The bad news is that there will be no Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner this evening. The good news is that the show has been postponed to Sunday night. And since our topic this week is “The Final Programme” (1973), that is very good news indeed, as it will give you another 48 hours to come to terms with the movie! Also, to collect your ruffled shirts from the dry cleaners.
One groovy adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s novel about secret agent and playboy physicist Jerry Cornelius – a whisky-soaked, biscuit-devouring, counter-culture dandy and “Eternal Champion” – the film transports us from his family’s elaborately booby-trapped estate outside post-apocalyptic London to the white nights of Lapland above the Arctic Circle, where scientists are poised to launch the next step in human evolution. One wonders what Ken Russell might have made of this movie, which is like a cross between “Lisztomania” and “Altered States.”
The cast includes Jon Finch (Polanski’s “Macbeth,” Hitchcock’s “Frenzy”), Jenny Runacre (Antonioni’s “The Passenger”), Hugh Griffith (“Ben-Hur,” “Tom Jones”), Patrick Magee (“A Clockwork Orange”), Sterling Hayden (“The Asphalt Jungle,” “Dr. Strangelove”), Ronald Lacey (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”), and Sarah Douglas (“Superman II”).
Writer-director Robert Fuest lent “The Avengers” its surreal vibe and steered Vincent Price as Dr. Phibes. One of the producers was none other than David Puttnam, who went on to produce “Midnight Express,” “Chariots of Fire,” “The Killing Fields,” and “The Mission.”
“The Final Programme” may never live up to the sum of its parts (or its psychedelic trailer, alas), but it is a fascinating curio and very much a product of its time.
LSD and flotation tanks will be provided in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, THIS SUNDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EST!