Frozen Alive (1964)
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Frozen Alive (or its West German title Der Fall X701) presents the skeleton of a really good movie. And, I suppose in 1964 our hero Dr. Frank Overton might well have been a suspect, but sitting here in the twenty-first century I kept thinking he had a rock solid alibi.
“A scientist experimenting with suspended animation decides to use himself as a test subject. While he is frozen, his wife is murdered, and he becomes the primary suspect.”
And, absolutely nothing I expected based on that brief synopsis happened. Because,
His name is cleared before he’s revived! He isn’t even really fully conscious or informed of his wife’s death by the end of the film!
That said, the wife isn’t a terribly sympathetic character so when she is finally killed (I think better than 40 minutes into this 81 minute film), we, at least I, felt like saying, “at last!” I started out by saying this had the skeleton of a really good movie, didn’t I? Well, at the very least this film needed a musical score of some kind.
It also needed to draw out it’s key plot point (scientist as suspect in wife’s murder) a bit more. There was no tension and no real compelling antagonist. I feel that a clever screen writer could re-write this and make it work in a modern setting, though the major hurdle will still be defeating the doctor’s air tight alibi.
Gaming Hooks
There would need to be some pretty compelling evidence available to really make the doctor a suspect, but the notion of a character waking up from suspended animation to find he is a suspect in some crime is intriguing. To me, the trick is figuring out why the fact that they were in suspended animation is not a pretty air tight alibi. In the movie, it’s never explained; I presume it has something to do with the state of forensics at the time, but even a cursory modern examination of the crime scene and the doctor himself would have cleared him immediately.
So maybe you could frame the unfrozen character for some kind of conspiracy to commit a crime. Once again, there isn’t really anything worth statting out in this movie.
Hmmm… Maybe, the characters are colonists on a ship full of other sleeping colonists. They are revived to be told that they are being held under suspicion of reviving themselves enroute and killing all the other passengers? Sort of… 2001 meets the Manchurian Candidate?
PSA: A schedule of sorts…
Next Month: Double Feature! The Screaming Skull & Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter
I immediately thought of the colonist idea since I have Blue Planet right at eye level on the shelf here. You could get around the alibi by adding in mistaken identity. The “colonist” angle isn’t really necessary for that, but it does imply that communication between origin and destination is tenuous and that presents many opportunities for fudged or swapped documents.
For Blue Planet, the thought expands out to this: A corporate assassin is given extensive, expensive bio-sculpts and a new identity and shipped as a popsicle through the wormhole. They arrive and, lo, they happen to be that unlucky 5% that experience partial amnesia. They don’t know who they are, or why there are guns pointed at them, only that they have a mission brief to pick up down-planet. As a further twist, it’s not that the identity swap failed, but their new identity isn’t what it was supposed to be, and that person is a wanted criminal. Did their employer set them up? Was there a mistake made by the bribed emigration clerk? Is someone hijacking the assassin for their own use? Did a double agent intercept the ID swap? Does the assassin get her memory back? If she does, are they her memories? Can she get away and pick up her instructions? Can she trust her mission brief?
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