The Man Who Thought Life Limited Slipcover Edition (US Import) [Blu-ray]

THE MAN WHO THOUGHT LIFE (MANDEN DER TÆNKTE TING) – 1969, Danish Film Inst., 97 min.

A long-overlooked gem of late 1960s Sci-Fi, Danish director Jens Ravn’s eerie, hypnotic thriller opens on a respected doctor, Max Holst (Preben Neergaard), who is brought in to examine an enigmatic, arrogant man, Steinmetz (John Price). Steinmetz can miraculously make objects materialize by focusing his mind (including an expensive cigar, in the film’s recurring leitmotif). When he attempts to blackmail Dr. Holst into performing surgery to expand this sinister brainpower, Holst refuses – and Steinmetz calls to “life” a mirror image that sets out to destroy the doctor’s willpower.

Brilliantly shot in B&W Scope by cinematographer Witold Leszczyński, with a disturbing minimalist score by Per Nørgaard (BABETTE’S FEAST), the film has the angular 60s Mod / Sci-Fi vibe of films like THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR and TIME OF ROSES (both Deaf Crocodile releases) and British TV shows like “The Prisoner” and “The Avengers,” with labyrinthine corridors, banks of geometric lights and nurses whizzing past on electric scooters.

“I will open the depths of existence to you, and will make all your ideas collapse violently,” Steinmetz both promises and threatens Holst – and as we descend down the rabbit-hole of Ravn’s gripping, Stanley Kubrick-meets-Kiyoshi Kurosawa cerebral horror, we too begin to lose our grip on reality, until it may be too late.

Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to present this first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release of the film, in collaboration with the Danish Film Institute. In Danish with English subtitles.