In the sixties we were fascinated by theories about "brainwashing in Red China" etc. In the subsequent decades we discovered that there wasn't much need for the science fiction approach when old fashioned genocide and brutality turned out to be so effective.
It was unthinkable in 1965 that human life would actually become cheaper in subsequent decades and that torture and interogation would become more brutal. It's for this reason that a remake of Ipcress File would now be laughable. You might Google the methodology of Warrant Officer Jeffrey Benzien for example. Or review some of the photographs from Abu Ghraib.
The only bad thing about The Ipcress File is the cliche-ridden plot which doesn't withstand much scrutiny. Missing scientists and multimedia brainwashing techniqes were regular themes throughout the sixties in movies and in tv series such as The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., A Clockwork Orange, The Manchurian Candidate, The Prisoner.
Thirty years later, the IPCRESS torture warehouse might have become a popular techno venue with kids lining up to get injected with psychotropic drugs and have their senses assaulted by industrial noises and pulsating projected images similar to the ones that seemed to upset Harry Palmer so much.
Funeral in Berlin is much more plausible.
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gregforttmags
11 years ago
In the sixties we were fascinated by theories about "brainwashing in Red China" etc. In the subsequent decades we discovered that there wasn't much need for the science fiction approach when old fashioned genocide and brutality turned out to be so effective.
It was unthinkable in 1965 that human life would actually become cheaper in subsequent decades and that torture and interogation would become more brutal. It's for this reason that a remake of Ipcress File would now be laughable. You might Google the methodology of Warrant Officer Jeffrey Benzien for example. Or review some of the photographs from Abu Ghraib.
The only bad thing about The Ipcress File is the cliche-ridden plot which doesn't withstand much scrutiny. Missing scientists and multimedia brainwashing techniqes were regular themes throughout the sixties in movies and in tv series such as The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., A Clockwork Orange, The Manchurian Candidate, The Prisoner.
Thirty years later, the IPCRESS torture warehouse might have become a popular techno venue with kids lining up to get injected with psychotropic drugs and have their senses assaulted by industrial noises and pulsating projected images similar to the ones that seemed to upset Harry Palmer so much.
Funeral in Berlin is much more plausible.
I don't know, I think what torment Palmer went through at the hands of that Albanian spy cell in that abandoned London factory/warehouse was chillingly similar to what inmates at Guantanamo Bay go through, albeit a bit more fantastical (with loads of sleep deprivation and sensory overload). Gitmo was set up with orders from the top and was a specialised facility for breaking down terror suspects. Abu Ghraib was a mismanaged mess and overloaded with inmates, with bored and sadistic guards not reigned in by their superiors.
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