THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1973)

Director: Richard Irving

Writers: Henri Simoun (Howard Rodman) adapting Martin Caidin’s novel Cyborg

Producer: Richard Irving  

Cast: Lee Majors, Martin Balsam, Darren McGavin, Barbara Anderson, Ivor Barry, Charles Knox Robinson, Anne Whitfield, Maurice Sherbanee, Robert Cornthwaite, Olan Soulé, Dorothy Greene, Norma Storch, George Wallace, John Mark Robinson

Former astronaut Steve Austin (Lee Majors) crashes during his test flight of an experimental aircraft for NASA. His injuries include the loss of his left eye, right arm, and both legs. Austin’s friend and attending physician, Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin Balsam), is approached by Oliver Spencer (Darren McGavin), the director of a government agency called the Office of Strategic Operations. Spencer is aware of Dr. Wells’ theories regarding the replacement of human limbs with functioning, lifelike, mechanical substitutes. He supplies Dr. Wells the millions of dollars needed to reconstruct Steve Austin into a cyborg (part man and part machine). After the surgery and recuperation, Spencer wants to employ Austin’s cyborg abilities on special missions for the OSO. However, Steve Austin is despondent about his strange, new condition and is reluctant to have any more to do with the government.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The Six Million Dollar Man has always been a favorite movie of mine. When this boob tube brat saw its first broadcast on the ABC network, I just knew that it had to become a series. At that time, I had no idea that television films were ever made in the hope that high ratings would justify the development of an ongoing series; I was just so buzzed about it that I thought fate somehow had to intervene to make me happy by providing a weekly dose of this as a new video vice. Aside from its status as the pilot for the iconic 1970s television series (which inspired a succession of other superhero programs), The Six Million Dollar Man is terrific as a stand-alone science fiction film and was nominated for a 1974 Hugo Award.

This TV-movie is a streamlined adaptation of Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg. He would write three sequel novels about his part-man and part-machine hero, Steve Austin. Caidin had an aviation and aeronautics background and wrote novels about World War II and space travel. His science fiction included current technological innovations and their future development and application. Caidin’s earlier 1964 novel Marooned (about the attempt to rescue NASA astronauts orbiting the Earth) had been made into the 1969 movie. Caidin first used the word “bionics” in his 1968 science fiction novel The God Machine, but he did not actually invent that term. (Don’t feel bad; I only just discovered that on my smart phone a minute ago.) Of course, it is The Six Million Dollar Man television series that made bionics a household word. Although Caidin’s novel refers to the technology implanted into his hero’s body as bionics, that term is never used in this pilot film.

The opening scene of the movie is the desert-based airstrip where NASA and the U.S. military are about to conduct an experimental test flight. This is the setup for the tragedy that puts the plot in motion and establishes the plight for our hero, former astronaut and test pilot Steve Austin. He makes a distinctive entrance that establishes his personality and foreshadows his fate. We first see Steve Austin as a lone figure approaching from a distance on a morning stroll returning from the barren desert onto the airstrip. This visually suggests Austin’s independence and his imminent isolation as a technological prototype which will eventually lead him to another even more lonely and dangerous desert-bound mission. We see Austin’s camaraderie while he makes small talk with the other NASA personnel as he returns, and we enjoy his nonchalance that irks the uptight general at the airstrip. Austin is immediately established as down-to-earth, confident, and likable. This is efficient storytelling and character building that puts us squarely on Austin’s side within the film’s first few minutes.

Steve Austin’s tragic test flight is very well realized with plenty of NASA stock footage intercut with Austin at the aircraft’s controls and radio chatter between him, escort planes, and the ground crew. The final footage of the ill-fated test flight is of an actual 1967 crash of the M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. That real accident’s NASA test pilot was Bruce Peterson. He was badly injured but recovered. Unfortunately, Peterson lost the sight in one eye due to an infection in the hospital.

Lee Majors was perfect casting for Steve Austin. He has the rugged good looks and athleticism that suit an action hero. Most importantly, Majors has a likability that has us rooting for him while he maintains some emotional reserve that makes us believe he has the discipline and stability to be capable of heroism. Before his acting career, Majors suffered a serious back injury playing college football that left him paralyzed from the waist down for two weeks. One must wonder if the memory of that trauma and the awful suspense of recuperation informed Lee Majors’ performance as the maimed and hospitalized Steve Austin. By 1973 Majors had already starred in three television series and would go on to star in several more. It is with this pilot film of The Six Million Dollar Man that Lee Majors begins his most famous role.

Martin Balsam’s movie immortality was already established as the private detective Milton Arbogast in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho (1960). He provides great support as Austin’s friend and physician, Dr. Rudy Wells. It is his character’s medical genius that restores our damaged hero to a full-bodied, superhuman state. Balsam’s narration as Wells immediately creates a sense of foreboding as the story begins and later explains the pioneering technology used to rebuild Steve Austin. Balsam’s Dr. Wells is both brilliant and compassionate. In the subsequent series, the role of Wells would be played by Alan Oppenheimer and Martin E. Brooks.

