The Ninth Configuration — also known as Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane — is one of the most mind-warping movies I've seen in a long time. Written and directed by the brilliant William Peter Blatty (and based on his 1978 novel), who you likely know from The Exorcist fame, it vacillates brilliantly between laugh-out-loud comedy and deep existential and religious examination.It takes place in the Pacific Northwest (though was actually shot in Hungary) in a castle-turned-asylum used by the US government for military personnel. Colonel Kane (Stacy Keach) is the new psychiatrist assigned to treat the patients and, ultimately, figure out how many of them are truly mentally ill and how many are faking. Colonel Fell (Ed Flanders) is the doctor who helps him get acclimated, Billy Cutshaw (the incredible Scott Wilson) is the former astronaut who botched a moon launch due to his own nervous breakdown, and Lt. Frankie Reno (Jason Miller) is trying to stage a Shakespearean play cast by dogs. Blatty himself even makes an appearance as Lt. Fromme, who steals the medic's clothes.It's almost too smart even for its own good. After the truly confusing opening scene set to Denny Brooks' "San Antone", we settle in for some genuine madness. You see shots of the castle set in the fog, in the waning daylight or pure darkness, and while it's obvious we aren't in the Pacific Northwest (or in the US at all), it lends an appropriately spooky, crazy setting for what's going on inside.Right away you feel disoriented, to a degree, not knowing for sure who is sane and who is insane. It feels as though everyone there is just free to say and do whatever their mind comes up with, and is that really, truly insane or is it just some kind of freedom most of us never enjoy? You have a feeling — or at least I did — about Colonel Kane as soon as he comes on board, wondering if he's truly mentally fit for the duty he's been handed. He's quiet and patient with the men, but in an eerily detached and almost zombie-like way — as Cutshaw says to him at one point, "you're too human to be human". He decides to indulge the men — to let them take over the castle, in a way — and what was already madness descends into pure comedic chaos.I found myself just scanning the screen, waiting for the next bit of hilarity, soaking in the dialogue… it's quick, witty, and smart in the most cutting way. I feel like you could watch this movie 10 times and notice something new at every viewing. It's amazing, really, that SO MUCH could be packed into a mere two hours. It's worth giving this movie a shot JUST for the scene where Colonel Kane and Cutshaw debate the existence of God. The entire movie is highly centered around religion and the questioning of it, but this scene in particular is just in a league of its own.When the twists arrive, they hit hard, and the story completely shifts gears. We soon find ourselves in a nearby bar with Cutshaw trying to drown his sorrows and the most ridiculous but awesome scene unfolds as Cutshaw is repeatedly prodded and taunted, and it only gets more tense when Kane arrives and they switch their attention to him, specifically Steve Sandor as the most absurd villain ever (just truly spiteful and mean, but then does a pretty impressive split at one point and just… I may have been clapping). You're watching the scene thinking (or saying out loud, as I was), "He's going to freak out on you guys. You DON'T EVEN KNOW the madness you're about to unleash"… and then it's unleashed and it is wild. One of the most intense bar fights I've ever seen. But I think an awesome one because it isn't there solely for guts and glory, or for gore, or for us to see someone get their lights punched out. It's another layer in an already complex relationship between Kane and Cutshaw.And the ending… well, I won't spoil it for you, but I think it summed things up quite nicely.But really, for every bit of laughter this movie provides, it delivers tenfold in deeply relatable and thought-provoking dialogue. It's sharply intelligent, well thought out, and crafted lovingly. The characters are intense and likable despite their obvious struggles. A vastly underrated and under-recognized film, truly!

