By BRIAN DE PALMA, JOHN FARRIS (197?)

This undated late 1970s screenplay is one of several never-filmed takes on Alfred Bester’s 1951 science fiction masterpiece THE DEMOLISHED MAN.  This particular script is not as famous as the 1980 adaptation by Oliver Stone, but is just as strong.  The writers were Brian De Palma, who was set to direct, and horror novelist John Farris, who had previously adapted De Palma’s THE FURY (from his own novel) for the screen in 1978.

THE FURY was, according to some, a dry run for THE DEMOLISHED MAN, i.e. a testing-out of the themes and visuals for what was to be De Palma’s magnum opus: an adaptation of a novel he’d reportedly revered since childhood, utilizing then state of the art visual effects.  Studio politics put the brakes on that dream, with the project moving from its initial home at Paramount to Fox, who decided not to go forward with it (bizarrely, De Palma later expressed interest in filming a subsequent DEMOLISHED MAN screenplay adaptation written by Stephen Tolkin, having apparently forgotten about this one).

To hear Farris tell it, he was the sole writer of this script, utilizing a previous one written by De Palma and combining it with Farris’ own 30 page treatment.  The De Palma touch, however, is evident throughout a narrative the pivots on Hitchockian suspense and visual bravura.

Bester’s narrative has been pared down considerably.  Gone are the philosophical digressions and pre-1960s psychedelia that packed the novel (and were largely preserved in the aforementioned Oliver Stone adaptation), with De Palma and Farris making their own additions.  Foremost among these are the sensationalistic opening pages, in which a man named Pete arrives home from work in the year 2049 to find his wife screwing another man (a sequence De Palma replicated in BODY DOUBLE).  Pete responds by beating to death his better half, only to have a policeman appear on his TV screen announcing that he’s under arrest; from there Pete is whisked away by an “anti-grav beam” that pulls him through the air and deposits him in police custody for “demolition,” a process described as “more immediate, and more dreadful, than the execution by electric chair.”

From there De Palma and Farris expend a great deal of ink setting up the particulars of this world.  It’s controlled by a band of telepathically endowed “Espers” headed by Lincoln Powell, the Prefect of World Police.  We’re also introduced to Ben Reich, an insanely wealthy businessman looking to take over the world (and also the surrounding solar system).  Accomplishing this goal involves murdering a rival businessman, the planning of which is methodically laid out by De Palma and Harris in a manner befitting ROPE or STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.  The killing goes off, but it’s far from perfect, involving as it does the unexpected intervention of a third party who witnesses the whole bloody mess.

Adding to the intrigue is a confident grasp of speculative detail of a type that tends to bog down science fiction themed narratives.  The mind-reading portions, for instance, are visually conveyed via clock-wipes, i.e. transitional wipes that move clocklike from the center of the screen (rather than the more traditional side-to-side method), illuminating a difficult-to-convey concept in simple and easy-to-understand fashion.  It really is a shame this script was never filmed.