The sixties must have been scary to movie producers as its fallout lasted into the seventies, when a number of freaky dystopian visions hit the silver screen. It seems that any negative societal trend could be extrapolated out to the year 2050, you’d get a green-lit movie. Or maybe it was just too much bad acid. Over the past weeks I’ve watched some of these seventies sci-fi films, and here some thoughts on the best of the breed.

Logan’s Run

In this trippy vision of the future, folks are euthanized at an early age to control overpopulation. A red gem embedded in your palm starts blinking when it’s your turn to die in a sacred ceremony. Realizing this is a completely stupid concept, Logan 5 and Jessica 6 escape from their bubble-world to learn they’re actually living in a post-apocalyptic nightmare complete with a cat-loving librarian in Washington.

Does that sound bizarre and slightly confusing? So is Logan’s Run, right about the time a giant toaster called Box appears to demonstrate the awesome limitations of seventies-era special effects.

IMDB: Logan’s Run

Soylent Green

Charlton Heston plays a corrupt cop in a future, sweltering Manhattan crippled by food shortages due to overpopulation. Heston gets to see how the elite live in their fancy apartments (where they bathe in real running water, drink actual hard liquor, and employ live-in hookers! Yeah!) when he stumbles upon a terrible secret: soylent green is peeeeeeeeeeeple!

I hope I didn’t ruin the ending for you, but you had about thirty years to find this out for yourself.

IMDB: Soylent Green

The Omega Man

Charlton Heston again, in another post apocalyptic future as an shotgun-armed vigilante roaming abandoned city streets by day, battling fireball-catapulting mutant zombies at night. There are some truly inspired scenes involving watching Woodstock, someone pretending to be a mannequin, and a tortuous torture sequence in an abandoned sports stadium.

Things eventually wrap up with Heston, a syringe, and a fountain filled with bloody water.

IMDB: The Omega Man

A Boy and His Dog

A young Don Johnson and a psychic, talking dog wander a nuked Earth (looking suspiciously like Arizona). Johnson meets a girl, he shows her his don johnson, and as a reward she lures him into a bomb shelter where a secret society of survivors living like Harper Valley PTA try to get his sperm with a milking machine. Things eventually wrap up with a… rather choice ending.

No, I’m not kidding. And you thought the psychic dog was a stretch.

IMDB: A Boy and His Dog

The Planet of the Apes Series

There were five Planet of the Apes movies, each progressively more silly and campy than the previous, but don’t blame the film-makers, as the budget for each sequel was less than the predecessor. Unfortunately, the movies’ plots go in the opposite direction, each one trying to be more epic and exciting than the first. Not a recipe for epic film-making, that’s for sure.

In the first movie, The Planet of the Apes, it’s pretty much a one man show as Charlton Heston and two other astronauts land on a planet ruled by apes. Heston shoots off a few great one-liners until he realizes he’s actually in an episode of the Twilight Zone. He then pounds sand.

In the sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, an astronaut sent to save Heston lands on the ape planet, and discover an underground race of formerly-human mutants that worship a giant nuclear warhead. The apes declare war on the mutants, and in the ensuing confusion, Heston detonates the nuke, blowing the planet to smithereens. It’s said Heston came up with this apocalyptic ending so he wouldn’t have to be in any more ridiculous ape movies.

But no, in Hollywood there’s always room for a sequel, and if it’s sci fi there’s always the possibility of time travel. So in Return to the Planet of the Apes, three chimps get in a spaceship and go back in time to a planet ruled by humans, which is basically Earth in 1974. The role reversal is slightly satirical as in typical American fashion, the monkeys are first celebrated celebrities but eventually, xenophobic fears of ape conquest marks then as a danger to banana cream pie and the American way of life. Eventually the primary primates die but Ricardo Montablan shows up as a circus owner who smuggles the baby ape Caesar away.

The fourth film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes takes place in the future where Earth is ruled by a totalitarian police state. All the cats and dogs died from a plague, and therefore apes were domesticated as pets (why not ferrets instead; I don’t know). The apes are treated in a manner reminiscent of slavery, so the now-grown ape Caesar decides to start a race war. The result is a huge bloody riot with guns going off, fires burning, and all hell breaking loose. Gee, weren’t the 70’s fun!

The fifth film Battle for the Planet of the Apes takes place in the post-apocalyptic future where humans and apes live together in a tense state of distrust. Meanwhile, a huge underground society of humans live beneath a nuked city. When they find out about the apes above ground, they declare war. By this point we’re hoping Charlton Heston would come back for a cameo so he can set off another nuke.

