Not to be confused with the forgettable Matthew Broderick/monkey team-up of the ’80s or the insipid teenagers’ apoca-party flick, this Project X is one of William Castle’s lesser-known pictures, likely because it’s neither gimmicky nor Rosemary’s Baby. It deserves not to be so obscure; far more eyes should feast upon this imaginative mix of The Matrix and Fantastic Voyage than just me and the Wachowski siblings (formerly known as the Wachowski brothers).

Set in 2118, the film posits the difficulty of retrieving a top-secret piece of info from the brain on a felled spy (Christopher George, Pieces) four days after he’s been frozen following a near-fatal plane crash. His last message to HQ warned that their country would be destroyed in 14 days, but failed to mention the weapon at play. To do this requires imprinting a new matrix (in other words, an entirely new identity and personality) as they probe his subconscious and pray his doesn’t notice or suffer brain damage.

They decide to make him part of a post-heist gang of bank robbers hiding out in a farmhouse in the 1960s. Their manipulation efforts include a dumb, beautiful blonde (Greta Baldwin), but the lost spy (Monte Markham, Guns of the Magnificent Seven) infiltrating the grounds isn’t part of their plan.

There’s a lot of Cold War paranoia going on here, but Castle does his best to dress it up as sci-fi entertainment, lest risk scaring audiences away. Despite a cast heavy with old fogies in jumpsuits and Brylcreem hairdos, he succeeds in crafting something resembling cutting-edge at his budgetary level. Production design is outstanding, even in its now-dated touches, and going further are the “special sequences by” producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera — yes, the animation giants, and this has to be the funkiest, hippest work of their careers. For Castle, Project X is his meatiest in subject matter; once his Tetris opening credits stop, the Big Ideas begin. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.