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Long before Malatesta, Dr. Sheridan Speeth was renowned in
scientific circles for his strange work in psychoacoustics. In 1961 Speeth was credited with discovering that humans could distinguish
between underground earthquakes and nuclear explosions by listening to audible
seismographic data. A classically trained violinist, Speeth believed musicians
would be the most successful at this task. He hired teams of trained cellists,
who boosted the reliability from 60 to better than 90 percent. Thanks to this
and other classified work, on-sight inspection became less of an issue in international
disarmament treaties and many trained cellists had steady jobs with the government.
Dr. Speeth enjoyed devising weapons that would do no permanent damage to their targets. Among his many inventions were a gun that would melt in the hand of the person who pulled the trigger, a device that would emit soundwaves capable of relaxing the sphincter muscles of enemy armed forces as they approached, and a device that would temporarily blur the vision of an opponent.
Working as a consultant with Dan Kron, the principal sound effects mixer and producer on Malatesta, Dr. Speeth noticed that inducing a ‘fear track’ on an optical track required the innovation of subharmonic virtual frequencies since the actual optical track had severe limitations in its lower range. He also produced the famous ‘barber pole sound’ with Mr. Kron for the scene in which Sticker is clubbed by Vena.
More About Sheridan Speeth - Malatesta's Carnival Consultant for Psychoacoustics
Sheridan Speeth (1937-1995) held a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Columbia, a master's from Harvard (where he was a graduate assistant to behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner) and a bachelor's degree from Oberlin. During the years leading up to this film he worked as a research scientist at Bell Laboratories and Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories and as a founder and director of R&D at Autotelic Industries. Speeth's later inventions included educational toys and devices for the severely disabled.
| Malatesta's Carnival of Blood Official Website. Copyright © Christopher Eric Speeth, 2003-2006. All rights reserved. Site Credits. |
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