The Bubble (1966)

Arch Oboler's The Bubble (1966) is something of an oddity, a film that feels like an over-extended episode of the director's radio anthology series (and later TV series) Lights Out, or even The Twilight Zone.  Despite the fact that it is in colour, it feels almost as if it could have been made a decade earlier - the use of 3-D reinforces the feeling that it has been time warped from the fifties.  Which is rather apt for a film which is about a group of people who stumble into a seemingly time warped town.  The 'bubble' of the title is a force field which seems to surround a small town and its surrounding area which three people - including a woman about to give birth - somehow penetrate during a storm.  The town itself seems to be a mish mash of elements from various geographical eras and even times - the bar, for instance, seems vaguely Old West, while other parts of the area, like the hospital seem to be from the thirties - while its inhabitants seem to be pre-programmed to go through the same routines and conversations over and over, like a stuck record.  A taxi driver forever asks 'Cab Mister?', a bar tender responds to every question by asking 'what will it be?', for instance.  Nobody eats, nobody drinks.  Instead, the population visit a throne-like device in a strange structure at regular intervals, where their energy is apparently recharged and their programming reinforced.  Those who 'malfunction', failing to follow their pre-determined routines, find themselves whisked skywards and swallowed by a black shape that periodically looms over the town, blocking out the sun.

All of which sets up an interesting premise which, unfortunately, is never really exploited.  The main problem lies with the pacing, which is painfully slow, with the three outsiders labouriously putting together the clues to finally speculate that the town represents some kind of alien experiment, the 'bubble' allowing them to observe humans as if they were in an ant farm.  Consequently, the film is at least twenty minutes too long, (a seventies re-release titled Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth was cut to around ninety minutes) and, in its latter stages, begins to sorely try the viewer's patience.  It seems to take the trio of interlopers forever to even notice that anything is amiss - even when the people they meet keep repeating the same routines and replying with the same words over and over.  Which brings us back to the idea that idea that the script might have originated as a half hour radio show.  A feeling that is reinforced by the underwhelming climax- for an anthology show like Lights Out the climax would have been the 'shock' reveal that the town and all its inhabitants are trapped in a bubble, under observation and doomed to repeat the same day over and over.  A feature film, of course, requires more than this to bring up its running time to acceptable length, hence the visitors' over-extended investigation into what's going on in the town.  The unfortunate result of this is that the three outsiders' actions in the town themselves feel repetitive, as they constantly try to get people to respond beyond their regular 'scripts' or step outside of their fixed routines.  

The sheer talkiness of the script, with characters all too often telling us about what is going on rather than the film showing us, is a - characteristic of Oboler's films - his background was in radio and theatre - as is the tendency toward a 'preachiness' of tone.  The film really needed a much stronger cast to properly do justice to its ideas, but instead employs second tier performers more familiar from TV and B-movies, like Michael Cole, Deborah Walley and Johnny Desmond.  Unfortunately, they never manage to make their characters any more than two dimensional, never giving the audience anybody in the film to really engage with or care about.  It also doesn't help that the scenario presented by the script is inconsistent: despite being entrenched in set daily routines, the hospital staff, for instance, seem to be capable of dealing with unplanned events as they successfully deliver the pregnant interloper's baby and consequently care for her and the baby.  Indeed, the local doctor does seem to have some awareness of his situation, at one point telling the protagonists that they 'haven't gone to their assigned start points'.  Yet other members of the local community simply repeat a single phrase in response to any attempt at interaction, becoming completely passive if forcibly removed from their established location and routine.  Moreover, the relative lack of action over the film's overlong running time combines with a generally cheap look to the sets to give the whole movie the feel of a B-movie, rather than the A-feature it was clearly intended to be.  

While Arch Oboler might not have been the most visually inspired of film directors, he was an acclaimed writer noted for his intelligent and thought-provoking scripts and plays, so it is no surprise that The Bubble should be full of interesting ideas.  Unfortunately, in their execution, they never really coalesce into a satisfying whole - while it might be possible to read all sorts of readings into it as pertains to free will, predetermination, government surveillance and social control or even, perhaps, as a an analogy for communism, it is never coherent enough to be definite about any of these things.  Nevertheless, despite its deficiencies, though, The Bubble remains an intriguing film, setting up a premise that might seem familiar nowadays, but at the time was reasonably original for a film. (Various parts of its concept would subsequently be reworked by numerous films and TV series - the idea of characters trapped in a time loop turns up in the seventies Dr Who story Carnival of Monsters, for instance, with the film The Forgotten using the image of people being hoisted skywards by aliens, while Under the Dome lifts the whole 'bubble' concept itself).  Its main short coming is that it fails to exploit this idea sufficiently and never properly follows up on all of the interesting plot strands it sets up.  Adding to the film's curiosity value is the fact that it was filmed in the 'Space-Vision' 3-D process, (Oboler was a 3-D loyalist, having directed the first released 3-D film, Bwana Devil in 1953), which, while still requiring the audience to wear stereoscopic glasses, could shoot the film in 3-D using conventional cameras.  Whether 3-D enhanced the film on its original release, I can't say, as I've only seen it on TV in 2-D, but a lot of stuff does get thrown or pointed at the screen.  For all its flaws, The Bubble remains worth watching, even if its ambition ultimately outstrips its resources - a common feature of Arch Oboler's productions.