Jacob's Ladder (film)
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Jacob's Ladder is a 1990 psychological thriller directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin.
Plot summary
Tagline: The most frightening thing about Jacob Singer's nightmare is that he isn't dreaming.
The film opens on 6th October 1971. Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is an American soldier in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Helicopters pass overhead, carrying supplies for what appears to be preparation for a big Viet Cong offensive. Without any warning, Jacob's unit is ambushed and the soldiers try to take cover, but the battalion begins to exhibit strange behavior for no apparent reason. Jacob tries to escape the unexplained insanity, only to be stabbed with a bayoneted rifle by an unseen enemy.
The film shifts between Vietnam, to Jacob's memories of his son Gabriel (Macaulay Culkin) and former wife Sarah (Patricia Kalember), to his present relationship with a woman named Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña) in New York. During this time, Jacob faces several threats to his life and has several hallucinatory experiences. It is revealed that his son Gabriel was hit by a car and killed before Jacob went to Vietnam.
As the hallucinations become increasingly bizarre, Jacob learns about chemical experiments performed on U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. He is approached by a man named Michael Newman (Matt Craven), who claims to have been a chemist working with the Army's chemical warfare division in Saigon. His project worked on creating a drug that increased aggression in soldiers. Human tests of the drug (code-named "the ladder") were first given to chimpanzees, then a group of Viet Cong POWs, and later, to Jacob's unit, through the platoons' C-rations. However, instead of targeting the enemy, the men in Jacob's battalion attacked each other indiscriminately.
Jacob's friend and chiropractor Louis (Danny Aiello) states the main thematic point of the film: in effect, hell is really purgatory, and those who are ready to let go of their lives do not find the experience 'hellish'.
We finally learn that Jacob never made it out of Vietnam; the entire series of experiences turns out to have been a dying hallucination. Jacob's experiences appear to have been a form of purgation in which he releases himself from his earthly attachments, finally joining his dead son Gabriel to ascend a staircase toward a bright light.
Because all of the movie's events take place in the span of a dying hallucination, the film's plot is considered a variation on Ambrose Bierce's 1886 short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which was made into a short film in 1961 and later popularized as a 1964 episode of the television show, The Twilight Zone.
At the end of the film, a message states that the U.S. Army allegedly experimented with a hallucinogenic drug called BZ, but the Pentagon denies it.
Thorough Evaluation of the Movie
The horror aspects of Jacob's Ladder are largely the product of a hallucinogenic glycolate anticholinergic deliriant known as 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate (NATO code BZ) that was rumored to have been administered to Vietnam troops by the government in a secret attempt to increase their fighting power. Although the movie is largely focused around BZ, the symptoms the troops experience are a grossly inaccurate representation of the chemical's actual physiological reactions. Possibly the first of its kind, director Adrian Lyne uses a technique in which an actor is recorded waving their head around, the recording is then digitally edited to remove some of the frames, making it look as if the person were experiencing remarkably powerful spasms of the head and neck. It is in this way that Lyne takes advantage of the human mind's fear of the unknown by creating such a disturbing and abnormal depiction of a human, and in turn adjusting the speed of the recording to be so fast that the sequence is only seen for a few seconds, that it ignites an almost subliminal fear, specifically panic. The game franchise Silent Hill borrows this technique (as well as many other aspects of this film) and includes it in almost every release of the game, a reference to this film can be seen in nearly every release as well.
Trivia
- It is suggested that Louis may actually be an angel; More specifically, Jacob's Guardian Angel. If so, it is ironic (and perhaps deliberate) that he is the only central character who does not have a Biblical name.
- Jacob's Ladder inspired certain concepts and themes in the survival horror video game series Silent Hill, according to an interview with the developers of the games.
- Jacob's son Gabe is played by an uncredited Macaulay Culkin.
- Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin initially wanted the demonic and angelic symbolism to be more representative of popular imagery - devils with pitchforks and angels with feathered wings. However, Adrian Lyne decided it would be far more interesting and frightening with more vague and menacing demonic figures.
- This film is the first to use the "fast-head" motion. The effect used to create the bizarre, twitching figures Jacob sees throughout the film have often been used in recent horror films, such as Stir of Echoes, The Ring, 1999's House on Haunted Hill, and an episode of the popular TV show Supernatural, as well as many monsters in the Silent Hill video game series. It was also used in the music video for the song "Stupify", by the heavy metal band Disturbed. uses the technique to comic effect when Austin Powers disables the Fembots.
- Several scenes that were filmed did not make the final cut of the film. Some of these are included in the DVD special edition.
- When the screenplay was published in book form, Rubin and Lyne had not yet decided on a way to end the film. Each had a different vision of the final denouement, and the original filmed ending is the one included in the published screenplay. A vast portion of the screenplay is not included in the final cut of the film.
- The movie is referenced in a song, "The Autumn Effect" by the band 10 Years.
- The movie is referenced in the 2002–2003 revival of The Twilight Zone in the episode, "[Night Route]". The episode has other similarities to the movie as well.
- For approximately 30 seconds, a boom microphone is visible on screen. This is a technical goof.
- The end of the movie mentions BZ.
- The album Psyence Fiction by the band UNKLE features the song "Rabbit in Your Headlights" (co-written by Radiohead's Thom Yorke), which samples the film.
- There are no optical visual effects at all.
- Jacob Singer never appears in any hallucinations -- all of them are from Jacob's point of view.
See also
External links
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