great SEN before he rebelled and joined the “New Alignment” of the Rebellion, underlining the link between the two spiritually emancipated heroes. 

 

The Great SEN’s quick exit also ended the triumphant Ozian trio, taking the healing and airy energy of the Great Oz away from viewers and characters.  This disappearance in a way briefly transformed the THX-Crow and the Cowardly SRT into a Dorothy and guardian Toto pair.  At one point after the disappearance of the Great SEN, THX 1138 also briefly went through a Cowardly Lion phase, lying on a morgue stretcher and pretending he was dead to avoid being captured at one point by two pursuing robovcops.  Thus, THX 1138 went through another Ozian phase, a transformative journey that came full elemental circle when he came across a computer terminal in his frantic underground odyssey with SRT.  This terminal allowed THX 1138 to make like the Great SEN in his underworld monitoring centre job.  Thus, THX 1138 completed a full circle transformative journey in the film that carried him through each Ozian elemental personification in turn, making him a whole and holy man.  This was an extremely important innovation in the film art of Lucas, underlining the healing nature of his films and anticipating a similar holy journey completed by the priest-like Jedi Knight, Luke Skywalker, in the Classic Trilogy.

 

However, this healing and holy transformation was a bittersweet victory for the newly emancipated THX 1138.  For the terminal allowed the whole and harmonious THX 1138 to determine that LUH 3417 had been terminated, and that her alphanumeric code had been reassigned to another test tube foetus, a sight that evoked the cloned test tube citizens of the allegorical Aldous Huxley indie docufiction novel  Brave New World (1932), and prepared us for the Clone troopers of the Tragic Trilogy.  Curiously, while no doubt simply symbolizing the fear of Lucas that THX 1138 would not be successful, this disappointing revelation again anticipated his real life divorce and the departure of his wife Marcia from his life forever after the TZ disaster and the critical and popular failure of STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI.  This revelation also ended the healing Ozian cadence of the film, as there was now no need to find, liberate and heal Dorothy in the form of LUH 3417. 

 

Still, despite the death of LUH 3417, the now harmonious THX 1138 and the virile and healthy SRT still stood in complete contrast to the drugged up and sickly inmates of the uncritically OMMRICK worshipping underground society, and quickly decided to escape the underworld.  Ironically, however, while a symbol of virile life Force, SRT was not actually alive.  In fact, he insisted in his jovial, Jar Jar Binks-like fashion that he was actually just a hologram.  This definitely linked him to the male and female Afro-American holocast television dancers seen earlier in the movie.  Thus, it was not surprising that SRT did not succeed in escaping the television linked underground labyrinth.  Indeed, after leaping free of the endless underground hallway maze and from Robocop pursuit and out into an underground parking lot, SRT and THX 1138 broke into separate rocket cars and attempted to blast away to freedom.  However, the rocket car of SRT was a wicked black car to the sinister left of the virtuous white Samos 3 rocket car of THX 1138, a colour and position that spelled doom for the jovial hologram.  Not surprisingly, the naïve and literally unworldly hologram proved to be too non-human and unknowledgeable to successfully operate his phallic car.  He promptly lost control and crashed prematurely into a pillar, trapping him in the TWILIGHT ZONE linked underworld…forever. 

 

This was a pivotal and seminal car crash and death that evoked the pivotal and seminal teen car crash of Lucas.  And like the real Great Crash of ’62, this car crash both ended a way of life and began a liberating new way of life.  For robocops stopped to examine the wreck, allowing THX 1138 to escape the labyrinth and blast out of the subterranean underworld in his virtuous white rocket car and down a long and winding escape tunnel that anticipated the Death Star trench at the end of STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE.  Ominously, one of the pursuing robocops was numbered 23, linking Lucas to the July 23, 1982 date of the TZ disaster again in another twilit memory of the future.  However, despite this ominous and twilit link, the rocketing white car of THX 1138 was an important symbol, like the ruby red polygon, the ruby red pill and the three Afro-American holograms.  For the car represented virility, harmonious and healthy life Force, and the side of Good, like the white horse of a Western hero.  Of course, these qualities anticipated the arrival of the equally harmonious, naturally flowing and powerful J.D.s, Jedettes, Jedi and Western heroes in the allegorical and Ozian themed Lucas indie docufeature film AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973) and the STAR WARS Classic Trilogy and the STAR WARS Tragic Trilogy.  The white rocket car also clearly represented liberation from underground youth society and all of its somnambulistic and unimaginative pod people, from draconian and sterile overlord establishment authority and its prying and banal television, and from the influence and worship of Kubrick. 

