The Lawnmower Man
Dir: Brett Leonard
1992
**
Brett Leonard’s The Lawnmower Man is an amazing film from the early 1990s – amazing in that it beggars belief as to how it ever got made in the first place. It is also amazingly bad. Originally titled Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man, the story actually had nothing to do with the horror author’s short story. The plot of Stephen King's 1975 short story concerns Harold Parkette, who hires "Pastoral Greenery and Outdoor Services Inc." to cut his lawn. The serviceman who arrives to do the job has a lawnmower that mows the lawn by itself while he crawls, naked, behind the mower, eating the grass. The serviceman himself is actually a satyr who worships the Greek god Pan. When Parkette tries to call the police, the mower and its owner ritually kill him as a sacrifice to Pan. It was first published in the May 1975 issue of Cavalier and was later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift. The film's original script, written by director Brett Leonard and producer Gimel Everett, was titled Cyber God and had nothing to do with King's short story. New Line Cinema held the film rights to King's story, and decided to combine Cyber God with some minor elements of King's "The Lawnmower Man". The resulting film differed so much from the source material that King sued the filmmakers to remove his name from the title. As much as I would have loved to have seen a faithful adaptation of King’s short story, I feel it would be virtually impossible, that said though, the script for Cyber God is really very good. In truth, The Lawnmower Man failed for two reasons; New Line Cinema being complete and utter idiots (and treating everyone involved in the film and the film’s audience as idiots) and the special effects. I’ll defend Brett Leonard all the way – his films are mistaken masterpieces, the only thing letting them down is that they are all ahead of their time, so unfortunately the required special effects just didn’t exist at the time they were filmed. The cutting edge – and utterly breathtaking – special effects seen months later in Jurassic Park pretty much banged the last nail in the film’s coffin. It was laughable then and it’s even more laughable now but watching it now in retrospect I have to say it has taken on a new charm. It begins with Dr. Lawrence Angelo (played by Pierce Brosnan just a couple of years before he became Bond), a doctor who works for Virtual Space Industries, running experiments in increasing the intelligence of chimpanzees using drugs and virtual reality. When one of the chimps escapes using the warfare tactics for which he was being trained the lab suffers a set back. Dr. Angelo is generally a pacifist, who would rather explore the intelligence-enhancing potential of his research without applying it for military purposes and is torn by his work. His wife Caroline is unhappy with the way he is ignoring her to focus on this project and he feels he somewhat stuck in a rut. We then meet Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), a local groundskeeper with learning difficulties and a low IQ. He lives in the garden shed owned by the local priest, Father Francis McKeen. McKeen's brother, Terry, is a local landscape gardener and employs Jobe to help him with odd jobs. Father McKeen punishes the challenged Jobe with a belt and "Hail Marys" whenever he fails to complete his chores. Dr. Angelo realizes he needs a human subject to work with, and when he spots Jobe mowing his lawn he has an idea. Peter (Austin O'Brien), Dr. Angelo's young neighbor, is friends with Jobe so Dr. Angelo invites both of them over to play some virtual reality games. Learning more about Jobe, Angelo persuades him to participate in his experiments, letting him know it will make him smarter. Jobe agrees and begins the program but Dr. Angelo makes it a point to redesign all the intelligence-boosting treatments without the "aggression factors" used in the chimpanzee experiments. Jobe soon becomes smarter than Dr. Angelo could ever imagine, learning Latin in only two hours. At this time Jobe also begins a sexual relationship with a young rich widow, Marnie. However, Jobe begins to display telepathic abilities and has hallucinations. He continues training at the lab, until an accident makes Dr. Angelo shut the program down. The project director, Sebastian Timms, employed by a mysterious agency known as The Shop, keeps tabs on the progress of the experiment, and discreetly swaps Dr. Angelo's new medications with the old Project 5 supply (reintroducing the "aggression factors" into the treatment). Jobe soon develops telekinetic and pyrokinetic powers and takes Marnie to the lab to make love to her while in virtual reality. Something goes wrong in the simulation when Jobe's virtual avatar becomes violent, attacking her mind directly; Marnie is soon driven insane, laughing endlessly at nothing. Jobe's powers continue to grow, but the treatments are also affecting his mental stability and he decides to exact revenge on those who abused him when he was "dumb": Father McKeen is engulfed in flames, a bully named Jake is put into a catatonic state by a mental "lawnmower man" continually mowing his brain and a lawnmower invention of Jobe's runs down Harold, Peter's abusive father. Jobe uses his telepathic abilities to make the investigating police attribute it all to "bizarre accidents", all in front of Dr. Angelo. Jobe believes his final stage of evolution is to become "pure energy" in the VSI computer mainframe and from there reach into all the systems of the world. He promises his "birth" will be signaled by every telephone on the planet ringing simultaneously. The Shop sends a team to capture Jobe, but they are ineffective against his abilities and he scatters their molecules. Jobe uses the lab equipment to enter the mainframe computer, abandoning his body to become a completely virtual being, leaving his body behind like a husk. Dr. Angelo remotely infects the VSI computer, encrypting all of the links to the outside world, trapping Jobe in the mainframe. As Jobe searches for an un-encrypted network connection, Dr. Angelo primes bombs to destroy the building. Feeling responsible for what has happened to Jobe, Angelo then joins him in virtual reality to try to reason with him. Jobe overpowers and crucifies him, then continues to search for a network connection. Peter runs into the building; Jobe still cares for him and allows Dr. Angelo to go free to rescue Peter. Jobe forces a computer-connected security door to open, allowing Peter and Dr. Angelo to escape. Jobe escapes through a back door before the building is destroyed in multiple explosions. Back at home with Peter, Dr. Angelo and Peter's mother Carla (who has become a romantic interest) are about to leave when their telephone rings, followed by the noise of a second, and then hundreds of telephones ring, all around the globe, suggesting Jobe is still alive. The theme of someone going ‘on-line’ or plugging themselves into a futuristic mainframe computer was nothing new but The Lawnmower Man displayed a shocking ignorance as to how computers, and indeed, the internet actually works. The special effects might have been cutting edge when they first started work on them but they weren’t by the time the film came out. It’s now considered so bad its good but it is still a shockingly bad film. It was discovered through FBI tapes that this was former Waco cult leader David Koresh favorite movie. Need I say more.