THE FINAL PROGRAMME (1973: Dir. Robert Fuest)
There was no better match of talents than director Robert Fuest and novelist Michael Moorcock. Based on the first book in Moorcock's surrealistic Jerry Cornelius series, The Final Programme is the quintessential film by Fuest, a mercurial talent who began as a set designer and later found fame directing episodes of the pop-art British TV series The Avengers. Having had a recent success with The Abominable Dr. Phibes, followed by the relative disappointment of its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Fuest thwarted career complacency by writing, directing, and designing this oddball sci-fi satire, featuring another fashionably-clad insouciant hero. Star Jon Finch (Polanski's Macbeth) is the very personification of chocolate biscuit-eating anarchist Jerry Cornelius, exuding a Byronesque style with his frilly collars, black nail polish and polymorphous sexuality. Miss Brunner, played with tongue-in-cheek venom by the rangy Jenny Runacre (The Passenger), is his perfect hedonistic nemesis, and its their epic conflict that results in one of cinema's most genetically bizarre and ribald apocalypses. Sadly the film garnered only cult status, and the world was deprived of the further adventures of its singular and charismatic protagonist. DVD REGION 1 & 2
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