Golden Age Hooptober challenge movie #11 and I thought I was safe with watching this B-movie because it was on TCM Channel.

"No living thing was harmed in the making of this motion picture."

And yet I’m adding this to my They Killed the Dog list. I don’t recall a dead dog but there is so many other dead animals in this it’s sad. Really sad and horrid.

This wasn’t even played during the TCM Underground Friday night specials. It should’ve been because this was just such a bad movie. It wasn’t campy. It wasn’t even a good apocalypse movie. Even with the fact that this movie has a jumbled up time-line it’s still an unbelievable sci-fi of the apocalypse.

So the book that this is based on, The Death of Grass by John Christopher, sounds like a good story. I’m sure in this case the book is definitely better than the movie. The book has the apocalypse happen due to a wide spread virus. One that all started in Asia and there is no counter-verse. Ok I’ll buy into that post-apocalypse story. But then the movie takes that and says it all started because of man-made chemicals and pollution. And starvation. And over-population. Oh and more pollution. And if you don’t believe this they add bits of real life evidence to all this. Over. And. Over. Ok. Sure. We are the cause of our own apocalypse. Except I kept feeling like I was watching an Al Gore documentary instead of a science fiction movie.

So finally after all that we get the story of the family with the WORLD’S WORST FATHER! Really this guy is an ass. His brother is telling him the whole “the end is nigh” and come to my farm if you want to live. Does that dad do this right away? No. He’s an “architect” and needs to finish building some whatever because he’s an “architect” and it needs to be finished… even though the end is nigh. And so once again the reminder of pollution and over population.

In all I don’t know how long it took for the great disaster arrived that finally caused the dad to realize that they have to get out of London before the government bombs them to take care of the problem of over-population and the virus. Possibly this family is the last to finally leave Dodge because that’s when the riots start. And we’re told through the radios that there’s been some people starving so much that they’ve turned to cannibalism. Would’ve been cool to see that but instead we see more riots and then later on a really horrible rape scene.

Yup. This movie is just horrible. And it also has so much macho masculinity that I think it was worse than watching Charlton Heston during his Republican years. As for the characters and the acting, it was really horrible.

On a positive note: all the politicians went to Canada so I guess in the end the Canadians don’t loose their morals and their sanity like every one else. So when the end is nigh go to Canada.


Golden Age Hooptober challenge:
6 countries: (6/6) (this movie set in England)
8 decades: (5/8) (this movie 1970s)
2 folk horror: (1/2) (this movie - cannibalism & viruses)
4 films from 1981: (0/4)
2 fillms from 1976 (birth year): (0/2)
2 haunted house films: (1/2)
Worst Part 2 movie: (0/1)
Film set in the woods: (1/1)
A Kaiju or Kong movie: (0/1)
2 Hammer Horror: (0/2)
3 films with a person of color: (1/3)
3 Asian Horror: (0/3)
A Tobe Hooper film: (0/1)