While watching 1973’s The Final Programme, I found myself desperate to know if this was a completely ad-libbed movie. Despite having some attractive, and expensive-looking sets, this is a movie where characters go from one location to another but often without any reason I could discern. They exchange dialog, but without any real communication seeming to have occurred, what with the lines reading like they were created using a magnetic poetry kit containing only words from 70’s sci-fi and spy films—and not the good ones.
Turns out what this is supposed to be about is the creation of an eternal, self-replicating hermaphrodite that has all the knowledge of the greatest minds in the world. Not sure why anybody would want to do that, but I wasn’t too surprised by some Nazi imagery near the end of the picture. That seems to be in the general wheelhouse of such weird aspirations. The result is a creature that can go fuck itself. No, really, having functioning sets of both kinds of genitalia, it can literally do that. As the end credits rolled, I was inclined to tell the filmmakers to do the same, regardless of their biology.
This film was a disappointment to me, as I have an interest in high-concept science fiction. That this was directed by Robert Fuest had me very curious. After all, this is the guy who directed one of my favorite films, The Abominable Dr. Phibes. But we weren’t even through the opening credits when red flags started going up, when I saw this was written, directed and designed by the man. That last credit is a warning for the pretentiousness that is about to be unloaded on the viewer.
It is set in what I assume is supposed to be near-future, where the world is on the verge of the apocalypse. That, or it already happened—I wasn’t certain which. Our protagonist is a very droll Jon Finch, wearing nail polish and the kind of frilly shirt only Prince could pull off. I’m not sure why he is entangled with Jenny Runacre, but she’s some sort of Emma Peel type agent, but notable in that she is bisexual and a cannibal. I don’t understand why she’s the latter, and I actually had to read a review to know that’s what she is. The film is that frustratingly vague about almost everything.
I’ve already told you where the film is headed. I can’t even say that was a spoiler, because such info is even in the one-sentence summary on IMDB. But before we get to a deeply ludicrous ending, there’s all sorts of business with a microfilm, deadly sibling rivalries, drugs, etc. Even in the context of the film, every element of the plot just feels like something the movie chooses to briefly muse upon before wandering onto the next element, like the unfocused mind of somebody on serious drugs.
As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I found myself seriously wondering if everything had been improvised. I was shocked to learn this was based on a novel by Michael Moorcock, and a fairly well-regarded one at that. The film supposedly hews rather closely to the source material, except for the ending. I can’t imagine what would convince me to read the book, but I’ll concede to being just a bit curious as to how the climax differs.
I also touched upon the sets, and some of them are impressive. And yet, they never seemed to serve any purpose. I didn’t even find them amusing, and this is a film that has a nightclub resembling the insides of a pinball machine, complete with huge plastic “pinballs” that girls are walking around inside of, like John Travolta in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.
As a write about such absurdities, it sounds like this should be hilarious, but it isn’t. The only time I did chuckle was when we see a sign on the master computer at the end reading, “THE MOST POWERFUL COMPUTER IN THE WORLD. DO NOT TOUCH.” I’m not even sure why I found that mildly amusing. Maybe it was just out of desperation to react to anything. I know I rolled my eyes at another moment where Finch surveys a brain floating in a tank of water and surmises: “It must be a brain-washing machine.”
I like strange, new ideas and I like a fair amount of offbeat, heady sci-fi from the 70’s. But The Final Programme somehow has a wealth of weird while ending up being tiring and boring. Too much here feels like the kind of stray ideas that usually don’t make it past a work’s first draft. And there’s a reason why finished books and films don’t have bits like a restaurant that serves industrial waste from Beaujolais—it isn’t that funny or clever even a minute or two after thinking it up. This is all loose ideas that never form a gestalt, and ends up feeling like J.G. Ballard without the high-minded concepts.
Dir: Robert Fuest
Starring Jon Finch, Jenny Runacre
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray