Innerspace (Type: Modification) (Severity ***)

In the 80s sci-fi film Innerspace a submersible and its pilot, played by Dennis Quaid, are miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of an unwitting stiff, played by Martin Short.  Meanwhile, rival villains are intent on destroying the hero and his craft (and by extension his host.  In one scene a henchman of the chief villain is placed inside a submersible robotic suit, so that once miniaturized he too can be injected and go after the hero in his submersible.

I dream a heavily modified version of this scene.  In it a huge notionally-human, but prodigiously mutated human creature lies on a couch in a bare, brightly lit room.  It has a long slug-shaped opalescent body, but no limbs.  Its head is almost identical to that of the cyclopean, tentacular one of the Dalek-human in the recent Doctor Who episode Evolution of the Daleks.  Its face is perhaps slightly flatter and pinker and moreover the corners of its mouth are pinned to the surface of a glinting metal headrest with rectangular prongs.  Far from being in pain or distress however the creature (which is clearly malign) seems to be enjoying its situation.

While it evokes the outsize suit from the original story by its sheer size, rather than being shrunk itself the creature is seemingly in the process of giving birth to a microscopic attacker.  Although this can hardly be too taxing a process for its huge body, it still arches dramatically in a manner that recalls the alien queen giving birth viviparously in Alien Resurrection.  As the birth occurs the ‘offspring’, whatever it is, is rescued in a small red container like a bucket.  This has been placed over the intersection at the creature’s ‘crotch’ of two long flaps of skin running down the length of its belly.  The positioning of the flaps on the body – together with the creature’s general attitude on the couch – is strongly reminiscent of a painting by H. R. Giger depicting another alien creature lolling in a bathtub.  Throughout the entire process the creature remains unambiguously male.

While still in the dream it occurs to me that this scene is a vivid expression of 80s ‘techno-fear’.  And, in and adjunct to the main narrative, I am using a still of the mutant’s head as part of the design for a CD compilation called So 80s it Hurts!