“Virtual Reality is the key to unlocking the human mind!”
I had not watched The Lawnmower Man (1992) from start to finish, but I always felt like I had absorbed it as a teenager through osmosis due to constant repeats on Channel Ten; I also remember boys in high school talking about the sex scenes in it, including the VR one that becomes a horror moment. Video games, violence, sex – everything a teen boy would be into, a cult sci-fi horror classic with a bad movie rep. Finally watching The Lawnmower Man for the first time, I was not prepared for it to begin with a lab chimp addicted to Virtual Reality who attempts a prison break, conveyed in a heat vision goggle head-set POV that replicates a video game. It’s all because of a hot-shot scientist, Dr. Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) who is pushing forward evolutionary research in the field of VR. He wants to expand the human brain, but is being covertly sponsored by a mysterious organisation, The Shop. Ordered on hiatus, Brosnan asks the neighbourhood lawnmower man Jobe (Jeff Fahey), who is picked on and belittled for being simple, if he’d like to be smarter. A computerised riff on Flowers For Algernon transpires, with Jobe improving mentally and physically through VR sessions, to the point where he starts to demonstrate powers anticipated by all the Jesus Christ imagery in the movie, a “Cyber-Christ”. Infamously released as Stephen King’s The Lawnmower Man by New Line who were later sued because they just slapped the title of King’s short story onto another script (there’s barely one scene that relates to the original text). Despite that, this film does feel in line with a 1990s era King adaptation like The Tommyknockers. Anyway, this is all very wacky stuff, but I was into this, finding The Lawnmower Man very entertaining. Pre-Bond Brosnan is a hunky Dr Frankenstein with an earring and a leather jacket, and Jeff Fahey runs the gamut, from goofy caricature to romance novel cover hunk to digital demi-god. Also features Austin Brien, the kid from Last Action Hero, classic character actor Geoffrey Lewis as Jobe’s kindly Irish uncle, and even a young Dean Norris from Breaking Bad as a snooty corporate boss. The dated graphics were still impressive to me – they are of a piece with the era but also feel like a complete aesthetic, a polygon magic eye painting Netscape browser painted wonderland. There’s also spinning wheel VR machines, Tron-styled lycra jump suits with glowing piping, and visual effects where people are disintegrated into digital bubbles (actually quite horrifying in my opinion). Ridiculous and nutty, but up there with Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic in expressing pure 1990s era hacker vibes that stands out even more visually with each passing decade. Great tech-horror ending – keen to see the sequel now. Streamed it on Shudder in Australia. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 