In 1959’s 4D Man, the first real sign that untoward untowardness has penetrated our everyday reality is when Dr. Tony Nelson (James Congdon) reveals his sole experimental success to his brother and his girlfriend. It’s a piece of steel with a wooden pencil stabbed through it. A scientific miracle! And also a not very subtle visual metaphor for intercourse.  

4D Man is the film that director Irvin Yeaworth and producer/screenwriter Jack Harris made the year after they collaborated on the unexpected hit, The Blob. The earlier movie was a fairly chaste endeavor. The teen protagonists share an innocent kiss early on and then spend the rest of the movie trying to fight the vile space jelly.

4D Man, though, is a more adult story, centered on desire and jealousy. Tony’s brother, the scientist Scott (Robert Lansing in his film debut) is in love with his assistant Linda (Lee Meriwether, also in her first role.) But Linda prefers Tony. Scott is already frustrated because his boss Dr. Carson (Edgar Stehli) always takes credit for his scientific innovations. The romantic rejection is the last straw. When Tony’s experiments turn Scott intangible, the scorned brother goes on a rampage, egged on by the somewhat incongruous big band jazz soundtrack.

That rampage on the surface at first mostly involves theft. But there’s a strong undercurrent of eroticism. One of the first things Scott steals with his power is an apple, that old Adamic symbol of sexual impropriety. Right after that he toys with the idea of stealing a woman’s necklace, his hand slipping through the glass to fondle the pearls.

Scott soon learns that using his powers drains him and ages him. To restore himself, he has to stick his intangible hands into other people, sucking out their life force. (“Something that saps the life out of a man like juice out of an orange!” as one policeman puts it.) Basically, Scott’s a vampire, with all the sexy vampire connotations.

Sure enough, there’s an innuendo-laden scene in which Scott uses his powers to walk through the door of Linda’s bedroom, lurking over her as she sleeps, and then pursuing her through the house. Later he picks up a woman in a bar, and semi-accidentally drains her life force when they kiss. Even when he confronts his superior Dr. Carson, who has stolen his work, the assault is framed in gendered terms. “Scott’s a man, not just a member of one of your teams!” he bellows in villainous third-person. Carson violated and emasculated Scott; now Scott can literally put himself inside the boss, violating him in turn. ““You needed me and you used me,” Scott sneers, “and now I need you.”

It’s Linda who finally puts an end to Scott’s depredations. She kisses the aged Scott, and when he turns solid to embrace her, she shoots him. The bullet enters him just like a stake through a vampire’s heart, or like that pencil through steel.  “Don’t you know I’m indestructible! I can go through anything!,” he protests as he bleeds out. But the 4D man—a failure in his career, a failure in love, old, washed up, drained and useless—isn’t really a man at all. He dreamt of penetrating, but ends up penetrated.

The Blob was a high-spirited movie about kids saving the day. The 4D Man is an anxious parable about aging and failure and sexual inadequacy. It’s perhaps fitting that the corny appeal of the first has remained eternally young, while the latter has vanished into obscurity, like the injured Scott at the movie’s close stepping into one last wall. Still, the 4D Man retains a certain creepy impact. It gets its hands into you.