So this week over at Star Trek Re-watch we reviewed the third season episode, The Mark Of Gideon and that put me in the mood for an overpopulation story done correctly. The best overpopulation film is the 1973 classic Soylent Green. Even if you disagree withe presumptions and politics of this film it is still one of the best Sf films out of Hollywood.
As I stated when I made Rollerball my Sunday Night Movie a while back, the 1970’s were a time for thoughtful and intelligent SF movies. Soylent Green is special beyond that because it is part of the Charlton Heston trifecta of SF movies, Planet Of The Apes, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man. These were A-list films not cheap sci-fi tossed off for the teenager drive-in market.
Soylent Green is set in the year 2022 (hey, only 11 years away!) in a New York City with a population of 40 million and 50% unemployment. It is very loosely based upon the 1966 novel by noted SF author Harry Harrison ‘Make Room, Make Room.’
Heston plays Detective Thorn, an overworked and pettily corrupt police office. When a rich and power man is murdered during a thuggish robbery, Thorn draws the case to add to the other three murderers he is chasing down. The world in 2022 is vastly overpopulated with resources nearly exhausted. To discover any information Detective Thorn relies in his ‘book,’ Salomon Roth (Edward G. Robinson.) A live-in friend who has ‘a hand full of twenty year old reference materials.’ When the facts of the murder start to point to assassination and conspiracy Thorn knows he can’t sweep this case under the rug or it might mean his job. Without his job he’d be sleeping on the street, scrounging for survival. Amid political pressure and dwinliing time Thorn has to uncover a secret so terrible not only are some wiling to murder for it, but it makes the victim welcomes his assassin.