TNC starts off as a cross between "M*A*S*H", "Cuckoo's Nest" and "Britannia Hospital", but not nearly as good as any of them. (Eventually it becomes "Rambo" before Rambo, but I'll get to that later.) A fear started setting in that this was yet another late-70s/early-80s Vietnam-war-related flick, carrying some damn self-important hence deluded peacenik message about "how bad bad bad the Vietnam war was". Not another one, I thought, won't they ever tire of the same old bull? Still, to comfort and motivate myself to continue watching this, I figured I'd rather see a war-themed movie about a bunch of half-crazed loony-bin Vietnam veterans than Jane Fonda taking care of a wheelchair-bound soldier in some corny Oscar-winning schmaltz-fest.Nevertheless, it soon became apparent that the crux of this story is not that the hippies, gullible/clueless students and their Marxist college professors had a valid point, but something entirely different: the age-old dilemma of whether God (referred to Wilson as "Foot") exists or not, whether there is reason to hope or to despair. In a nutshell. Unfortunately, Blatty (writer/director/producer) spends too much time in the first half involving the new "shrink" Keach in pointless, usually tiresome dialogues with the patients, most of whom quote so much from literature, philosophy and science that one could get the impression that the US military drafted most of its soldiers from colleges – which is of course not at all the case.TNC takes a sudden turn for the interesting when the movie's major plot-twist comes into play: Keach is really just another patient, the notorious "Killer Kane", allowed to play shrink in order to try and cure himself of his guilty conscience. Of course, this is a totally absurd premise, but the movie had already treaded bizarre-movie territory, so what the hell. I had half-suspected that Kane wasn't a real shrink, given the empty stare on his face throughout much of the first half, i.e. something seemed to be afoot, and it was.Sadly, while the second half is far more interesting, it also has TNC's absolute low point. It was quite predictable that before the movie was over there would be a moment in which Kane would "regress" to his old Killer-Kane self. And this is where the biker gang comes in: the moronic, over-the-top brutal, aggressive, violent biker gang that exists nowhere in the real world except in Blatty's somewhat strange vision of what "Bikerland America" must look like. This gang follows every cliché in the 60s B-movie rule-book about how to portray biker gangs. (Real bikers probably laugh or throw beer-cans at the screen whenever they see this kind of nonsense in movies.)The leader of the gang is played by a guy who looks nothing like a biker, much less a biker leader, and who actually wears EYE-LINER. (Actually, he'd be better off cast as a beach bum in a silly sex-romp comedy.) Yes; Blatty, who must have been an old geezer by the time he wrote this novel, was utterly out of touch with pop-culture specifics so he confused the 70s glam-rock poser movement with the quasi-hippie biker-gang culture. This extremely silly, utterly fictional gang starts torturing Wilson, an event which predictably causes Kane to take matters into his own hands, but not before being tortured himself for a while, in a game which the bikers call "beach-ball". Wilson gets a biker penis stuck into his mouth, and this proves to be the final straw for Kane who then starts off a Rambo-like outburst of violence which leaves half a dozen bikers dead in its wake. I am no expert on biker gangs, but something tells me that gay sex is NOT high on the list of their "fun-to-do-things-when-I'm-happy-and-drunk" list. (So clueless is Blatty that the end-credits don't even refer to the gang members as "bikers" but "cyclists" instead!)Eventually, Kane takes his own life, proving to Wilson that "goodness" in people truly exists, which in turn cures Wilson. To make the ending even more bitter-sweetly idealistic, Blatty allows the dead Kane to leave a sign to Wilson years later, just as Wilson had asked of him should Kane die first, proving that there is life after death after all. Wilson is overjoyed, and he smiles. Last scene; the end. Not only had he been cured years earlier, but now he can be a Foot-follower as well, just like all the rest. (Or nearly all.) The notion that "good/selfless" deeds prove that God exists is a rather naive one, but I'll let that pass. I suppose that is why Blatty needed Kane's sign from the grave, too, in order to cement the victory for the "God does exist" crowd.There are moments in TNC that are intelligent, insightful or interesting, such as the patient who is "punishing the wall atoms" with a hammer for not letting him pass through it (evidently, this soldier had been well-informed about quantum mechanics and particle physics), or the scene in which Wilson finally reveals to Kane and the viewers what the real reason was for not aborting the Moon mission. TNC also has an excellent visual quality, so typical of the period during which it was filmed, so it's a pity that the movie's potential didn't amount to more. But, as I said, when you introduce an exaggeratedly over-the-top biker gang into your movie then all you can do is cheapen the end-product that way. Never use biker-gangs as a plot-device; never – even in a comedy, let alone a drama.And yet again Richard Lynch was hired to play a gay man. "Scarecrow", "God Told Me To", (and perhaps a few others?) and now this. How does a (casting) director look at Lynch and think "gee, he'd be ideal as a gay man"? I simply don't get it. But I guess it's the same moronic reasoning that gets Angelina Jolie cast as a professional killer or Sean Penn as an intellectual.

