science

The Big Cube

The Big Cube is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Big Cube rather than just read about it. In short: The Big Cube is a 1969 psychological thriller film directed by Tito Davison and starring Lana Turner, Karin Mossberg, George Chakiris, Daniel O'Herlihy, and Richard Egan. The film is an international co-production between Mexico and the United States.

Key takeaways

The Big Cube belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Big Cube to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Big Cube from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Big Cube is a 1969 psychological thriller film directed by Tito Davison and starring Lana Turner, Karin Mossberg, George Chakiris, Daniel O'Herlihy, and Richard Egan. The film is an international co-production between Mexico and the United States. Its plot follows an aging former actress who is dosed with LSD by her malicious stepdaughter, seeking to drive her mad and obtain her fortune. It is notable for its aggressive portrayal of LSD use and the 1960s youth counterculture as vicious evils.

Plot Adriana Roman, a successful stage actress, retires to marry Charles Winthrop, a wealthy tycoon. Winthrop's daughter, Lisa, is instantly distrustful of Adriana solely because she is "the other woman" taking her father's affection. Charles is killed in a boating accident, which also leads to Adriana suffering from a concussion. Lisa's new boyfriend Johnny Allen, a womanizing, fortune-hunting medical student, capitalizes on that distrust to persuade Lisa that her father's death was murder, a charge exacerbated by Adriana's threat—as per her late husband's instructions as laid out in his will, for which Adriana is executor—to disinherit Lisa if she marries Johnny. Johnny conspires with Lisa to lace Adriana's prescribed sedatives with enough LSD to drive her insane. During one of the episodes, Adriana hallucinates that Johnny and Lisa are attempting to throw her over a cliffside after taking her on a drive into the country. Later, while Adriana has further LSD-induced hallucinations at home, Johnny plays pre-recorded subliminal messages to further drive her crazy, one of which instructs Adriana to leap from a window—Lisa is unaware of this scheme. As Adriana is about to jump to her probable death, Lisa saves her. While still unaware of Johnny's true intent, Lisa continues with their plan and Adriana is committed to a mental hospital, where they have Adriana declared legally insane and thus unable to carry out her obligations in Charles' will. After their wedding, Johnny demonstrates that he doesn't really love Lisa by openly seducing other women, most notably Lisa's free-spirited best friend, Bibi. Johnny bribes Lisa to divorce him by providing a $100,000 settlement in return for keeping silent about what they did to Adriana. Lisa does divorce him, but instead of succumbing to Johnny's threats, she decides to come clean to Frederick Lansdale, a playwright friend of Adriana's who has always loved her himself, about what she and Johnny did. By this time, Adriana is suffering from amnesia, still believing that Charles is alive. Frederick decides to write a play detailing Adriana's traumatic experiences and casts her in the lead role. He hopes that replaying her experience on stage will cure her. By the opening performance, Adriana has glimpses from her memory of what has happened, not fully realizing what those fleeting thoughts are. By the climactic third act of the play, which details the tape-recorded subliminal messages Lisa and Johnny played during Adriana's hallucinations, Frederick decides to play the actual recordings with Lisa and Johnny's voices. This brings Adriana back to reality. She recognizes the voices and the fact that Lisa and Johnny use her real name as opposed to her character's name in the play. Lisa rushes onto the stage, admitting to Adriana what she and Johnny did. In a rage, Adriana slaps Lisa in the face. The play and Adriana's performance are a huge hit, Adriana and Frederick are about to be married, and Lisa has reconciled with Adriana. Meanwhile, Johnny has begun taking his own LSD while being shunned by his so-called friends. He is last seen on the floor in the midst of an LSD trip.

Cast

Production

Development The film was based on a story by Tito Davison and Edmundo Báez, the former of whom served as director. In January 1968, Motion Pictures International (MPI) negotiated a co-production agreement with the Mexico-based Producciones Anco to produce the film, based on a screenplay written by William Douglas Lansford.

Filming The film was shot on location in Mexico, primarily at the Studios Churbusco in Mexico City as well as on the coastal Acapulco Bay with a budget of US$560,000. The shooting schedule was scheduled to last approximately eight weeks, with principal photography beginning on May 3, 1968. The decision to shoot the film abroad was to dually help bolster Mexico's film market, as well as help lower production costs, which were estimated to be $300,000 more if filmed in the United States. It was George Chakiris' last lead in a feature film.

Release The Big Cube opened at the Acapulco Film Festival in November 1968 before being released theatrically in the United States on April 30, 1969, opening regionally in Cincinnati, Ohio. It continued to open in several U.S. cities throughout May 1969, including Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; and Boston, Massachusetts. The film opened in Los Angeles on May 21, 1969, though New York City engagements did not begin until January 1970.

Home media The Big Cube was released on DVD in 2007 as part of Volume 2 of Warner Brothers' Cult Camp Classic's "Women in Peril" series, a three-part series that included John Cromwell's Caged (1950) and the film that gave Joan Crawford her last starring role, Freddie Francis' Trog (1970).

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Big Cube

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Big Cube claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Big Cube before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Big Cube ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Big Cube

In research: The Big Cube appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Big Cube in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Big Cube is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1960s exploitation films, 1969 American films, 1969 English-language films, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Big Cube outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Big Cube in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Big Cube means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Big Cube out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Big Cube in simple terms?

Why does The Big Cube matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Big Cube?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Big Cube.