The Mind of Mr Soames (1970)

The Mind of Mr Soames is a 1970 Amicus production and it’s not at all what you might expect from that company. This is not an anthology film. It’s not gothic horror. It’s debatable whether it even qualifies as a genre film. You could call it a science fiction movie in the sense that it deals with science but it has a contemporary setting with no futuristic technology, expect perhaps for a tiny bit of speculation about surgical techniques.

It also deals with behavioural therapy of a kind which gives it a very tenuous link to A Clockwork Orange which came out in the following year. It’s certainly part of a whole range of movies starting in the late 50s which deal with the ramification of new psychological approaches which were gaining ground at the expense of increasingly discredited Freudian theories.

In fact a brief look at the plot synopsis might lead one to expect a kind of psycho killer movie but it isn’t that either.

It’s also untypical of Amicus’s output in being very low-key and rather cerebral. It’s even at times close to being an art movie.

His might account for the film’s descent into obscurity. It would have been tricky to market and movies that are tricky to market do tend to do poorly at the box office. It hasn’t gained a major cult following, again most likely because it’s so difficult to categorise.

And it has an intriguing cast.

Eminent American neurosurgeon Dr Michael Bergen (Robert Vaughn) arrives at the Midlands Neurophysiological Institute to perform experimental surgery on a 30-year-old man named John Soames (Terence Stamp). Soames has been in a coma since birth. Dr Bergen hopes to awaken him. If the operation succeeds Soames will of course be like a new-born baby. He will have to be taught to walk, to talk, to feed himself.

That’s the task of psychologist Dr Maitland (Nigel Davenport) - to put Soames through a crash course that will take him from babyhood to adulthood in a few months.

Of course the crash course runs into problems. Dr Maitland’s training regime is inflexible and rigorous. Dr Bergen on the other hand realises that Soames really is a child. He needs to play.

Soames eventually escapes and gets into a good deal of trouble through his total lack of understanding of the adult world. It seems that his escape could end disastrously or possibly even tragically, for Soames himself or for others. You think you know how it’s all going to end but this is neither a horror film nor a thriller so it’s wise not to assume that it will follow a typical horror movie or thriller trajectory.

What I like most about this movie is the number of times it sets up situations which the viewer will be sure can only play out in one way but the movie refuses to conform to our expectations. It’s just not the movie that you have probably assumed it’s going to be.

The film does explore issues about child-rearing and these may perhaps be intended as a commentary on wider social issues - individual freedom of expression opposed to social responsibility.

Dr Maitland is a believer in the need for discipline. Dr Bergen believes in freedom. These were issues that were in the air in 1970 (and again there’s that faint but tantalising similarity to A Clockwork Orange).

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Terence Stamp. I find him very mannered and I dislike most of his performances but if you cast him in a weird offbeat part he would give you a weird offbeat performance and on occasions that worked brilliantly. He’s perfect in William Wyler’s The Collector and in the Fellini-directed Toby Dammit segment of Spirits of the Dead. Stamp’s performance here works and I doubt if any other actor could have bettered it.

Nigel Davenport is good in the tricky part of Dr Maitland. It’s tricky because Maitland is a very unsympathetic character - he’s stubborn, he’s blinkered, he cannot admit to being wrong and he has no understanding of people. But he’s not a villain. He has no actual desire to hurt Soames. In his own way he means well.

Robert Vaughn is excellent as Dr Bergen. Vaughn of course had immense charm but this is not quite the debonair playboy charm of Napoleon Solo. Dr Bergen’s charm comes from a genuine human warmth. Vaughn makes Dr Bergen self-assured without being arrogant. He may not always be right but he means well.

There are no villains at all in this movie, just people who sincerely disagree on fundamental issues. We don’t really want anything bad to happen to any of these people.The film gets its points across without the audience ever feeling that it’s being lectured. The ending is typical of the entire approach of the film - set the audience up to expect one thing and then give them something else which is less obvious and more satisfying.

This film was based on a novel by Charles Eric Maine, a science fiction writer with no great reputation but I rather enjoyed his novel Spaceways.

The Mind of Mr Soames is offbeat and fascinating. Highly recommended. It’s on Blu-Ray, from Powerhouse Indicator.