PROJECT X

US, 1987, 107 minutes, Colour.
Matthew Broderick, Helen Hunt, Bill Sadler, Stephen Lang, Jean Smart, Dick Miller.
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan.

Project X is a comedy thriller with literally monkey business going on. The film is a star vehicle for Matthew Broderick in the days when he was a young star in such films as War Games, Biloxi Blues. His co-star is Helen Hunt who had a long career before she emerged very successfully on television in Mad About You and then moved into films, winning an Oscar for As Good As It Gets.

The film is interested in space exploration but also in animal experimentation. Broderick is the pilot who has to train the monkeys who go into space but discovers that they are being injected with radiation. One of the monkeys, the chimpanzee, Virgil, is an orphan, is trained in sign language and is to go into space. The film veers from the comic touches with the interactions with the chimpanzees to the thriller where Virgil has to be saved and the authorities who are abusing their power have to be unmasked.

The film was directed by Jonathan Kaplan, better known as an action director with such films as White Line Fever, Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning vehicle The Accused, Brokedown Palace about drug smuggling in Thailand.

1. The popularity of science fiction? The imagination? What if ... ? This film as an example of '60s science fiction: technology, technical aspects of filming? Insight? Moralising?

2. The film of William Castle? Quickies, shockers? Entertainment at a popular level? His quality science fiction filmmaking: sets, imagination, animation, superimpositions? Dramatising of the id? The metropolis? The use of video and holographs? Colourful style? Contrived? Audiences accepting this? Musical score?

3. The film compared with the science fiction of the '50sf the developments of the '60s? The period of 2001? This film's echoes of contemporary interests and films?

4. The plausibility of the plot and treatment? The details of the story. the pace of the narrative, the use of conventions? Themes?

5. The situation of Hagan Arnold: frozen, the international situation, the 14 days? The information, the holographs? The decisions to be made? History, the phones, Karen, the nightmare, the story, the torture, the truth, the ending? Christopher George as the American hero type?

6. Evil and villainy: the mystery, appearances, the phone, shooting. Karen, the meeting, the injections, death, the use of the brain?

7. The picture of the 22nd century and comparisons with the 20th: pills, technology, violence, illness, power, science, military, the war, ordinary people? The background of power struggles and their consequences?

8. The recreation of 1965-68: photos, papers, newsreels? The banks and their style etc.? Details of human living?

9. The background of scientific research,, the brain ? cf. Fantastic Voyage etc.? Themes of freedom. personality?

10. The doctor and style. military background, assistants? The elaborate nature of the re-creation of the scene. acting? Karen and her role?

11. Enjoyable science fiction, espionage and heroism? Science fiction and its moralising?