Product Details

• Actors: Alexander Scourby, Leslie Nielsen, Joseph Campanella, Orson Welles, Richard Basehart
• Directors: Alexander Grasshoff, Aram Boyajian, Bert Haanstra, David Seltzer, Jack Kaufman
• Writers: James Lipscomb
• Producers: Al Giddings, Alexander Grasshoff, Bud Wiser, James Lipscomb
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Nat'l Geographic Vid
• VHS Release Date: July 11, 1997
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630447430X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,168 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just a documentary, but a work of art, July 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: National Geographic's The Incredible Human Machine [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I'll start off by saying that the classic National Geographic documentaries played a vital part in my childhood. I rented them from the local video store so many times that the employees there called me "the National Geographic kid." CREATURES OF THE NAMIB DESERT, THE SHARKS, AFRICAN WILDLIFE--these were to me what SNOW WHITE and THE LITTLE MERMAID were to other kids. What can I say? I was (and still am) a total egghead. (I'll be 21 next month.)

However, I always had a unique relationship with THE INCREDIBLE HUMAN MACHINE. On the one hand, I knew that it was a masterpiece, and was continually compelled to watch it. And yet, something about it frightened me. Its images, like the inside of the esophagus and blood pumping through vessels, were somehow more than I could deal with. As a result, I only watched it a very few times.

Fortunately, I'm much less sensitive now (I've even become an avid fan of horror movies--a complete turnaround from my childhood), and I recently went back and saw THE INCREDIBLE HUMAN MACHINE. And, while it no longer scares me, there is something unnerving about it. In some ways, it's similar to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (maybe its flip side, since this is an odyssey through INNER space). There's an awe, a scientific/poetic ecstasy to everything. Maybe it's the uneasy feeling that our boundaries as animals have been broken, that we're seeing things that had previously been reserved for the gods.

But why is that? I've seen many other, more technologically advanced (remember, this film is 25 years old) documentaries on the human body, but none moves me like this one. There are several reasons. It's written, directed, and edited with seamless perfection (kudos to Irwin Rosten and Hyman Kaufman) and makes the most of its short running time. At fifty-odd minutes, there's only time to give a thumbnail sketch of each of the bodily systems, and the film does so in a marvelously succinct and resourceful way. But that's only part of it. Far more than just filling us up with facts like most documentaries do, it ventures into the realms of art and philosophy without ever overplaying its hand. It takes the time to present small, incredible images like individual heart cells beating in a petri dish, or an embryo's spine forming, or a zygote expanding and contracting. (Narrator E.G. Marshall compares this last one to an "exploding star," effortlessly linking inner and outer space.) It quotes Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, and Joseph Conrad, while celebrating our bodies through images of world-class athletes and ordinary people. A gymnast performs on uneven parallel bars, a deaf woman hears for the first time, a man in a biofeedback experiment powers a toy train with his mind. Ultimately, the film makes you think about who we are, and marvel that we exist and are capable of so much.

(I was unable to fit this into the last paragraph, but I simply have to give special credit to Billy Goldenberg, whose eerie, pulsating music plays almost continuously through the film and greatly intensifies its emotional impact.)

I could go on about this film for much longer, but I've made my point. So I'll finish on a personal note of triumph. THE INCREDIBLE HUMAN MACHINE has been here all these years; it just took me a while to be able to fully enjoy it. And now I can, and I will for the rest of my life. I hope you buy it and get out of it all that I have.

PS: I wish that National Geographic would issue some of their pre-1975 documentaries on video. Also, with videotape rapidly becoming an outdated medium, they need to reissue their entire catalog (including the pre-1975 stuff just mentioned) on DVD, so the next generation can enjoy these classics.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good video but very outdated, May 6, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: National Geographic's The Incredible Human Machine [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I remember liking this video as a child so I was anxious to see it again. It's funny how times change. The old Geographic with their big booming narrator voice and documentary scenes that look like they were staged for the camera just don't do it for me anymore. Some of the scenes are still touching but I would reccomend keeping your memories intact and avoid watching this. It's just not worth your time and any expense.

3.0 out of 5 stars Still good, despite the years, March 4, 2010

By 

M. Gaggero (Genova, Italy) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: National Geographic's The Incredible Human Machine [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Very instructive video, a bit outdated by modern video technology, but still fascinating. I think many modern-day documentary producers took inpiration from this video. It's spectacular as well as informative: today you see a lot of amazing images but fewer real content.