 

Of course, linking cars to freedom came naturally to a film artist who spent so much time as a teenage speed racer.  Indeed, a powerful and liberating yellow brick road coloured race car had already appeared in 1:42:08, and rocket cars or spaceships would also appear in most of the subsequent films and telefilms of Lucas, from the rocketing hot rods of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, to the land speeders, Deathpod racers and rocketing spaceships of the STAR WARS films.  In fact, wholey THX 1138 even suffered from an engine temperature overheat problem that temporarily stopped his rocket car at one point in his desperate escape, anticipating a similar overheating problem that temporarily halted Jake Lloyd’s implicitly Spielberg linked Anakin Skywalker in his Death pod race against the insidious and Landis linked Sebulba-voiced by Lewis MacLeod-in STAR WARS EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE. 

 

After solving his heating problem, the wholey Ozian Force was clearly now with the harmonious THX 1138 as he made his liberating escape in his rocketing car.  However, racing down the winding and Yellow Lined Road of the escape tunnel at speeds up to an ominous and twilit 235 mph, THX 1138 was pursued by two of the tall and black clad robocops.  Ominously, one of the pursuing robocops was 23 again, implicitly and ominously reaffirming that Lucas and THX 1138 were already trying to escape from the shadow of the TZ disaster.  These two robocops rode two white jetcycles in a tight tandem, hunched over their bikes in relentlessly roaring pursuit of THX 1138 like two hellbent flying monkeys trying to take him back to the Black Castle, or like two Wicked Witch sisters on horsey broomsticks.  The sight of the two officers was ironic, reminding us that Duval played a pursuing highway patrol motorcyclist named Gordon in THE RAIN PEOPLE.  They also darkly foreboded the two TIE fighters that accompanied Darth Vader on his relentless pursuit of Luke Skywalker down the Death Star trench at the end of STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE. 

 

This link to the climatic end of STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE was reinforced by the radio chatter and the scenes of the underground control room that were intercut with the rocketing cars and bikes throughout the relentless chase, elements that anticipated similar intercut Imperial and Rebel control room activity throughout the Classic Trilogy, scenes that were inspired in turn by the intercutting of the frantic War Room with the final attack run of the wayward bomber at the end of DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, in another allusion to Kubrick.  Indeed, in one snippet of control room chatter heard earlier in the movie, a male voice said “…OK start your descent” to THX 1138 when he was at work making robocops, a voice and phrase that was repeated in the Rebel cockpit chatter at the end of STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE. 

 

Of course, this time the control room scenes and chatter were linked to the evil underworld Empire that was trying to capture instead of aid the rocketing hero.  And the first Empire monitored the progress of THX 1138 down the trench tunnel with amusingly detached and drugged incomprehension, abruptly calling off the chase when a computer impersonally signalled that expenditure for the chase had exceeded the allotted budget, implying the conviction of Lucas that film art should be made for higher goals than the simple making of money.  Ironically, this ending anticipated the ending of STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE, where success was also achieved when a computer was shut down, and a man was left to his own intuitive devices.

