Some day we may be said to have "frankenheimers" instead of nightmares; his films (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May) take the conspiracy thriller to new realms of paranoiac possibility, always based on some current preoccupation. Seconds spirals off in a macabre way from the obsession with youth and regeneration in middle-class society, Dorian Gray transposed to a cold, dehumanized world. Arthur Hamilton is a businessman whose life has wound down to a monotonous round enlivened by the occasional spark of indigestion. With nothing to lose, he accepts the offer by an underground organization to officially "kill" him and allow him a chance for a second life. Following brainwashing and plastic surgery, Arthur emerges with the 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; he has become yet another type of organization man. Hudson perfected the agony of the remodeled man with a human soul longing to emerge, and James Wong Howe's cinematography makes strange normal locations where, as in a dream, absurdity lurks.