There have been dozens of adaptations of the great Philip K. Dick in the 40 years since his death, but these certainly aren't the best.
If a futuristic militarist government had the power to wipe your memory clean and then implant false memories, would you be the same person? How would you ever know your true self, your true reality? And if we implanted false memories in an android, would it believe itself to be human? Would it actually be human? Futurist science fiction writer Philip K. Dick was a prophetic individual who asked such questions about memory, identity, and humanity. He questioned not just these things, but reality itself, all the way leading up to his death 40 years ago this month of March. To commemorate the author, The New Yorker has recently illustrated an excellent biographical piece.
His brilliant, often noirish stories are futuristic dystopian nightmares, and most film adaptions of them have been dark, high-tech visions of interplanetary wars and fascist governments. His popularity surged again when his great alternate history novel The Man In The High Castle was developed into a series from Amazon Prime Video, with Ridley Scott as executive producer. The story involves life in a dystopian America after the country loses World War II and fascists run America.
His work truly took off in feature films, though; unfortunately he would die just two months before Blade Runner, the first major adaptation, was released. Many great Philip K. Dick adaptations (Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly) are masterpieces, but with literally two dozen direct adaptations (and many looser ones) of his 44 novels and 121 short stories, not all of these movies from Dick's work could be iconic classics. While some may not be complete masterpieces, they are still fun, brimming with the author's wild ideas, and desrve not to be so overlooked. These are five of the most overlooked Philip K. Dick movie adaptations.
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Screamers is based on the short story “Second Variety," which was admittedly very hard to film and more abstract. Peter Weller (Robocop, Naked Lunch), stars in Christian Duguay’s film, which takes place on another planet rather than on Earth as in the original story. Weller’s acting is excellent; no matter the project, the actor can bring melancholic weight to anything (he somehow gave Robocop gravitas and emotional development, after all). With a similar paranoid feel as The Thing, this is the tale of androids who can only be detected by the sounds of their screams. These beings become sentient and eventually evolve so that they are indistinguishable from humans, bringing up such familiar Philip K. Dick themes as identity, reality, and humanity.
There are some good jump scares in Screamers, which is just about as close as a Philip K. Dick adaptation has come to being a horror movie. It also features some interesting scenery and memorably bonkers and odd moments (like Weller playing with a teddy bear by campfire). For the most part, Dick’s stories translate well into action-packed science fiction films that make you think, but "Second Variety" was not very conducive to adaptation. Duguay does his best attempt though, bringing the kind of lo-fi, atmospheric horror he brought to two Scanners sequels.
Based on two Philip K. Dick books and featuring K. Dick himself as a character (one of the books is semi-autobiographical), the lower-budget Radio Free Albemuth boasts the weakest special effects of any Philip K. Dick movie, although it is an interesting film overall, probably best known for featuring rocker Alanis Morisette as the character Sylvia. Jonathan Scarfe plays Nick, a typical Dickian protagonist who suffers from disturbing nightmares and visions which somehow represent a paranoid truth. The real draw here is seeing some kind of representation of the author himself on the screen.
This is an alternate reality film, where there is a world war. Nick learns he is a member of a secret society of citizens of the world who are receiving transmissions from a spaceship. Sylvia releases a song that contains subliminal messages from the secret society that will possibly bring needed change and perhaps revolution. Scott Wilson plays the fascist leader of America in this odd, overlooked little film.
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Impostor is a 2002 film based on the story “The Impostor” by Philip K. Dick from 1953, where the characters all have cell phones! It’s a great example of the author's accurate predictions of the future of Earth and technology. Gary Sinise is Spencer Olham, a scientist who is falsely accused by the sinister and reactionary Major Hathaway, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, who works for the repressive forces of ESA (Earth Security Association, one of many shady and shadowy government organizations found in the paranoid world of Philip K. Dick) of being an alien.
Not just any alien, but an enemy alien who murdered the real Spencer and is now passing himself as the man, with the goal of assassinating a high-ranking Earth official. Gary Sinise is thus put in the impossible position of proving he is who he is, and not an impostor. Or is he actually an android with implanted memories who is simply unaware he is not human, and carrying a time bomb? The ending is full of surprises and revelations, and director Gary Fleder brings the same grim intensity he brought to Kiss the Girls. As always, Dick’s characters deal with things like memory, identity, and reality.
Next is a 2007 Lee Tamahori film based on “The Golden Man” by Philip K, Dick and starring the always interesting Nicolas Cage, here playing Las Vegas magician Cris Johnson with the power to see two minutes into the future. He makes money on the side by gambling, using his skill to tell the future and win money, while developing an obsession with a woman played by Jessica Biel. The great Julianne Moore plays an agent who wants to use Johnson's power to stop a nuclear attack. Biel is fantastic here, and also appeared in the 2012 remake of Philip K. Dick’s Total Recall.
In 2012, Len Wiseman directed Total Recall, a remake of the superior and much more popular 1990 film of the same name, which is based on the 1966 Philip K. Dick story, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” However, the 2012 version might be unfairly maligned; the original is obviously great, but it is dated enough to warrant this visually splendid update. Colin Farrell plays Dennis Quaid, who goes to the Rekall company which specialize in giving you memory implants of your wildest dreams come true. He decides to purchase the memory of a spy in the ongoing civil war, however before they can implant the memories he is attacked, as apparently he actually is involved in the uprising against a tyrannical government controlled by the maniacal Chancellor Vilos Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston).
Kate Beckinsale plays Lori, an agent who hunts Quaid down, despite his belief that they have been married for seven years. Melina (Jessica Biel) saves him and he eventually learns that she might be his true love. She is a warrior at heart and Biel, as always, is terrific in the part. The film is unfortunately overly long; it is two hours and could have been 80 minutes, with some repetitive fighting cut. The extended director’s cut, which makes a long movie even longer, is worth seeking out if only to see Ethan Hawke's great little performance. The original is one of the best Philip K. Dick adaptations, but this remake was hardly as bad as people felt at the time, and remains overlooked.
David L Tamarin is a writer whose work can be found at godless.com and Amazon. He is married with a son and five cats. Favorite films- Scarface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, Taxi Driver, Airplane!, HENRY: Portrait of A Serial Killer, A Serbian Film, Irreversible