mike48128 Review of The Terminal Man

The Terminal Man (1974)

A Major disappointment. No longer intriguing. I hated it!

[6/10 · 22 January 2017]

Said to be one of Michael Creighton's least-favorite novels. Much changed from the book, including the ending. Poor George Segal. He plays a man with a rare kind of epilepsy that causes him to become psychotic, violent, and an amnesiac. To my knowledge, there is no such type, and the American Epilepsy Foundation condemned this film! Richard Dyshart throws up before he performs the surgery; not a good sign. Much professional criticism in the film citing mind-control by computers and such science-fiction Mumbo-Jumbo. It appears to be highly edited for content and screen time before release. An almost bloodless brain operation. The wiring goes wrong and his brain tries to create more seizures, as one of the electrodes stimulates his brain's "pleasure center". His girlfriend helps him break out of the hospital. He is armed with a gun and a blonde wig. Brief nudity in the strip club. He goes on a killing rampage. After this point, the film is no longer fascinating or intriguing. It becomes a tedious paint-by-the-numbers ho-hum non-thriller. He violently murders both his girlfriend and a Catholic Priest. He finds his way to Dr. Ross' (Joan Hackett) apartment, and it appears for a moment that he is going to go after her "Psycho Style" in her shower. He never gets inside the bathroom. The door stops him. In my house, the door would have crumbled like balsa wood. She stabs him in the chest with a kitchen knife and he ends up in a freshly-dug grave in a Catholic Cemetery. The Swat Team shoots him. I would have had him short-circuit and jump out the apartment window, in the stark realization that the operation (and the movie) were both failures!