Review for The Final Programme

"Throw down your needle and come out with your veins clear."

I've been wanting to see this film for an age but, until Network released this, it’s been a rare and pricey affair with copies going for north of £75 on Amazon.



Of course it won’t be to everybody’s tastes. Indeed, if the reviews and box-office receipts at the time of its original release are anything to go by, it wasn't to anybody’s taste. But time can be kind to groovy, experimental films of this type and viewed through our an all-knowing, post-modernist eye, I think there is much here to enjoy.


The Jerry Cornelius novels penned by Michael Moorcock in the late sixties are among my all time favourites. I’m not even a fan of the ‘fantasy genre’ nor most sci-fi but these surreal streams of hippy-infused consciousness seemed to me to be perfect bed-fellows to William Burroughs novels of the period, or maybe JG Ballard’s surreal masterpiece, ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’.


In other words, if you don’t understand that groove then you’re never going to get this. It doesn't work on any other level.
It should also be applauded as a very brave attempt, like Cronenberg’s misfiring ‘Naked Lunch’. Nice try but the book is and remains ultimately un-filmable. The same could be said about ‘The Final Programme’ though in common with Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch', much has been done to reflect the spirit of the original. (Though Moorcock is rumoured to have detested the film). 


‘The Final Programme’ (released as ‘The Last Days of Man on Earth’ in the USA in an effort to spice up interest) was made in 1973 and is described as a ‘comedy-thriller’ though dystopian black-comedy would be nearer to the mark.


Directed by Robert Fuest (perhaps best known for his colourful and imaginative Dr. Phibes features and who started as a set designer on groovy TV shows like ‘The Avengers’) he also penned the screenplay from Moorcock’s novel and designed the impressive sets. So his auteurship runs through this feature like a name in a stick of rock. For my money, it looks great – far better than it deserved to for such a low-budget film.


Right. So what is the film about? Well, describing its narrative won’t be easy, though it does have one in the way that, say, Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ has one. The journey is as important as its end point and my advice is just to sit back and absorb rather than try to make too much sense of it all. That way madness and frustration lies and probably accounts for its many negative reviews. So, like the final episode of the surreal sixties TV classic, ‘The Prisoner’, just enjoy it for what it is and don’t knock it for not being what it isn't. Or something like that.


The film opens at the bleak desert funeral of Jerry Cornelius's father, a Nobel-prize-winning scientist who has developed something termed the "Final Programme"—a design for a perfect, self-replicating human being. The funeral is set in what could easily be a post-apocalyptic future, though that is never fully revealed.

A group of scientists including Dr. Smiles and the sexy but dangerous Miss Brunner (who literally consumes her lovers) convince an ultra-cool, single-minded Jerry Cornelius to locate the microfilm which they believe hold the secrets of his father's Final Programme, which is believed to be hidden somewhere in the family home.


Plot twists abound with the so-called disappearance of his sister, Catherine, who it transpires is being held in drug-induced suspended animation by his junky brother, Frank who looms large in the plot when it transpires that he holds the micro-film.
So they set out to attack the house, a feat not unlike a video game (though these had not yet been invented) with barriers to entry at every turn including mazes, doors with spikes, gas chambers and more.


In an effort to shoot Frank with his needle gun, Jerry kills his own sister and is himself wounded. When he recuperates, in a surreal and slightly sinister futuristic hospital, he meets up with Miss Brunner and her young lover, Jenny who she ‘consumes’ during love-making.


They chase down Frank to a remote location and this time Jerry succeeds in killing him and capturing the microfilm. With this in hand they set out with the scientists to Lapland where they can enter a lab to put the Final Programme to the test. Miss Brunner and Jerry somehow combine into an hermaphrodite being and destroy all others before limping into the sunset.


And that’s it. If that all sounds a bit weird, well it is. Clearly designed to play out like a Freudian hippy dream, the film does exactly that – like The Monkees ‘Head’ without the songs. 

The transfer looks really special and the original full-frame un-cropped version is included here for the curious, though it was never intended to remain un-cropped so was probably shot with black tape set against the top and bottom of the view-piece. 


You also get a couple of trailers (US and Italian) though I’m ashamed to say I struggled to spot the difference between the two. There are also some PDF publicity materials on the disc which can be accessed via your PC.

If it sounds like your bag then it probably is. Watch the above clip before purchasing so you know what you’re in for.