 

And left alone he was, as THX 1138 crashed his rocket car at an ominous and almost TZ disaster date predicting 235 mph into some unavoidable construction crew obstacles, before leaping from the freedom machine to faithfully continue his race for life and freedom.  Humourously, he was quickly swarmed by a group of dwarven “shell dwellers”, who were joined in the 2004 CGI Special Edition by simian “shell dwellers” who evoked the apemen of the Dawn of Man segment of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in another implicit affirmation of the Kubrick roasting intent of THX 1138.  In the original version of the film, these shell dwellers were mostly alienated Munchkin dwarves like the Kubrick linked shell dweller previously met in the detention area, who attacked and attempted to capture THX 1138, as if in bitter reminder of the miserable fate that befell people who refused to leave behind childhood and adolescence.  Fortunately, THX 1138’s transformative Ozian journey had left him a whole and harmonious adult who was easily able to fend off these warped Munchkins and CGIians and leave Oz behind forever. 

 

Indeed, THX 1138 soon found a tunnel ladder that allowed him to climb up, up and out of the subterranean labyrinth, looking with his bald head like a determinedly rising and irrepressible human erection.  The steadily climbing figure of THX 1138 also evoked the determinedly climbing heroic duo of Freder Fredersen and his implicitly Charles Chaplin linked friend Josaphat-played by Theodor Loos-who climbed resolutely up two ladders and out of their own subterranean worker underworld to unite the underworld workers and upperworld overseers-perhaps symbolizing film artists working hard to ensure that relations between film crews and studio heads remained good during the production of film art and that both sides committed themselves to the creation of film art for film art’s sake -implicitly symbolized by Brigitte Helm’s implicitly Mary Pickford linked Maria-rather than fame, fortune and Oscar statuettes-symbolized by the Oscar statuette evoking Machine-Man that was insidiously infused and animated with the spirit of Maria by Rotwang-at the end of METROPOLIS.  Eerily, the tenaciously pursuing robocop 04-an ironic but fitting numeric designation, given the importance of the four Ozian elements and the healing and harmonious Force in the film art of Lucas-followed him up the ladder in dogged and despairing twilit pursuit, its Tin Man figure reminding us that THX 1138 began the film as a robotic human Tin Man before the start of his invigorating and transformative journey. 

 

Amusingly, this Tin Officer taunted the steadily climbing hero like an insipid Darth Vader, inanely telling THX 1138 to “…please turn back…this is your last chance.”  But THX 1138 had clearly defeated his impotent Tin Man Side.  Indeed, he simply ignored the robot monkey, who soon stopped and turned back when the control room called off the overly expensive chase.  This was an unnoticed but significant milestone in the films of Lucas, marking the first time that the Forces of Evil were defeated not by an hero, but by their own dimwitted greed and incomprehension, in the end.  In fact, this distinctive and idiosyncratic ending prepared the viewer for the self destruction of Ford’s Bob Falfa, Paul Freeman’s Rene Belloq, McDiarmid’s Emperor and Christensen’s Skyfaller at the end of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI and STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH.

 

Then swelling symphonic 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY evoking music played as THX 1138 scrambled up the last few rungs of the tunnel ladder to freedom from box populi and Kubrick worshipping masses and from drugged up student underground worlds.  Finally, the embattled and wholey hero escaped the diseased and drugged underworld labyrinth with its hints of incest, and stood harmonious and free of the suffocating influence of Kubrick in the fresh air of a sunlit day.  And here in the healthy open air and blazing sunlight of Kansas reality, THX 1138 stood triumphantly erect and reborn in front of an huge, apocalyptic and mushroom cloud-like setting sun like a true silhouetted Scarecrow, evoking the exploding atomic mushroom clouds at the end of DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB to reaffirm the implicit Kubrick roasting intent of THX 1138 one last time.  A Scarecrow still cheekily linked to deliberately idiosyncratic, offkilter and Old Hollywood mocking composition, for the silhouetted THX 1138 and the setting sun were located on the sinister left of the screen. 

