The Mind Snatchers (1972)

 The Mind Snatchers (1972)

Written by Dennis J Reardon (From his play)
& Ron Whyte
Directed by Barnard Girard

This is a little low budget drama which happens to be Christopher Walken’s first leading moving role.
It also features Ron Cox, Joss Ackland, Ralph Meeker and Bette Henritze.

It’s a mind control story, but this time not with drugs, but rather electronic direct interface with the brain.

Walken plays an rebellious individualistic soldier, an army private. He is taken off to an isolated military hospital with very few people around and only two other patients.
He is put in a room with two other soldier patients and spends most of the movie trying to figure out why he is there and what the place is all about.
Ron Cox plays one of the other patients. He’s a rather wild guy and wants to be friendly with Walken’s guy and is revealed to be an aggressive criminal in a disturbing scene. The third man is just a body in the bed, apparently the first one worked on by a military contracted low-key mad doctor played by Joss Ackland. All this under the supervision of uniformed major played by stern Ralph Meeker.

So after all the trying to figure stuff out and escape the place there is a satisfying wrap up of the whole thing in the last 10 minutes where Walken gets to deliver some interesting dialog about what makes him human and ought not to be tampered with by this doctor.

Good little movie for Walken fans and those interested in mind control and MK-ULTRA in the movies,
It was originally titled The Mind Cage which was the title of the play produced in 1970 by Joseph Papp. The Mind Cage is a better title for what goes on in this.