What an odd, unsettling brainwashing movie. There’s some weird whiplash between a spy plot that’s almost completely dropped and the real main plot of a scientist trying to prove that a deceased colleague was brainwashed by undergoing the same isolation procedure. But when that main plot kicks in and you get another brainwashing followed by the creepy as hell side effects, oh yeah, this is some good psychological terror. A wonderful lead performance by Dirk Bogarde as the scientist who comes out the other side of the brainwashing much more damaged than he was before. The ending is a little too much "and they saved him through the power of love" for my taste, but overall this is worth checking out if you see it coming up on TCM some day. Some darn fine practical affects work on the isolation tank, which involves a person in a diving suit suspended in the tank so they have no stimulus of any kind.
★★★ 1/2
1963 - Directed by Basil Dearden and written by James Kennaway.
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