The great Darren McGavin appears in the crucial role of Oliver Spencer, the callous, government bureaucrat that has been planning to fund a cyborg project to create technologically enhanced humans for espionage and military operations. Spencer decides that Steve Austin’s catastrophe presents the perfect subject for a cyborg prototype. Spencer practically steamrolls over Dr. Wells when he presents him the proposition to turn the comatose Steve Austin into a cyborg. McGavin’s performance as the heartlessly pragmatic Spencer is a joy to watch. This role was just one year after McGavin had first portrayed the more admirable character of newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak in the record-setting TV-ratings blockbuster The Night Stalker (1972). That fine film would lead to a sequel, The Night Strangler (1973), and then the weekly series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75).

During Steve Austin’s recuperation and reconstruction, Jean Manners is his personal nurse. Her affection for her patient makes the physically rebuilt, emotionally damaged Austin confront his new self-image as a once ideal specimen of manhood that is now partly artificial. Jean Manners is played by incandescent-eyed Barbara Anderson. She had guest-starred on many television series and won the Primetime Emmy Award for her ongoing supporting role of Police Officer Eve Whitfield in the series Ironside (1967-71).

One of my favorite scenes of any sci-fi film occurs after Dr. Wells and his team have performed the surgery attaching Steve Austin’s artificial limbs. Austin regains consciousness and weakly quips to Wells, “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?” The rest of the scene plays without dialogue as we see Austin lying in his hospital bed coping with the strange sensations of his new cyborg body and his mental struggle to make his mechanical attachments respond. As his new arm rises into his field of vision, Austin’s expression passes from strain to horror to hope. Majors, Balsam, and Anderson give very moving silent performances underscored by the awe generated with Gil Mellé’s idiosyncratic and powerful music.

Some departures from the source novel concern Steve Austin’s cyborg modifications. I am guessing that Austin in the movie has his right arm rather than the left arm replaced because actor Lee Majors was probably right-handed. In the novel, Austin’s artificial eye could not see, but it could take photographs with an enclosed miniature camera. Similarly, his bionics limbs had compartments concealing devices, such as an underwater breathing apparatus in his leg and retractable swimming flippers in his feet. The middle finger of his bionics hand could shoot poisoned darts. While Austin’s bionics limbs of the novel were tireless and formidable weapons, they were made much more powerful in the film. Lee Majors’ character can run sixty miles an hour and tear off car doors. His artificial eye can not only replicate human vision, but in the later episodes it can see in the dark and has zoom in capability over long distances or for up-close detail.

There are also interesting and effective character alterations from the Cyborg source novel. The ruthless Oliver Spencer originates in the TV-movie and provides more immediate dramatic conflict with the characters of Steve Austin and Dr. Rudy Wells than any government official does in the novel. Spencer’s agenda as the OSO director to develop Austin as a weapon is not enthusiastically received by either Wells or Austin. The movie also modifies Steve Austin’s character; he is a civilian member of the space program instead of a military colonel. This establishes Austin as a man not accustomed to military protocol, which makes him apprehensive about what the government and Oliver Spencer have planned for him. These changes in a simplified movie plot dial up the drama to deal with a couple more character concerns than the novel. Conversely, the ongoing television series would replace OSO director Oliver Spencer with the novel’s less antagonistic Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) as director of the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence) and make Austin a USAF Colonel, after all.

While the film’s Steve Austin suffers the same accident and reconstruction as the novel’s character, he is made a bit more sympathetic. In the novel, Austin is chiefly concerned with his ability to gain mastery over the new technology that has been attached to him. He is also angered by his initial helplessness and fears that his manhood and virility are diminished by so much of his original body having been destroyed. The Austin of the film has those same emotions, but as he is not a member of the military, he is more suspect of the government and averse to killing. Despite the character’s trauma and frustrations, Lee Majors makes his Steve Austin more appealing than the somewhat surly and cold-blooded character of the novel.

It is Steve Austin’s ambivalence in the film that creates more tension for us during the mission Oliver Spencer assigns him. We wonder how capable and determined Austin will be when he is sent out into the desert of Saudi Arabia to rescue an important hostage held by terrorists.

The Six Million Dollar Man is another fine example of the compelling science fiction films that were being made in the early 1970s. I think science fiction should not just be a genre used to create fantasy worlds; it can speculate about the real-world consequences of scientific developments and their impact on individuals and society. Although this film depicts potential benefits of man merging with technology, it also stresses humanity and independence. As we become ever more dependent on technology, we must maintain and protect those vital human attributes.