Fuest's Places: THE FINAL PROGRAMME (1973) aka THE LAST DAYS OF MAN ON EARTH

Sure, in its mad bid to be drolly satiric, and painfully hip, the result has not aged as well as one would hope: superfluous cameos like an ineffectually mugging Sterling Hayden as eccentric arms dealer Wrongway Lindbergh ("the Wrong way. is the right way," is his motto) reek of that late-60s 'older stars trying to fit into the counterculture via eccentric cameos' desperation.. There's also that bit where the ride up to Lapland in a balloon (which is I guess, kept handy for films that can't afford a Phantom F4, which Jerry supposedly pilots). But the whimsy and twee touches are kept at a distance. I do like the three wise men scientists (Basil Henson, George Coulouris, and Graham Crowden) who follow Ms, Brunner around; they more than make up for all the elements that seem to be missing. For example, Jerry's quest for napalm (he pronounces it "Nepal-m") and the rescue of his strung-out sister from his junky brother Frank's druggy clutches. We never really see the sister until much later so any inkling of what kind of strange incestuous reason he has for this is left unexplained. This is a film that blithely skips over vast and possibly interesting mythic arcs that may be in Moorcock's novel in favor of hit and miss (but at least it swings for the fences). Futuristic satire like a restaurant where wine and alcohol comes in dehydrated cubes (Jerry orders French toxic river sludge, demanding to know 'which bank' it was culled from.) or a pinball arcade where Jerry meets his stoned connection (Ronald "Why don't you tell me where the Ark is... right now?" Lacey) are well executed but may induce groans in those who by then have higher hopes for this strange, otherwise very hip movie. 

Perhaps the only film that comes close in its style is 1971's Hammer film Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.In that film too, a strident dominatrix-y intellectual badass female (Valerie Leon) runs roughshod over trios of stumbling old men scientists (George Coulouris and Aubrey Morris appear in both) while teaming up with a fey amoral aristocratic hipster (James Villers instead of Finch) to bring about some earth-shattering prophecy by ushering in a new kind of woman. Here, Runacre handles her carnivorous authority with cool throaty confidence and instantly establishes a deep in-the-moment sultry rapport with Finch's Jerry, one cool young super genius sexy cool titan to another. One can't help but wonder as to what a great Lady Macbeth she would have made opposite Finch in Polanski's 1971 film (instead of Francesca Annis, though she was fine enough). It's their scenes together--and her beating up Jerry's brother, the manipulative junky Frank (Derrick O'Connor)--that really crackle. 

Luckily most of the film involves the pair of them, with the three scientists making the perfect back-up band. Far from the usual stuffy bowler-and-brolly types we'd expect to be harumphing in the background or the dreaded reverse (that Richard Lester-ish style of conservative faux-hipness), these three-four older scientists manage the hitherto impossible - each being cool and individual while functioning as a cool ultra-dry comedy team. Aging scientists unconcerned with the surface flash, they're in pursuit of completing--with the straight facedness required to convey now-or-never urgency--a complicated experiment that's beyond mad/daft and that needs to be executed at a certain, looming time. 

Overall it's a film free of villains, unless you count Frank, who's taken over the family estate, setting all the futuristic alarms and traps --including psychedelic light attacks ("designed to cause pseudo-epilepsy:), elaborate inflatable tunnels (a mix of a carnival bouncy castle and Corman's Masque of the Red Death), poisoned gas, and poisoned needles shooting out of walls while the siblings shoot at each other in weird homemade futuristic air guns (just to be extra weird and save on blood expenses).

But all of that is fine with me because of the cocky actorly rapport with Runacre and Finch as these kind of super-cool amoral hedonist next-gen scientific wits in fabulous clothes and --in his case--a kind of foppish arrogant feminine elegance; hers, a Bowie-esque androgyne sexy-cool. With her tousled orange hair and natty slacks and his too-tight black velvet blazer and black nail polish, they're a superb-looking team, like they've spent a lot of time improv --they're destined to entwine! 

Hint: Fans of Hammer films (and their ilk) might recall Runacre as playing a great insane red-dress wearing schizophrenic Folies Bergère dancer in the same year's The Creeping Flesh.