I don't want to discuss about technical aspects, my comment focuses on the absence of any deep meaning in this work, because I think this movie is a little bit overrated.Is it the metaphor of something? I tried to understand it very carefully, but I didn't find any trace of symbols. The dialogs are not funny and are not profound, they seem only pointless and pretentious.The psychiatric experiment in itself is totally unbelievable for the large amount of energy and money used, and the serious risks implied. The friendship between Cutshaw and Kane is too fast and superficial, and that's why his death is not a dramatic event. The scene at the bar is a very mediocre representation of stereotypes. You cannot say how evil is the "normal" human race, watching a band of drunk bullies. This poor scene is made to raise - very easily - the rage of the audience. It wants to hit below the belt, not inducing any reflection.... so, whose side are you on, Blatty?But the most important point is: why a man who commits suicide has to be considered a hero, a martyr, a saint? That's the point. 1) A disturbed man doesn't do it intentionally, he is forced by his illness. 2) Someone thinks it's an altruistic action dying for a simple demonstration? I don't think so. 3) He says: "I'm tired of living". OK, so dying is selfish. This makes no sense. No, sorry: it's stupid.Someone found God or any sort of illumination watching this movie? I don't think so, because it is a fraudulent and messy juxtaposition of strong themes (madness, sacrifice, friendship), but empty of any artistic synthesis.(Sorry for my poor English)

Sometimes the process is transparent. You can see in the work what the writer is going through in the process of creating the work. He or she is not explicitly in the thing, but the struggle of creation is.No one is going to think that Blatty is an important or even effective writer. That hardly matters when a writer is prepared to put his life on the line for us.What happened here is that his spooky book was made into a successful movie, giving him some clout. Pepsi Cola wanted a bottling plant in Budapest, and was faced with a corrupt communism that wanted to attract movie makers to their otherwise unsuccessful city. So Pepsi agreed to finance any bad film and Blatty happened to fall into the opportunity.(There is a bizarre product placement.)This meant that he could indulge himself, and he does. The overall wrapper is a juvenile, banal notion of the search for God. A dedicated film enthusiast will know how to ignore these sections, mostly at the end. The main content is a Marx-brothers inspired bunch of set pieces of crazy Vietnam soldiers in a castle asylum. They have an unrealistic access to any props needed to support the skits. If you are able to look at this episodically, some of these skits are inspired, more like Ernie Kovacks than Groucho though. Most of these are based on writer's artifacts. One sequence follows a soldier determined to reimagine the works of Shakespeare as acted by dogs. Peppered throughout are references to other movies, as if the fantasies of the characters were guided by films. This includes an overlong extraction from "The Wild One."A key character is a reluctant astronaut who realizes that he is part of a national drama of identity and cosmos.The setup is that our narrator is the new psychiatrist who himself is crazy. His eyes are not to be trusted and the wackiness we see could easily be imagined. Because of this, and the hospital's complicity in letting him believe he is a doctor, this story is compared to "Shutter Island." But the later film is a whole, long form piece, with layered acting based on DiCaprio's lessons for "Inception." It carefully engineers a solution at the end for those who wish one and an ambiguous resolution for more serious viewers. It is whole and coherent.This is merely a set of skits with the untrusted narrator's device. I see it as "Duck Soup" for Vietnam, at least in the central sections, combined with the dark night of the soul that a writer faces.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.