The Cube (1969)
An unnamed man, simply called "The Man" is trapped in a cubical white room where anyone else can enter and leave, but which he himself apparently cannot leave. A stool is brought in covered in strawberry jam, the furniture changes throughout the play. The main character, is subjected to an increasingly puzzling and frustrating series of encounters, as a variety of people come through various hidden doors. But, as many remind him, he can only leave through his own door, so he must find it to leave. Originally airing on NBC's weekly anthology television show NBC Experiment in Television in 1969, the production was produced and directed by puppeteer and filmmaker Jim Henson, and was one of several experiments with the live-action film medium which he conducted in the 1960s, before focusing entirely on The Muppets and other puppet works.
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Overrated and overhyped
How sad is this?
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
'Time Piece' was fantastic, and Jim Henson's follow up of sorts is even better. It is called 'The Cube' and is about a man trapped in a cube that he cannot escape...and that is, essentially it, but that is also not it at all. It sounds simple, but gets more complicated by the second as strange characters come and go and come back again and go away again; the man is confused and so are we, it seems that there is no solution to a problem so absurd, so nonsensical. It takes on a style of sorts (story-wise) that expresses what the halfway point between the meeting of the worlds of 'The Twilight Zone' and a Samuel Beckett play would look like. It is so surreal and thought provoking, but also extremely funny (an important aspect of Henson's entire career was, obviously, his witty sense of humor that hasn't aged in the slightest), and kind of disturbing and weirdly sad and sadly weird (sadly as in the weirdness itself sometimes takes on a more tragic feeling, even when it's still being very humorous, not as in the weirdness itself is an unfortunate product of the film, as it is certainly quite the opposite of THAT), and genuinely really terrifying in parts (those laughing clowns, the boy on the bike singing "you'll never get outta here..." *shudders*). It's so many emotions bottled up into one stylistically consistent surrealist comedy that is as metafictional, postmodern (more so in an artistic sense than in a philosophical sense, although there's a little of that, too), philosophical, strange, confusing, thought provoking, troubling, dark, funny, and entertaining as I could have ever anticipated!
I was 12 when I stumbled on this show one Sunday morning - and I think it permanently Warped My Mind. I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to absurdism, if you don't count MAD Magazine... I never forgot the show, and for years afterwards I tried to find more info about it. What a thrill to stumble on Wikipedia's entry,which had a link to the full video... and I did *not* know till just now about Henson's role in the production! One can see the roots of many future TV and movie productions here - from THE PRISONER to THE MATRIX to THE TRUMAN SHOW. And considering the times, the production effects and editing are simple yet sophisticated, perfect usages of the possibilities of the medium. A crucial piece of TV history... Be sure to let your preadolescent or adolescent child watch this thing, it'll prepare them nicely for the absurdity to come...!
No, this is not the competent little thriller from 1997 (reviewed in BATHOS #6) spawning two perfectly superfluous sequels and a lot of unpleasant nonsense about people for no good reason being tortured in small rooms by unknown assailants. It is a silly, self-complacent sketch made in 1969 and purporting to say something about something or other.Still, the basic concept (if you can call it that) is the same, a man caught inside a cube. He doesn't know why, nor has he got a lot of time to think about it, since he is constantly visited by funny guys, all presenting him with ample opportunity to escape.Of course, his situation is completely surreal, which in this case means that it makes no sense whatsoever. Except of course, as any three-year-old will have divined after five minutes, that it is all about modern man being trapped by the conventions of society.And if you haven't guessed, you will be constantly reminded by hip girls and folksingers talking and singing about how deluded we all are. Unfortunately, this is not about the games people play.It is about what underdeveloped overpaid television executives fresh out of high school think about the rotten society that gives them cameras to play with. GET A HAIRCUT!Since the guy is obviously only confined by the idiotic script, it has none of the suspense of THE PRISONER, and it's just as far from the hilariously straight-faced send-up of our television-engineered reality by the Pythons. The cube looks like a toilet, and that's where this crap belongs.Watching it is like spending an hour in a cube make that ten hours! Stick to Muppets, Jimmy.
I haven't personally bought it, but there IS an internet company supposedly offering copies for sale at $11.99. The website is www.dvdmovie-finds.com As for myself, I also have memories of seeing this as a child and having it stuck in my head and wondering all this time if it was just a nagging old dream. Amazing! It's almost as if it was some bizarre cultural experiment by Henson to see if he could get some program in your brain that won't go away. There's something about the idea of being in a small "room" that allows visitors to enter and exit, but NOT the occupant, that is so oddly frightening, yet thought-provoking, that young minds (I was eight-years-old at the time) buying into the fantasy can never forget it. It's an early brush with the frustrating world of Kafka. I'm tempted to buy the DVD and watch it again, but maybe knowing it WASN'T a dream and could be simply a silly old TV program might ruin the sense memory. Then again, maybe that website is lying and the film truly ISN'T available, thus keeping 'The Cube' as fittingly out of reach as getting out of the cube was to the occupant!