 

Clearly, the age of Old Hollywood as well as his subterranean life were setting and a skyrocking and cheekily idiosyncratic new day was rising for THX 1138 as well.  This sunset vista anticipated the setting sun that began AMERICAN GRAFFITI, and the twin setting suns of Tatooine at the beginning of STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE and at the end of STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH.  Unfortunately, the setting sun also brought with it twilight, bringing Lucas closer to his own journey through the Twilight Zone, an ominous journey affirmed by the presence of Duval.  However, the sunlit vista also hinted of a real world rendezvous with the African queen of his holo-tv dreams, like Dorothy’s real world rendezvous with Hunk Andrews, a rendezvous that came true in the new millennium when Lucas began to be seen with Mellody Hobson.  An intriguing possibility, for at the moment THX 1138 had triumphed in the end but had not got the girl, linking him to D’Artagnan and Hawkeye and anticipating other triumphant but single heroes like John Milner, Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi and Indiana Jones at the end of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, STAR WARS EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI, STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH, and the twilit, allegorical, CGI enhanced, Ozian themed and Lucas executive produced Spielberg indie docufeature film INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989).   

 

And so, like Barbarella and Pygar, THX 1138 was at last free from Kubrick and OMMRICK worship, television and the disaffected, drugged, frustrated and impotent youthful underground labyrinth mentality and the Establishment and its exuberantly gloomy planetary nuclear apocalypse, warned of all too well at the end of DR. STRANGELOVE: OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.  At last Lucas left behind Establishment and film school pessimism and his generation’s wild underground rebellion and openly embraced a harmonious world free of disease and drugs.  This evoked the daylit and harmonious ending of THE WIZARD OF OZ and prepared the viewer for similar daylit endings at the end of AMERICAN GRAFFITI and STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE.  This healing ending also broke the viewer away from the pessimistic and sterile post-apocalyptic Cold War mentality for the first time in the film art of Lucas, anticipating the triumphant endings of the Classic Trilogy to come.  Ironically, in fact, like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THX 1138 was one of the first post-World War II allegorical films to escape from the Cold War in the end, making THX 1138 one of the first true post-Cold War films. 

 

Clearly, this was an important new beginning and not an ending for THX 1138, Lucas and film art.  Indeed, the ending of THX 1138 was a perfect and prescient metaphor for the life and films of Lucas.  For the ending presaged Lucas’ own embattled and ultimately successful escape from his father, the boring, unimaginative and pod people filled small town labyrinth of Modesto and his defeatist fellow film students and the MAD establishment, and eventual triumph as an independent and imaginative J.D. Jedi film artist by taking advantage of setting of the Old Hollywood era to succeed as an independent and idiosyncratic mainstream film artist with an innovative and creative docufeature style that fused mise-en-scene with montage to create mise-en-montage in the New Hollywood era.  This triumphant ending also anticipated his liberation from the benevolent but constricting influence of his mentor Coppola and his separation from his wife, Marcia.  A significant farewell to hippy flower power impotence that anticipated the rise of the disciplined and determined ranks of the militant film Rebellion and its unswerving dream of restoring a bold New Hollywood Republic policed by wise but tough and unyielding and triumphant Jedi Director Knights in the Classic Trilogy. 

 

Significantly, the many allusions to previous allegorical films and novels gave the odd and baffling film a sense of continuity in spite of its unusual nature to THX 1138.  The unisexually bald men and women with their alphanumerical designations and identical clothing seen in the film also evoked those equally bald and alphanumeric designated men and women met in the allegorical Yevgeny Zamyatin novel We (1924), a satirical roast of the Russian Revolution.  The legions of bald male workers also evoked the legions of bald men who built the Tower of Babel in METROPOLIS, a film that saw vengeful and technology obsessed inventor Rotwang try but fail to wreak furious revenge on the father of Freder Fredersen, the wealthy and powerful “Master of Metropolis” with the Los Angeles cadenced name of Joh Fredersen.  Significantly, Rotwang struck back at Joh Fredersen for taking his wife, Hel, from him, a seduction that killed her giving birth to the successful Freder, a failure to stop Joh Fredersen that implied the hope of Lang that the equally vengeful and technology obsessed film inventor, Thomas Edison, would also fail in his furious attempt to stop the wealthy and Los Angeles based Hollywood studios from successfully releasing the film art that they had taken from Edison, on one level.  Fitting evocations of METROPOLIS, as determined blonde underworld worker 11811 aka Georgy-played by Erwin Biswanger-openly anticipated the arrival of Georgie Lucas and Luke Skywalker. 

