While boarding a crowded train Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is passed a note. All it says is 34 Lafayette St. He then receives a phone call from someone claiming to be his old friend Charlie (Murray Hamilton). Charlie died. It takes some convincing for Arthur to believe Charlie is still alive. Charlie tells him that he changed his life through an organization called the “Company”. Charlie tells him to go to 34 Lafayette Street if he wants to change his own life. Arthur is a middle aged man with a dull life in the suburbs of Scarsdale, New York. He and his wife Emily (Frances Reid) have grown apart and have fallen out of love with each other. His daughter is married and lives in California. With some trepidation he follows the instructions and, through a series of addresses, arrives at the “Company”.
Arthur is drugged and manipulated into a compromising situation. The Company uses a tape of Arthur’s assault on a young woman to maneuver him into agreeing to use their services. Arthur is appalled at the lengths they go to acquire clients but he signs the contract. The Company fakes Arthur’s death and provides him with massive plastic surgery and a new identity. When the bandages come off Arthur is reborn as Antiochus “Tony” Wilson (Rock Hudson), an artist who lives in Malibu, California.
Tony has trouble assimilating into his new life. He meets Nora Marcus (Salome Jens) and develops a relationship with her. When he gets drunk at a party he begins to talk about his old life and finds out that he is in a neighborhood full of “reborns” and employees of the Company. Tony is unable to handle everything that has happened to him but his Faustian contract with the Company comes back to haunt him in a way he never realized could happen.
“Seconds” was released in 1966 and was directed by John Frankenheimer. It is a dark science fiction film and part of the subgenre of psychological horror. Originally panned the film has since gained a cult following. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
Rock Hudson was amazing. Far from the style of roles he usually takes he was wonderful as the disillusioned Tony. The film is a bizarre nightmare scenario full of distorted nourish images and strange angles. It’s like being trapped in a horror funhouse. The movie was totally depressing and claustrophobic from beginning to end but somehow very compelling. The tone of the film becomes more dismal as it goes along until you reach the end where it goes from just disturbing to absolutely horrifying. Again, Rock Hudson’s performance here was superb.
The scene where Arthur Hamilton is undergoing plastic surgery includes several shots of an actual rhinoplasty operation. Director John Frankenheimer filmed some of the shots himself after the cameraman fainted. Rock Hudson actually got drunk for the scene in which he gets drunk at a party. The beach house where Tony Wilson lived actually belonged to director Frankenheimer as did the trophy Arthur prized and the mounted fish over Arthur’s fireplace.
Frankenheimer had to cut seven minutes from the grape stomping sequence of the film to be able to release it in the U.S. The scene shows some frontal nudity and the Catholic Church objected to it. Frankenheimer maintains that the removal of the nudity made the entire scene appear to be an orgy which wasn’t Frankenheimer’s intent. Eventually the scene was restored for the thirtieth anniversary of the film.