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CARLINO, LEWIS JOHN (1932– ). American writer and director.
Film based on his work: Resurrection (tv movie) (Stephen
Gyllenhaal 1999).
Carlino first worked primarily as a playwright, with occasionally
forays into the theatre of the absurd which might been seen as anticipations of
his cinematic dalliances with science fiction: Epiphany (1963), evidently
inspired by Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros, features an unhappy man who
tries to turn himself into a chicken, while in High Sign (1962), a man
pretends to be God and briefly fools one of his friends. None of his plays were
noticeably successful, however, so in the 1960s, in search of either new
challenges or higher salaries, he moved to Hollywood and began writing for the
screen. Recognizing his talents, John
FRANKENHEIMER assigned him to
adapt David Ely's novel Seconds, and he did remarkably well, inspiring
what is surely Rock HUDSON's greatest performance as an old man, given the
apparently desirable opportunity to begin life again as a young man, who
ultimately regrets his decision. Seconds remains one of science
fiction's unacknowledged masterpieces, long overdue for reassessment and
serious attention.
Unfortunately,
the film was not successful, so that Carlino had to spend the next seven years
alternating between films and television work which included the horror film A
Reflection of Fear and the post-holocaust drama Where Have All the
People Gone? Described in the entry on Peter
GRAVES as an effort to remake Panic
in Year Zero without its interesting parts, the film might be appreciated
by an older, wiser critic for its decision to eschew lurid melodrama to focus
on the quiet struggle of a few bewildered survivors to adjust to a world that
is suddenly and mysteriously uninhabited. Although it has not been seen in over
thirty years, I am not surprised to find people on the Internet who still
remember the film and (like me) would be eager to see it again.
Perhaps, in the
next few years, Carlino deliberately sought to suppress all memory of Where
Have All the People Gone? as he strived with new energy to establish
himself as a major film screenwriter and occasional director, beginning with The
Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976), a film which almost
qualifies for inclusion in his science fiction credits on the grounds of its sheer
weirdness, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which actually makes
the cut because of the fantasies of its mentally ill protagonist. Another
triumph was Resurrection, which inspired another uneven performer, Ellen
Burstyn, to a career-best performance as a woman who gains the power to heal
after a near-death experience. Finally, Haunted Summer merits a mention
because one of its characters is Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein,
although the film does not deal with the circumstances of its composition.
In his fifties,
a time when many writers carry on with undiminished enthusiasm, Lewis John
Carlino instead faded away, leaving behind a singular corpus of science fiction
and fantasy works involving unassuming, ordinary people who try to adjust as
their lives are altered by unusual developments. Now, I like Star Trek and
Star Wars as much as the next person, but Carlino's best works are also
science fiction stories, even if they lack overt generic markers, and they are
films that true fans of the genre should be able to appreciate and cherish.
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