Tuesday 8 April 2014

27/28: Mystery Man (2.15/16)

1979; 48+48 minutes
Director of Photography John McPherson 
Written and Produced by Nicholas Corea
Directed by Frank Orsatti

A hitch-hiking Banner picks the wrong car to climb into when the driver turns out to be a neurotic, crazed, misandrist who, in her emotionally charged speeding, loses control of the car and ploughs them both off the road.  The woman is thrown free but a trapped Banner can only be saved by his transformation into the Hulk, who escapes from the wreckage with his head on fire.  Passers-by obviously report the sighting whilst alerting the medical authorities who find Banner a few minutes later (naturally not realising that he was the creature).

Suffering from facial burns and memory loss he is bandaged up at the hospital, before McGee turns up to take a grip on the story.  Unaware of who is beneath the mask, McGee suspects that the 'mystery man', now dubbed John Doe, could be instrumental in his hunt for the creature, and agrees to take the amnesiac Banner/Doe to see a memory specialist in another state.  Mid flight the plane runs into a storm and crashes in the forest below, the pilot killed but Banner and McGee surviving, albeit with a badly broken leg in the case of the latter.  Banner patches him up and calculates a 45 mile trek to get them to the nearest town.  Thus begins an adventure through the vast forest as fires several miles away are closing in, wolves in the vicinity are sensing a fresh meal, and a masked Banner is struggling to piece together who he is.

A great concept begins with an unusually funny escapade as David is trapped in a car with the wrong woman, a scene that quickly turns to frisson as the vehicle crashes.  The bewildered David spends the rest of the two episodes that make up this story listening to McGee's obsessive tales of the Hulk, and because these snippets of information are essentially part of David's own history as well, gradually his memory begins to recover.  The superior first episode is a rare cliffhanger finale, leading to the second part that admittedly runs slightly too thin to keep the excitement going.  Having said that, it does finally lead to the pivotal moment in McGee's epic chase where he learns the truth that the Hulk actually transforms to and from a visibly normal human, and that's primarily how the monster has remained largely elusive.

Number of Fists: ****/***

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