Jack Kost: Norman Burton

Monday, July 28, 2025

On this day in movie history - The Gumball Rally (1976):

The Gumball Rally

directed by Charles Bail,

written by Leon Capetanos,

based on a story by Leon Capetanos and Charles Bail,

was released in the United States on July 28, 1976.
Music by Michael Small.

Cast:

Michael Sarrazin, Nicholas Pryor, Tim McIntire, Raúl Juliá, Norman Burton, John Durren, Gary Busey, Joanne Nail, Susan Flannery, J. Pat O'Malley, Vaughn Taylor, Lazaro Perez, Tricia O'Neil, Harvey Jason, Steven Keats, Wally Taylor, Eddy Donno, Dick Karie, Alfred Shelly, Whitey Hughes, Larry Silvestri, Wes Dawn, John Morton, Stephen Blood, Linda Vaughn, Walter R. Smith, John Lawlor.

Thursday, June 19, 2025

On this day in movie history - The Terminal Man (movie & novel):

The Terminal Man

directed and written by Mike Hodges,

based on the novel by Michael Crichton,

was released in the United States on June 19, 1974.
Music by Dan Wallin.

Cast:

George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard A. Dysart, Jill Clayburgh, Donald Moffat, Michael C. Gwynne, William Hansen, Norman Burton, James Sikking, Matt Clark, Jim Antonio, Gene Borkan, Burke Byrnes, Jordan Rhodes, Dee Carroll, Jason Wingreen, Steve Kanaly, Al Checco, Fred Sadoff, Jack Colvin, Ian Wolfe, Lee de Broux, Robert Ito, Victor Argo, Rutanya Alda, Ed Avery, Dorothy Hack, Bob Harks, George Holmes, Michael Jeffers, Dale Johnson, Diane Jones, Clyde McLeod, Joe Pine, Nilsa Ray, Clark Ross, Michael Santiago, James Sweet, Nicholas Worth.

Recommended reading:

The Terminal Man

By Michael Crichton.

First Published 1972.
ISBN-10: 0394447689
ISBN-13: 978-0394447681

Description:

In his first novel since The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton once again combines documentary verisimilitude with hair-raising suspense to open up for the reader a new area of modern science: surgical-electronic mind control.
The man ‘in the hands of science” – the Terminal Man – is Harry Benson. He is a violent paranoid who has already twice attempted to kill. Against the profound opposition of his psychiatrist, a team of surgeons proposes to connect his brain to a computer that will regulate his behavior. From the conflict among the doctors, to the actual operation itself – during which forty wires are attached to forty points in Benson’s brain – to the functioning of the computers, to the terrifying results when Benson escapes from the hospital, the tension rises as the reader becomes a close-up witness to an experiment just short of the ultimate computer control of a human being.

Psychosurgery of the kind Crichton describes is already taking place under established medical auspices – a new form of behavior control that has become a key scientific and moral issue in our time. Crichton takes it out of the realm of the abstract, and makes immediate its workings, its dangers, and its implications, in a novel that provides urgent information and, at the same time, superb entertainment.

Jack Kost