I watched Soylent Green today, then I watched it with the commentary by Richard Fleischer and Leigh Taylor-Young. I saw the picture in the theater when it came out in 1973 and thought it was great. I thought a horribly over-crowded future, with pollution and starvation working hand in hand to keep the population down, was something that easily could happen. It seems even more possible today. Richard Fleischer is the director and Stanley R Greenberg adapted Harry Harrison's novel Make Room! Make Room!. I read that novel back in the 70s and seem to remember it was pretty different. Fleischer touches on the differences in his commentary.
Charlton Heston is a cop in the corrupt future with the rich segregated from the masses in fancy towers overlooking the day to day squalor of the poor. Edward Robinson is a "book" who works with Charlton. Books do research and share knowledge with other books. There's not much by way of computer based infrastructure going on in their world of 2022.
Joseph Cotton is a rich guy, a man is sent to Joseph's apartment to kill him, Charlton is sent to investigate. Leigh-Taylor Young is the young woman who comes with the apartment Joseph lived in, she's there for his pleasure, these women are called "furniture". As Charlton digs into the death he suspects it's not a simple robbery. Eventually someone high up puts the kibosh on the investigation and Chuck Conners is sent to kill Charlton. In his escape Charlton winds up in the Soylent Green factory where he find out that SG is people.
I hadn't seen the movie in a number of years, I didn't even have a copy, I saw a cheap used copy of the DVD recently and thought I should see it again. I enjoyed it and I also enjoyed the commentary with Fleischer and Taylor-Young. I'll hopefully watch this again someday.
I watched Alien Arrival next, it's a 2016 SF movie that's also called Arrowhead. It's from Australia and it's written and directed by Jessie O'Brien. It's pretty low budget but it's looks fairly good. Mostly it's a guy in the desert with some decent CGI. Dan Mor is the guy and he's sent to an alien planet to retrieve some data that might save his father from execution. The ship has some issues and all crew get out in escape pods. Dan takes a shuttle from the ship and lands on the alien planet to find the dead body of the ship's security officer and the unopened escape pod of a young woman played by Aleisha Rose. They find the alien planet has some weird stuff going on. Dan is killed by a bug creature and a crystal revives him, it even grows his missing foot back. It gets more interesting and eventually Dan and the lady get off planet in a ship. It's a bit better than average. I wouldn't need to get a copy, I saw this on AP, and I doubt I would watch it again.
Comments