Adapted from Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius quartet The Final Programme, A Cure For Cancer, The English Assassin and The Condition of Muzak, Michael Fuest's The Final Programme (1973) is possibly the last gasp of Swinging London. Fuest is more a stylist than a director (his filmography is pretty wretched), and the movie is a team effort with input from the cast.
Moorcock hated the result, which is why you don't see his eminently filmable novels exploited for the silver screen (and possibly why it's not on the Chewb). But we don't have to compare it to the book or measure it by his intent, we can just slouch on the couch like the slobs we are and let it massage our cerebral cortex for eighty minutes. As one IMDB reviewer sez, it's funny, stylish, and erotic. A relentless visual and aural assault on the viewers senses, sez another. It's no lost masterpiece, but it deserves a home on th' Isle O' Foam©.
Beaver & Krause, frequent visitors to these balmy shores, provide the soundtrack (suitably futuristic Moog bleeps and swooshes), to which Gerry Mulligan and Eric Clapton contribute.
You need this in your life. To ask why is to indulge in pointless sophistry.
Loaddown includes both movie and book(s), if you're the bookish type.
This is a weighty loaddown, so go and clean that clogged U-bend while you wait:
ReplyDeletehttps://ufile.io/ewec0ak3
Many thanks! I've seen this, but not for many, many years. Moorcock is a real rabbit hole to explore and links in well with some of the people featured antecedent on this sainted isle.
ReplyDeleteAntecedently - goddamit!
DeleteThanks! (I was going to holler "Sold!" but that might have seemed ungrateful.)
ReplyDeleteFuest things first: His filmography is not "pretty wretched", thank you please. He directed not only the Dr. Phibes films (AKA the zenith of camp cinematic achievement) but also half a dozen or so episodes of The Avengers (AKA the real one not that Marvel nonsense) during its imperial phase (AKA when Diana Rigg was catsuited up on a weekly basis in it). Put it this way, when it comes to postwar British cult movies, gimme a Fuestfest over any tedious Powell & Presstrouser effort any day (sorry, Marty).
ReplyDeleteUdderandat, Farq, you're quite right: The Final Programme is one of those flawed-but-fab-fun "experimental" films that make no sense whatsoever (hi, The Magic Christian!) yet you can't help being intrigued by (see you around, The Magic Christian!) In other words, it was as faithful to the books as it could ever have hoped to be.
Arch, Fuest is a stylist, more an art director than a director, and a good one. You prefer the Dr. Phibes movies - all two of 'em! - to A Matter Of Life And Death, A Canterbury Tale, and Peeping Tom? That is absolutely your right, of course, but forgive my snort of contempt.
DeleteI'm intrigued, d/l started, time to clean the bathroom.
ReplyDeleteWhen LSD was informing (and I use the term advisedly) the best creative arts. Oh for those times again!
ReplyDeleteI was obsessed with this film after first getting hold of a VHS copy in 2002. The remote possibility of looking like Jon Finch in this is the only reason I'd want my hair back. Shame there's no real OST.
ReplyDeleteArchie grouped it above with 'The Magic Christian', which was the subject of an obsession 2 years prior. Someone must have put something in the water back then.
There were a handful of films that had become staples of the midnight double bill on the arthouse/college circuit by the mid-'70s. They constituted a quasi-genre in their own right, but with only three features in common: (i) they had next to no structured plot, (ii) their budget would be best characterised as discreet, and (iii) the more lysergically or cannabinolically enhanced one's preparation for viewing them was, the more enjoyable and Deeply Meaningful the films would then seem. I lapped them up with lashings of relish. The supreme example of the quasi-genre, of course, was Performance.
ReplyDelete^^^This!^^^
DeleteA few of my favorites from the midnight movie era of are:
El Topo
Pre-Hollywood John Waters films
The Harder They Come
Reefer Madness
Freaks
Eraserhead
Most of these movies have paranoia and existential angst in common. I can't offhand think of an "acid" movie that's positive and uplifting, in an evangelistic way. Which is odd - for me and many others (I'm guessing you, Babs) the psychedelic experience, once you learned to ride the wave, was wholly positive. Where were Disney and Fred McMurray when we needed them? Cary Grant may be an unlikely psychonaut, but he made Operation Petticoat with a lot of help from Sandoz, the pink submarine prefiguring the yellow.
DeleteI've d/l'd the film, but decided to read the book first, it's been on my shelf unread for about 25 years, with a whole stack of other sc-fi.
ReplyDeleteThanks Farq, I finished the book this week and have just watched the film. Nice to see some familiar actors, Mr Smiles (Graham Crowden) was in Britannia Hospital I believe, another cult film I haven't seen in ages. Anyway I enjoyed the film, though it's missing the months long party from the book, which I was looking forward to.
ReplyDeleteSo now I going to pick another old Moorcock book form my shelf. Toodlepip old fruit!
You're welcome, Bambers! Stay groovy!
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