Seconds

In Seconds, this grim creeper available on video for the first time, a sinister high-tech company called The Company gives a middle-aged banker (John Randolph) a second chance at life. Thanks to plastic surgery, the sad-eyed shlub turns into a handsome stud (an unusually dour Hudson). Director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) and cinematographer James Wong Howe throw in a hodgepodge of '60s visual tricks (such as freaky fish-eye-lens distortions) to create an unrelenting sense of doomy paranoia. But the technical dazzle can't make up for the boring, unsympathetic characters. With no one to root for, this arty, humorless film ends up pretentiously empty. C