Chained to an Enzyme

Pineapples are flourishing on the chilly mountain peaks of Tibet. Lush acreage has appeared in the desert of Mongolia. Red China has produced a miraculous substance that can enrich its soil and abolish hunger. To devise a way to steal the Chinese secret, Rus sian, American and British intelligence authorities confer. Their solution: send in Gregory Peck.

In his two previous films this year (The Stalking Moon and MacKenna's Gold), Peck was saddled with period western costume. In The Chairman he is restored to mufti as John Hathaway, Nobel-prizewinning chemist, professor and all-round chump. Hathaway allows the combined intelligence forces to se crete an aspirin-sized transmitter in his head. He is blissfully unaware that the capsule also contains an explosive that can be triggered back at headquarters.

Transported to China, Hathaway watch es rice farmers Maothing revolutionary rubrics, has an interview with the chair man -- a benign, ping-pong playing chap -- and cons his way to the secret for mula. All the while, beeping and honk ing, he is being tracked like a satellite, his pulse rate and adrenal flow monitored back in England by a one-eyed, three-star general (Arthur Hill).

When the beeps broadcast trouble, the general decides to fire his ultimate weapon -- Hathaway. Will Hathaway blow his mind, or will he reach the Rus sian border before the Red Guard clos es in? The grim countdown begins: 30, 29, 28 ...

Given the framework of international intrigue, Director J. Lee Thompson could have provided a brisk Bondist thriller. Instead, he has followed the B-line of movies of the '40s: a lone Amur-rican good guy against the Yellow Peril. For Imperial Japan, read People's Republic of China; for Alan Ladd, read Gregory Peck. The Chairman is a basket of bromides--except for one original line that ought to be anthologized. The chemist who developed the soil enricher murmurs to Hathaway: "We are none of us free. We are all chained to an enzyme." During the filming of The Chairman in Hong Kong, Communist Chinese newspapers warned the cast of "various serious consequences'"--the film, obviously--and angry mobs burned Peck in effigy. They got the wrong man.

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