New Print Some day we may be said to have "frankenheimers" instead of nightmares; his films, particularly in the sixties (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May and Seconds) take the conspiracy thriller to new realms of paranoiac possibility, and, if absurd, are always based on some current preoccupation. Seconds spirals off in a macabre way from the obsession with youth and regeneration in middle-class society; it is a Dorian Gray tale transposed to a cold, dehumanized world. Arthur Hamilton is a middle-aged businessman whose life has wound down to a monotonous round, interrupted only by the occasional spark of indigestion. With nothing to lose, he accepts the offer by an underground organization to officially "kill" him and thus allow him a chance for a new, or second life. After an ordeal involving brainwashing and plastic surgery, Arthur emerges as one Antiochus Wilson with the face and body of none other than Rock Hudson. The old consciousness resurfaces when least welcome and conflicts rage within him, but there is no turning back; Antiochus/Arthur has become yet another type of organization man. Rock Hudson seems to perfectly encapsulate the agony of the remodeled man with a human soul longing to emerge, and James Wong Howe's cinematography makes use of the fish-eye lens to make strange even the most normal locations-a dry cleaners, a meat market, a train station-where, as in a dream, absurdity lurks.