 

The state enforced drug addiction designed to keep everyone passive and malleable evoked the state enforced drug addiction and malleable passivity of the citizens of Brave New World.  The film’s constant electronic surveillance-aided by LUH 3417 and SEN 5241, who initially worked in the underworld’s computer and closed circuit television monitoring control room-also evoked the battle against constant surveillance, two way telescreens and enforced sexual abstinence of Nineteen Eighty-four, and the television linked telescreens of “1984”.  This distant surveillance also evoked the crystal balls that allowed Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West to watch over Dorothy and her companions in THE WIZARD OF OZ.  The listless, unimaginative, unemotional and lifeless people of the underworld also evoked the equally listless, unimaginative, unemotional and lifeless pod people and their podovisions of the allegorical and implicitly television bashing Don Siegel docufeature film INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956).  The vaguely Ozian structure, embrace of artistic independence and rejection of the counterculture’s dissipated drug use, as well as the labyrinth under the City of Night of the implicitly Wicked Witch of the West linked Tyrant of BARBARELLA also returned in THX 1138. 

 

In addition, by portraying an individual’s struggle to break free from an asexual and robotic underground society rendered somnambulistic and impotent by state enforced drug addiction, THX 1138 often seemed like the story of a frustrated underground Odysseus struggling to continue his journey by escaping a dystopia that was a mixture of the drugged up land of the Lotus Eaters and the ghostly underworld of Hades.  However, despite incorporating and alluding to all of these previous films, legends and novels, Lucas still succeeded in heading off on his own idiosyncratic and Ozian tinged direction in THX 1138, an idiosyncratic direction enhanced by unbalanced frames, disjointed and staccato editing, strange sound effects and dialogue and lack of definite plot and story.  Lucas also anticipated his future, for the high priests of OMMRICK in hooded black and grey robes anticipated the black cape of the huge and intimidating black roboman, Darth Vader, and the gleefully insidious and black robed and hooded Emperor of the STAR WARS Classic Trilogy and Tragic Trilogy, while the tall black and white uniformed robocops with silver metal faces anticipated the lookalike white skeletal armoured Stormtroopers of that trilogy.

 

Unfortunately, however, Duvall openly linked Lucas to the Twilight Zone again via his role in the TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series.  Pleasance also ominously linked Lucas to the Twilight Zone again via his role as Professor Ellis Fowler in the allegorical Buck Houghton telefilm “The Changing of the Guard” (1962), a season three episode of the original TWILIGHT ZONE telefilm series.  Curiously, PTO, a thoughtful and philosophic old man who looked like Clarke, co-writer of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and was met in the surreal and lunar detention centure, was played by Ian Wolfe, who like Duval and Pleasance also ominously linked Lucas and THX 1138 to television and the Twilight Zone again via a small role as Schwimmer in the allegorical Siegel telefilm “Uncle Simon” (1963), from season five of the original TWILIGHT ZONE series, in a twilit trio of links to the Zone for Lucas.  Last but not least, THX 1138 also had to elude doggedly pursuing Robocop 23 in order to escape from the drugged up and diseased underworld and stand at last in healthy and sunlit freedom in the real world.  Thus, Lucas also unknowingly anticipated the TZ disaster and his fight to use CGI enhancement to liberate film art from the Twilight Zone after 1982 in eerie and ominous memories of the future disaster, as well.