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Ecological dystopia loosely based on Harry Harrison's novel, Make Room! Make Room! (1966) about overpopulation. Thorn (Charlton Heston) is a Manhattan detective sent on a case that is in danger of allowing him to discover the truth about the products of the Soylent company, and the source of the food supply. It is his elderly companion Sol Roth (a final role for Edward G. Robinson) who discovers the truth first, and opts to die, in horror. The film makers have the guts at least to go for a seventies-style ending, and it's not at all clear that Thorn's discovery will get out. There is no stomach for it, so to speak.
The truth, of course, is nonsense, but the same charge never really got levelled against Jonathan Swift when he proposed a variation. It strikes me that there is a leakage of energy from the equation - but in slightly different form will see the same pointless work in The Matrix and the woomtide Doctor Who special.
There are plenty of good world-building touches - an opening montage offers a technological history of the city from pioneer to contemporary times, the designated and rentable prostitute/lovers are referred to (in suitably sexist terms) as furniture and rioters are scooped up by JCB-like vehicles. Special effects seem to be kept to a minimum - mostly matte shots of the city, and a greenish fog to suggest pollution.
But what are we meant to make of the relationship between Thorn and Sol, who repeatedly say they love each other. Father and son? Lovers?
V: Colossus: The Forbin Project (Joseph Sargent, 1970)
Remarkably straight-faced precursor to cyberpunk, made by the future director of The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (1974). Dr Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) has built a computer that will bring peace to the world by monitoring intelligence, and being ready for attack and defence at all times. Shortly after being turned on, it finds a second computer, Guardian, designed by the Russian. At first both superpowers try to keep the computers apart, but the machine holds the world to ransom until the human conform. All the president (played by one Gordon Pinsent) can do is wring his hands, whilst Forbin tries to find a way into the impregnable device. Forbin has a distinct German accent, I suspect a nod to the German Nazi rocket scientists.
It's a adaptation I've always liked, and one which I'm glad has held up two or three decades after I first saw it. The scientists try all the techniques there are to block computers, to no avail. It is perhaps a shame that the one prominent female in the cast (Susan Clark) has to play a love interest, although the film rather backs into it, and almost pulls it off. I'm quite fond of the original book, but I've not read the sequels.
Ron Howard is filming a remake. Presumably there Colossus will be defeated by a three fingered reboot - or trying to deal with Vista.
Totals: 5 Cinema: 1; DVD: 4; Television: 0.
