I was watching VH1's Metal ...
Question: I was watching VH1's Metal Mania and they showed Metallica's video "One (Short Version)," which includes short clips from what looked like a 1950s movie about a boy who grows up to become a science experiment for the military. He remembers enough Morse code to ask for help when he can't communicate. It looks like a really interesting movie, and I'd love to see it.
Answer: The movie from which Metallica took the clips that appear in the bleak "One" is Johnny Got His Gun (1971), directed by Dalton Trumbo and based on his own 1939 antiwar novel of the same title. It revolves around a young American soldier (Timothy Bottoms) who, on the last day of World War I, loses all his limbs and is left blind, deaf and speechless by a bomb. He's kept alive in a military hospital where doctors assume he's in a chronic vegetative state, but his mind is actually crystal clear, and he finally manages to communicate by tapping out messages in Morse code with his head.