Cryogenics Movie

April 22, 2014 8:11 PM

I have a memory of seeing a movie on TV when I was maybe five or six years old (so, early 1970s) in which a young woman was frozen cryogenically in order to keep her fresh and young while the young son of the mad scientist doing this freezing would have time to grow up and then, twenty years or so in the future, marry the then-to-be-unthawed woman. What am I remembering?
posted by JimInLoganSquare to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

Omg, I have contemplated writing this exact question. I remember it was black and white, and the hero is discovered to not be a rich person because of the holes in his sock.
posted by politikitty at 8:22 PM on April 22, 2014

I vaguely remember this. I think it might be an episode of The Twilight Zone.
posted by bondcliff at 8:29 PM on April 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: For what it is worth, I distinctly recall this as being in color, not black & white. also, the freezing chambers basically looked like large glass fish aquariums.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 8:32 PM on April 22, 2014

Much later than the 70s, but Creator deals with a frozen wife.
posted by willnot at 9:37 PM on April 22, 2014

Close maybe, the Twilight Zone had the episode "The Long Morrow" where the astronaut goes off for 40 years but before he leaves he falls in love with Mariette Hartley who decides to keep herself frozen while he's gone and OMG there's a huge plottwistthatIwon'tsay.
posted by kinetic at 4:49 AM on April 23, 2014

Someone was asking about this on the Kermode and Mayo film podcast. I can't remember exactly which episode (I can't check at work, but I think either the Gervais or Aronofsky ep), but it was within the last couple of weeks! They definitely found the answer in the end:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/kermode
posted by threetwentytwo at 5:24 AM on April 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

No help on the movie, but Peter F Hamilton did a short story like this, in his Second Chance at Eden collection. The story is The Lives and Loves of Tiarella Rosa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Second_Chance_at_Eden
posted by Jacen at 5:53 AM on April 23, 2014

> Someone was asking about this on the Kermode and Mayo film podcast.

I knew it sounded familiar, but thought I had read it on reddit. In any case, it was either the April 4 episode (I'd bet on this one) or the March 28 episode, because I recall it was Kermode and Mayo themselves who were out of town for the April 11 episode, and the show wasn't aired the week after that.

(Hello to Jason Isaacs.)
posted by Sunburnt at 6:57 AM on April 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

If this was in fact a movie I think it lifted some key plot points from The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein (originally published in 1956).
posted by Rash at 8:47 AM on April 23, 2014

Response by poster: The April 4 Kermode and Mayo podcast definitely nails the plot [and title] of the movie I was thinking of: The Perils of Pauline (1967). I never in a million years would have found that on my own. Thanks to threetwentytwo and Sunburnt for providing that lead.

And what an odd coincidence this has been. I had not thought about the movie in decades, but it popped into my head a few days ago when my wife and I were discussing the Ted Williams case.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 8:55 AM on April 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Okay, it's entirely possible I watched this on my grandparents black & white set (which they had into the late eighties), but I found the scene I was thinking of at minute 53:37 here. So thanks for asking the question! And thanks, internet, for finding the answer.
posted by politikitty at 10:34 AM on April 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I went to USENET to try downloading this movie, and grabbed The Perils of Pauline (1947), a comedic biopic about a silent serial actress named Pearl White. That movie was named, in turn, for The Perils of Pauline (1914), a serial in which White starred.

Know the difference!
posted by Sunburnt at 9:34 AM on April 26, 2014