After the remarkable success of their first low budget effort, THE BLOB in 1958, producer Jack H. Harris and director Irwin S. Yeaworth put together an even better follow up in 4D MAN (1959). It did not achieve the success of its predecessor at the box office yet it would influence future shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS, and STAR TREK. One of the most intriguing aspects of this movie is that it was shot in Eastern Pennsylvania, not in Hollywood yet it is as good if not better than most Hollywood sci-fi of the period.
Although budgeted at around $250, 000 it has superior special effects, surprising character development, and very good performances. 4D MAN marked the acting debuts of Robert Lansing who would go on to a solid if not spectacular career and Lee Meriwether, a former Miss America, who would do lots of TV including THE TIME TUNNEL and BARNABY JONES. The script by Theodore Simonson and Cy Chermak including an emotional love triangle between 2 brothers, is surprisingly adult in tone for this type of genre film.
Brothers Scott and Tony Nelson discover a way to rearrange molecular structure so that solid objects can pass through one another. The older brother (Lansing), rejected by his former girl friend (Meriwether) for his younger brother, accidentally succeeds in passing himself through solid matter. The energy it requires to do this ages him and he winds up having to kill others by touching them and absorbing their life energy in order to stay young. He becomes more and more unbalanced with each murder until it seems as if nothing can stop him.
This part of the plot is very similar to the 1936 Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi film THE INVISIBLE RAY. That’s only fitting as 4D MAN was originally distributed by Universal who made the earlier film. It wound up as part of a 1965 drive-in double bill and was re-titled MASTER OF TERROR. It showed up on late night TV in the late 1960s before disappearing. This Kino Lorber release was taken from the original camera negative so the movie looks great and Ralph Carmichael’s controversial jazz score is very vivid. Both the DVD and the Blu-Ray come with a number of special features making this a real treat for the 1950s sci-fi buff.
The Capsule Critic 