Nobody seems to remember this Canadian made sci-fier from 1995. MEMORY RUN (a.k.a. SYNAPSE) was a fairly typical example of the type of budget-lite straight-to-video fare of the time, having been filmed in Toronto with a locally sourced cast and crew and bearing a script that’s quite derivative, with BLADE RUNNER (1982), THE TERMINATOR (1984) and TOTAL RECALL (1990) all directly pilfered.
The film is of interest primarily for its source material: the novel SEASON OF THE WITCH by Jean Marie Stine, published in 1968 (when the author was known as Hank Stine) by the fabled Essex House upscale smut line. The only Essex House novel to be adapted for film, SEASON OF THE WITCH was largely bowdlerized by screenwriters David Gottleib and Dale Hildebrand and director Allan A. Goldstein, although Stine claims to be okay with the alterations, asserting “They made the changes I would have made to exteriorize the theme of what is, after all, a stream-of-consciousness novel, and for me the essential theme of the mutability of gender is carried through to the end.”
It begins with the young Andre Fuller (Corey Sevier) seeing his parents gunned down by riot gear outfitted cops. 15 years pass, with (as textual intertitles inform us) the government now controlled by the “Corrupt and Powerful Life Corporation” that’s opposed by a resistance movement known as The Union, which the grown-up Andre (Chris Makepeace) assists. One morning he wakes up next to the body of a woman (Karen Duffy) killed by a rival (a divergence from the novel, in which Andre was a sex-crazed murderer) and is promptly sentenced by a Life Corporation operated high-tech tribunal.
Andre winds up having his consciousness transferred to the dead woman’s body via a surgical procedure whose particulars are kept murky (a test, we learn, for the Life Corporation’s overseers, who are seeking to ensure immortality by inhabiting younger bodies). Andre, renamed Celeste, is understandably non-plussed by his new feminized form, and the fact that he—now she—is being held prisoner by the Life Corporation, but she finds allies in the form of fellow prisoner Alice (Natalie Radford) and Dr. Munger (Saul Rubinek), who was instrumental in turning Andre into Celeste but is now having second thoughts. With their help Celeste escapes, and finds brief solace with a Union chapter (in place of the hippie commune described by Ms. Stine) led by Alice’s ex-Life employee brother Gabriel (Matt McCoy). After being nearly wiped out in a Life initiated raid, Gabriel and Celeste join forces with Munger to take on the Life Corporation directly.
The conception of a man living as a woman may have seemed radical in 1968, when the Jean Marie Stine novel was initially published (and when producer David Gottleib allegedly began pursuing the film rights), but by 1995 it was old hat, having been utilized in GOODBYE CHARLIE (1964) and SWITCH (1991), and later in X,Y (2004). MEMORY RUN has little to add that’s unique or provocative, with the novel’s overpowering sexual content all-but completely jettisoned (with a brief glimpse of Gabriel getting it on with his Torri Higginson played wife being all the sexiness we get), and the gender change that powers the story depicted in an inexcusably offhand manner.
Given the nature of the production, the art direction and special effects are just as you’d expect: cut-rate, with much of the film set inside an Ontario hydro plant that was apparently supposed to look futuristic. The copious fights and shoot-outs fail to generate much excitement, and the acting is strictly of the collecting-a-paycheck variety, with veteran players like Barry Morse and Saul Rubinek looking bored, and Karen Duffy (coming off DUMB AND DUMBER) never managing to convince as a man in a woman’s body, or as the Sarah Conner-esque ass kicking babe she’s supposed to become.
Vital Statistics
MEMORY RUN (SYNAPSE)
Fries/Schultz Film Group
Director: Allan A. Goldstein
Producer: Andy Emilio, Dale Hildebrand
Screenplay: David Gottleib, Dale Hildebrand, Allan A. Goldstein
(Based on a novel by Jean Marie Stine)
Cinematography: Curtis Petersen
Editing: Evan Landis
Cast: Karen Duffy, Saul Rubinek, Matt McCoy, Lynne Cormack, Torri Higginson, Chris Makepeace, Barry Morse, Nigel Bennett, Jonathan Tanner, Natalie Radford, Robbie Fox, John Stoneham Sr., Diana Rowland, Corey Sevier