But it didn’t end there, as a Planet of the Apes television series sprung to life, only to be just as quickly squashed. I’m surprised someone didn’t recast some apes as a music group. I would love to hear Roddy Macdowal and Charlton Heston singing Time to Change.

IMDB: Planet of the Apes

IMDB: Beneath the Planet of the Apes

IMDB: Escape from the Planet of the Apes

IMDB: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

IMDB: Battle for the Planet of the Apes

THX 1138

This George Lucas pre-Star Wars movie is incredible in terms of ambiance and mood. It contains a depressing vision of a future where everyone lives in an underground city as a drugged out drone working in what seems to be a gigantic nuclear power plant. People live with assigned roommates, take pills, and watch big screen TV. Eventually Mr. THX 1138 realizes this society sucks and he makes a run for in in a giant white room.

The most interesting part in this flm is the aforementioned white prison and the tunnel-vision car chase, ending in some unforgettable imagery.

IMDB: THX 1138

Dark Star

Equal parts 2001, Monty Python, and a beach ball. This is where George Lucas got the visual idea for hyperspace. An insane ode to the isolation of four astronauts in deep space.

Two people involved in this film went on to further sci-fi fame: John Carpenter the director did Starman and The Thing. Dan O’Bannon wrote Aliens. It must all be due to the inspiring situation of a bouncing beach ball as a dangerous alien presence. The ending is supposedly inspired by a story by Ray Bradbury: Kaleidoscope.”

IMDB: Dark Star

Zardoz

Sean Connery plays a barbarian of the future where a giant stone head flies over the landscape dropping guns on the savage population so they can kill themselves. What? Well, the stone head is controlled by a society of elites who live in a bubble world do this in order to keep the savages from invading their hermetically-sealed future world, populated by Charlotte Rampling.

You can almost see Connery wondering how things could go downhill from You Only Live Twice.

IMDB: Zardoz

The Andromeda Strain

A very heady scifi film, with a large part of its action cerebral. A satellite returns to Earth contaminated with a deadly, alien virus, Scientists take the dangerous satellite into a huge underground research bunker to develop an antidote before the viral strain spreads worldwide and kills everyone. Because of the scientist’s top-heavy brains, the only action sequence comes at the end, involving a stressful escape from the research compound.

But first pubic hair is burned off with an ultraviolet light. No, I’m not kidding.

The director Robert Wise went on to helm the first Star Trek film.

IMDB: The Andromeda Strain

Battlestar Galactica

I found the original film fascinating as many plot elements found in the current incarnation are right there in the seventies version. In retrospect, it was largely the execution was messed up. One can only handle so much of the same space battle footage repeated over and over Hanna Barbera style. But we do have Cylons destroying New Caprica, a confused fleet of survivors, an asinine, cigar chomping Starbuck, the Quorom of 12, and the pseudo-religious Greek mythology hokey tolerated in the quest for Earth. The same question remains: is this fleet of humans ourselves in the far future, or are they Earth’s ancestors? Unfortunately, this path led to the tragic Battlestar Galactica: Earth.

Most notably absent from the current incarnation are updated versions of Boxy and Muffit, and Jane Seymour.

IMDB: Battlestar Galactica

Westworld

Imagine a future where technology is advanced enough to create lifelike, humanoid robots. What do we do with this technology? Open a theme park, of course! Westworld is a simulated wild west town where rich tourists play cowboy, blowing away expensive hardware with guns. Somewhere along the line it’s revealed the park is still in public beta, as the robots start killing people. I hope there are lawyers in Westworld.

Note: Star Trek’s Majel Barret makes a brief appearance as a robotic hooker. No, I’m not kidding.

IMDB: Westworld

Silent Running

Bruce Dern plays a space hippie who is told to destroy his space greenhouse carrying what’s left of the Earth’s forests. He hates this idea, kills his crew, and flies off to Saturn. His only companions are robots and his wacky ideals. Hard to say if this film is pro-environment or not.

The special effects were done by Douglas Trumbull who also worked on 2001, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner. One scene of an escape pod looks exactly like the droids’ pod in Star Wars.

Note: If you make a science fiction film, I recommend not populating the bridge of your spaceship with current computers of the day. In twenty years they will inevitably look dated.

IMDB: Silent Running

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