The Mind of Mr. Soames

The Mind of Mr. Soames is a 1970 British-American sci-fi–drama film directed by Alan Cooke and starring Terence Stamp, Robert Vaughn and Nigel Davenport about a man who awakens from a 30-year coma with an immature brain. The film is based on Charles Eric Maine's 1961 novel of the same name.

Plot
John Soames is a thirty-year-old man who has been in a coma since a brain injury during birth. Now revived, he shows the behaviour of a child and is monitored by two doctors attempting to find out if he can be rehabilitated into the adult world. One English doctor, Dr. Maitland, is only interested in educational activities and he works John until he stops interacting and refuses to eat. Another doctor, the American Dr. Bergen suggests play for its own sake would have benefits and he brings a bouncy ball into John's room. John is soon interacting again and eating once more.

During all this time, John has met no women, nor any schooling in morality. Eventually, John is allowed outside into the natural world by Dr. Bergen and he delights in it, drinking water from a pool by dipping his head in. Dr. Maitland finds out and returns John to his room. Again, John becomes distressed. The men talk to him a great deal but John has fewer words, and although he appears to understand, when he is told to wait six months until he goes outside again, he does not know how long that will be.

John breaks free, having struck an orderly with a wooden chair and knocked him out, nearly killing him. He runs through woods until he reaches a river where he sleeps. The next day, he sees a busy road for the first time. A man stops his car thinking he is a hitch-hiker. The man chats whilst John is silent. John gets out, finds a pub and helps himself to some food without paying. A woman offers him a drink, a glass of bitter that John spits out on the floor that attracts intense attention from the pub crawlers. A man comes to help the barmaid, saying he owes money. John is ejected from the pub.

He passes a school playground and attempts to join a group of children who are playing with a ball. John takes the ball where he creates a scene with the schoolchildren and their teacher. He runs away once again and it gets dark.

John helps himself a coat from a car parked outside someone's house. The owner shouts at him, John runs and is hit by a car. The couple stop and get him into their car. The woman wants to take him to a hospital but the man says they'll call the police (he has been drinking), so they drive John to their house. The woman puts him in the spare bedroom.

The next day, the woman offers to clean him, and asks what he remembers. John says a few words and the woman thinks he is in shock. She suggests he was injured by an unknown hit-and-run driver, and the woman found him by the side of the road. John eats breakfast and the woman announces his name—she has seen a newspaper. She says he is wanted for attempted murder upon the orderly. She accepts that he was locked up by bad people. John touches her hair and she says she cannot recall the last time her husband was half as gentle.

John leaves before the police come to the house but he manages to get a train ticket and uses money from the coat he has on. The doctors are still in pursuit. On the train, John talks very slowly to a nervous teenaged girl with his limited vocabulary. The girl drops her violin and as John goes to help her he puts his hand on hers and the girl screams repeatedly and pulls the emergency brake. As the train stops, John hops off and runs away through the countryside with the girl telling a guard that John tried to attack her.

Eventually, the police use dogs to follow John across the countryside to a barn. The doctors arrive. Maitland threatens to 'get angry' if he does not come out. The other doctor, Bergen, says to be calm. He goes in and speaks to John and realises John has hurt his leg (falling from the train). Bergen offers medicine from his car and says he will not force John to go with him, it is John's decision. John asks him not to go and then follows him out into the rain. Meanwhile, two young journalists reporting on John's history from the institute are watching from a car. The man's hand is poised over a switch.

Suddenly, a bright light dazzles John and the dogs start barking. In panic, John spins round and round with the pitchfork he holds. He lets go and it spins out, hitting Bergen. When John realises what he has done, he broke into tears and collapses. People step forward and place him on a stretcher. Bergen is in pain but all right. Bergen's assistant gets into the van beside John and says his name kindly. John, who looks traumatised, gradually turns to look at him and reaches out a hand. Bergen's assistant takes it. They drive away leaving Maitland standing in the rain until the two students drive over to pick him up.

Cast

 * Terence Stamp as John Soames
 * Robert Vaughn as Doctor Michael Bergen
 * Nigel Davenport as Doctor Maitland
 * Christian Roberts as Thomas Fleming
 * Donal Donnelly as Joe Allan
 * Norman Jones as Davis
 * Dan Jackson as Nicholls
 * Vickery Turner as Naomi
 * Judy Parfitt as Jenny Bannerman
 * Scott Forbes as Richard Bannerman
 * Joe McPartland as Inspector Moore
 * Pamela Moiseiwitsch as Melanie Parks
 * Billy Cornelius as Sergeant Clifford

Production
The Mind of Mr. Soames was an attempt by Amicus Productions to branch into the non-horror field (they had also tried to option the rights to Flowers for Algernon but had been unable to secure them). The large budget was provided by Columbia Pictures.

Release
The film was released in theatres on 12 October 1970 in the United States, 26 March 1971 in Ireland, 18 June 1971 in Mexico. It was released on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on 4 March 2011.

Box office
The Mind of Mr. Soames was a failure at the box office.

Critical response
Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote in his review:

"'There are some movies that do nothing right, no matter how well they do it, and such a movie is The Mind of Mr. Soames, not that it does anything well. But with each scene, each camera movement, each gesture from its large and dispirited cast, The Mind of Mr. Soames, which opened yesterday at the Cinema 57 Rendezvous, displays an emptiness and a falseness of response that is beneath even the inadequacy of its ideas and the banality of its plot.

'John Soames (Terence Stamp), in a coma for all of his 30 years, is finally brought to life by the super surgery of Dr. Bergen (Robert Vaughn) so that he may be educated according to the theories of Dr. Maitland (Nigel Davenport), director of the institute where he had been peacefully sleeping. Between permissive Dr. Bergen and repressive Dr. Maitland a certain ideological conflict develops (e.g. 'How often do you play—games—with him?' 'Games? What do you mean, games!') that is the first and, I guess, final cause of the melodrama.

'But in the background there is a third doctor (Donal Donnelly), a source of hope who keeps his own counsel, patiently watches the wild child, and incidentally looks a bit like François Truffaut. The Mind of Mr. Soames is full of boldly introduced but ultimately undeveloped character clichés, which add a touch of bogus mystery to a film that is otherwise 100 per cent predictable. For example, Dr. Bergen drinks—too much—but nothing ever comes of it.

'And the callous TV director (Christian Roberts) who willfully almost wrecks Soames's belated childhood—what is his story, full of meaningless dark hints and fitful glimmerings? As Soames himself, a child of Frankenstein dressed in a mansized set of pink Dr. Dentons, without booties, Terence Stamp must have the best fun in the movie. Not only does he get to cry a lot and to play with toys, but he also is allowed at one time or another to dump baby food on all his doctors and keepers—with which inspiration The Mind of Mr. Soames exhausts itself and falls into moral platitude and heavy breathing.'"

Hal Erickson of Rovi wrote, on Rotten Tomatoes: "The Mind of Mr. Soames can be described as a melodramatic Charly. John Soames (Terence Stamp) is a hospital patient who has been in a coma for 30 years. Doctor Bergen (Robert Vaughn) attempts to revitalise Soames by transplanting an infant's brain in the patient's head. When Soames awakens, he has the mental capacity of a baby, but Dr. Bergen is certain that he can accelerate the maturation process, which he does in a matter of weeks. But the pressure on Soames' emotional stability is such that he tragically snaps during a live TV broadcast. Adapted from a novel by Charles Eric Maine, The Mind of Mr. Soames raises more questions than it can possibly answer, but works well on the level of solid science fiction."

Note the review from Rotten Tomatoes is incorrect as there was not an actual transplant of a baby's brain.