Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment
Morgan Delt (David Warner) is a failed artist, who was raised as a communist by his parents. His upper-class wife, Leonie (Vanessa Redgrave), has given up on him and is in the process of getting a divorce in order to marry Charles Napier (Robert Stephens), an art gallery owner of her own social standing. Given the innately rich and personal world of fantasy Morgan has locked himself into, he goes off the deep end. He performs a series of bizarre stunts in a campaign to win back Leonie, including putting a skeleton in her bed and blowing up the bed as her mother sits on it. When these stunts fail, Morgan secures the help of his mother's wrestler friend Wally "The Gorilla" (Arthur Mullard) to kidnap Leonie, who still nurtures residual feelings of love tinged with pity for Morgan. The plan fails, and Morgan is arrested and imprisoned.
On his release he crashes the wedding reception of Leonie and Charles dressed as a gorilla, for which scene Reisz borrows clips from King Kong to illustrate Morgan's fantasy world. Morgan flees the wedding on a motorcycle with his gorilla suit on fire. He is subsequently committed to an insane asylum. Here, Leonie visits him looking visibly pregnant. With a wink, Leonie tells him he is the child's father. Morgan returns to tending a flowerbed as the camera pulls out to a longshot of the entire circular flowerbed with the enclosed flowers arranged into a hammer and sickle.
insanity, cult, psychedelic, satire