The Lawnmower Man (film)
1992 science fiction dark horror film / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Lawnmower Man is a 1992 science fiction horror film directed by Brett Leonard, written by Leonard and Gimel Everett, and starring Jeff Fahey as Jobe Smith, an intellectually disabled gardener, and Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Lawrence "Larry" Angelo, a scientist who decides to experiment on him in an effort to give him greater intelligence. The experiments give Jobe superhuman abilities, but also increase his aggression, turning him into a man obsessed with evolving into a digital being.
The Lawnmower Man | |
---|---|
Directed by | Brett Leonard |
Screenplay by | Brett Leonard Gimel Everett |
Based on | "The Lawnmower Man" by Stephen King (uncredited after lawsuit) |
Produced by | Gimel Everett Milton Subotsky Masao Takiyama |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Russell Carpenter |
Edited by | Alan Baumgarten Lisa Bromwell (director's cut) |
Music by | Dan Wyman |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | New Line Cinema (United States) First Independent Films (United Kingdom)[1] |
Release date |
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Running time | 108 minutes 142 minutes (director's cut)[3] |
Countries | United States United Kingdom Japan |
Language | English |
Budget | $10 million[2][4] |
Box office | $150 million[5] |
The film is adapted from the merging of a 1975 short story by Stephen King with an original screenplay entitled "CyberGod." While King's story focused on the titular character, a rotund, animal-like Pan worshipper who strips naked and eats the newly cut grass like a goat while controlling his lawnmower with mystical powers, the film has the same character controlling the lawnmower by means of the untapped potential of the human brain, which has been stimulated by advanced, but unethical scientific experimentation. In both versions, the character, initially presented as an unthreatening worker, turns into a menace once his powers are manifested, but in the film, this is the result of stimulation of the brain by nootropic drugs beyond the titular character's capacity for human goodness.
Because of the deviation from his story, King successfully sued to have his name removed from the film, which was originally titled Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man. He won further damages when his name was included in the title of the home video release.[6]
A sequel, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, was released in 1996, with Austin O'Brien as the only returning actor from the original film.[7]