The Cube: A Nightmare Recovered
Deep within my earliest childhood memories I have the indelible image of a vague and frightening setting: a featureless room with no doors or windows— floor, walls, and ceiling the same gleaming white grid. In the room a man sits alone with no memory of his arrival, wishing to be anywhere else. People appear and talk with him, teasing him with ideas of freedom, toying with his mind. His memory uncertain, his reality unstable, he doubts everything and wonders whether he can even hold on to his sense of self.
This nightmare is kindred to the fever delirium I experienced a few times as a child— a kind of temporary insanity where 320 BPM explosions pound in the silence of my room and my bed sheets feel like corrugated metal under my touch. It isn’t real, I tell myself. It will pass. But the memory lives, patiently waiting for me to revisit my menagerie of childhood nightmares— like the white room.
Fast forward to two years ago. I am 38 years old. I have long had a taste for existential plays like Brazil, Groundhog Day, and The Truman Show — stories that confront one with questions about the nature of existence and the meaning of one’s life. In my web surfing I come across references to a B-movie I had never seen simply called Cube, about a group of people inexplicably trapped in a three-dimensional maze fraught with deathtraps. Interesting, I think… sounds a lot like my childhood nightmare. But it’s far too new for me to have seen it back then, and my nightmare was terrifying, but not violent. I see they even made a couple sequels: Cube2: Hypercube and Cube Zero. They certainly don’t look like “must see” classics. Perhaps someday I’ll check them out.
Fast forward to yesterday. I am 40 years old. On a whim I decide to see what Wikipedia has to say about that movie I heard of a couple years ago. I type the article name into the search box, but get it slightly wrong:
Wait a minute— this isn’t the movie I saw referenced before… it’s much older: made for television in 1969. I would have been four years old when it aired. There aren’t any deathtraps, just a man in a white room with no way out…
Hear that sound? That’s my mind blowing.
The shock of familiarity is overwhelming. Is this the source of my childhood nightmare? It sounds like it, but is there some way I can watch it to be sure? It turns out I can. There are people out there trying to save movies and television shows of the 60s and 70s from the dustbin of history. It turns out there is even a Yahoo Group devoted solely to the history and discussion of The Cube. And there is a BitTorrent stream where it can be downloaded in its entirety. (I recommend VLC player for viewing.)
Though the details had been lost in my memory, I am left with no doubt by my fresh viewing: this is my nightmare, down to the despairing ending.
And the evil, twisted genius of a filmmaker responsible for infecting me with this honored member of my childhood menagerie?
The magic smoke pours from what little mind I have left.
Jim’s work has long been an inspiration to me, including Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, The Muppet Movies, Fraggle Rock, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and other works too numerous to mention. His untimely death in 1990 was a personally-felt tragedy. And I have since had the honor of working on a project directly with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop where I contributed to a re-design of their animatronics system.
I don’t consider knowledge of something complete until you have experienced its dark side. Finally seeing The Cube as an adult has been a dark homecoming for me. It stands as a portent of the imagination and energy that would later become such a treasured part of my childhood and beyond.
Thanks again, Jim.
April 9th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Hi Robert,
Glad I could help you out. Like many of the folks finding their way to THE CUBE, they saw it alone as a child. And it burrowed into their brains…..
I had learned it was Henson’s work when he mentioned it in passing at an appearance at the 1982 World SF COnvention in Chicago. When I finally got online in ‘99 and discovered IMDb a little while later, I discovered just how little was known then about that teleplay. IMDb had even gotten the actor’s name wrong!
But some searching started revealing more. And posting it on IMDb got more people educated, interested, and re-attached to the show. Like you and I, most had never run into anyone else who had seen the show and remembered it.
At the Henson appearance, for example, in a room of several hundred people, I’m pretty sure I was one of maybe 4-8 people who responded to his mention of THE CUBE.
Anyway, the IMDb site led to the creation of the Yahoo group.
And it was the Yahoo group that finally located an actual copy of the show.
Okay, it was b/w and research shows the original was in color, but what the heck! It was probably a pirate copy some film/TV prof ran off in the 70s on the equipment in his department’s video engineering center.
And that is the copy that is spreading around the globe.
Dick Schaal, the star, is retired and living in Florida. One of our co-moderators is on speaking terms with him. It was nice to be able to provide him with copies of his long-ago performance.
Meanwhile, we continue to get passersby who think this is part of the violent CUBE series from Canada.
Oh well. At least the confusion helps bring in the occassional wanderer who really IS looking for THE CUBE.
Anyway, welcome ot the group. Make sure you save a copy of the script(s) and the screen caps. And if you know anyone looking for a Flash project, I have an idea for a THE CUBE screen saver……
–David
April 12th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Hello, I enjoyed your blog on this topic and I can completely identify with the experience. As David Martin explained, your experience is so typical of most of the members of our group that it is almost correct to regard it as “textbook”.
David founded the group and worked tirelessly to stimulate the community to find a copy— as you know. I feel we owe our success to his vision and direction. And to “Frank” who finally put his hands on THE CUBE from (as I gather it) a rather eccentric archivist, who had piles of tapes stacked up here and there.
Mike Mardis, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, was David’s first “member” and provided insights from his employment in the television industry, and also created the first discs to be physically “vined” or “weeded”, i.e. distributed for copying then passed onto to the next address in line, to be copied again, and the master passed on…
I’m Michael Campbell (from upstate South Carolina) and my contributions were perhaps more mundane. I produced dozens of discs for simple give away (as the “vining” process had inherent weaknesses if a single party failed, or even lagged) and mailed them all over the world: Australia, Warsaw, France, Spain, The Netherlands, etc.. you get the idea. Then, after the physical distribution process had seems to slow, I picked up the avi file from Patrick Flannigan,(a member who has adapted THE CUBE for a stage play and has already staged a reading) and created the torrent file which you found somewhere. It was distributed to several places and I can account for 2843 downloads, but of course that doesn’t count multiple burnings from a single person (maybe as gifts, etc) and torrent trackers can be ’strange’ in their accounting practices.
Also, I had to good fortune to locate Richard “Dick” Schaal AKA “The Man In The Cube” in Florida and have several very pleasant conversation with him— even received a holiday “note” from him this past December.
Well, I’ll say bye… just wanted you to know who I was and to say I enjoyed your piece on THE CUBE.
Remember you can leave at any time, but you must use your door…
Michael
May 7th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I used this film in my high school classes for years… nothing like making them think..or putting their minds into much!!!
I had it on 16mm film but it was lost in a school fire. Anywhere I can get a copy on VHS or DVD
Another wonderful black comedy film was “If There Were No Blacks You’d Invent Them” (think it is BBC)
Appreciate any help you can give.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Fred…..
I can point you toward a new copy of this…If you’re into Torrents, it’s here:
(this torrent also contains a avant-garde film trailer for the live German stage production KUBUS, which ran in the winter of 2007)
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4175704/The_Cube_1969_Existential__Horror_play_basis_of_3_movies._color_
or contact me at:
leahcim3360@yahoo.com
May 8th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Hello All,
I did a more recent posting focusing on the upcoming play KUBUS, but also linked to the full-length color version on Google video. Click here for the more recent post.