The Chairman (1969)

This film is Bizarre. Bizarrely edited with a bizarre tone that goes all over the place. Forgotten today with middling to negative reviews.

Yet I’ve tried to see this film for years and found myself enjoying it through its weirdness. Gregory Peck plays an ex-spy professor who goes to China in the midst of the Cold War in a US-British-Soviet joint mission to retrieve a formula for growth enzymes. And yes, setup wise it’s very TORN CURTAIN esque.

A communication device is installed in his skull to permit satellite transmission back to HQ so they can hear his entire journey…except for the fact the neglect to tell him that there is a small explosive charge inside the device that can be implemented if they feel the mission is going sour or when he comes into contact with the titular character…aka where John Carpenter probably got the idea for the similar device in Escape From NY.

I always knew of this as the movie where they put a bomb inside Greg Peck’s head and darn it if it doesn’t somehow work! Sure it’s problematic as hell and will cause you to throw your arms up in incredulity but Peck is stunningly charismatic in essentially a Bondian role and J Lee Thompson directs many scenes very well despite the tone and script being all over the place. The scene where Peck’s character actually meets Chairman Mao is handled brilliantly and is multilayered to say the very least. The action climax is well cut and then the tag ending has echoes of 3 Days of the Condor almost.

Basically had this been made five years later it would have been darker and better. As it stands it is intellectual, well made if inefficient and somewhat plodding. Which of course makes it better than 99% of what hits screens today.