Z.P.G. (1972)

Powerful

good back-story, and good acting

Excellent but underrated film

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This film was exhibit in the Sitges Fantastic Festival 1972. Geraldine Chaplin was awarded as Best Actress for her play. The commentaries published in SF magazines of their time were enthusiastic. Unfortunately, the film was almost non-exhibit in Barcelona (one week in one theater of double program, and in 1974 in Madrid in the same conditions). Now, there is a DVD edition in Spain, but only in dubbed, not with original voices. This is a film very representative of its time, early '70. The same year when this movie was presented, another SF films ere "Solaris", "A Clockword orange" and "Silent Running": another kind of fantastic or SF films, very different of the SF and fantastic films of today (or even 10 years later...). It is curious to note that some guides and encyclopedias of fantastic films are not favorable to this film, and eve one of them indicates that the movie ends without no sense. At least, the DVD edition shows clearly that the couple arrives to an inland that is a radioactive cemetery, a bitter end for their history. Could be that some versions of the film omitted this end? Certainly, it is not a enjoying movie: it is very sad, very dark. The best scene is, perhaps, when Carole (Geraldine Chaplin) is going to have a baby in the cellar: a very good scene. Z.P.G. is a rarity of its time. It is also another conception of SF movies, now forgotten and missing.

In the not too distant future, overpopulation with its resultant pollution has made most of the earth unfit for habitation. A portion of humanity has retreated into a hermetically sealed city. By edict couples are prohibited from having children. Exempt are those born Before Edict and the initials B.E. are invisibly engraved on those children's foreheads visible only under a special light wielded by law enforcers.Deprivation of maternity has driven many women to psychosis. There is a scene where women scream at another woman with a young child "Baby! Baby!" and the authorities move in. It turns out that the child has a B.E on his forehead.Despite the danger, the characters played by Reed and Geraldine Chaplin decide to have a baby anyway. Gripping was the scene when Reed was researching via a virtual library on how to perform a baby delivery. He was of course being monitored by a "Big Sister" computer of the authorities. How he got to the sections about maternity and delivery is interesting. He first surfed through sections about some obscure aspect of monastic art,Premonstratensian art. From there he managed to navigate to pregnancy and delivery. The computer, however, sensed that he drifted into the taboo topic of childbirth. Reed's chair clamped onto him sending volts of electricity into his body. He pretended to be disgusted at the videos he saw of childbirth and alleged that he was about to report and protest the presence of such "filth" in the library. His acting here was notable as he seemed to be really in pain with his face oily and perspiring. The leader of the civilization rides in some kind of whimsical toy-like flying saucer that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" every time he makes an appearance. The tone, texture and general treatment of this film is both amusing and unsettling at the same time. It is what makes it a fine one.The horrors governments would be willing to perpetrate to achieve Zero Population Growth was accurately predicted in this movie. Compulsory mass abortion was (is?) practiced in China in the '80s. There too was the testimony of a Chinese lady doctor who escaped to the West that babies who were delivered live illegally (more than two children for the couple) were murdered by injecting poisons into the fontanel. Later China amended the two-child decree to only one. During Indira Gandhi's regime in India, Rajiv (her son who later on became PM himself), regularly went on patrol gathering young men and having them forcibly sterilized. And of course, women who went to public health clinics for any reason were summarily sterilized once it was determined that they already had children. But why pick on China and India, abortion in the U.S. and in most of the EU is also done on a massive scale under the alleged "right to privacy" and of "freedom of choice."If you are intrigued by societies that seal themselves off from the rest of the world and humanity, check out Zardoz (1974 with Sean Connery) and Logan's Run (1976 with Michael York). There is also, of course, The Time Machine of which I know of at least two film versions. I like the older George Pal production because of its lush texture and the beautiful actors (Yvette Mimieux and Rod Taylor). The Lost Horizon also has two versions one made in 1937 and the other in 1973. The newer version is the better one with Peter Finch and Liv Ullman although the parts with George Kennedy (singing at that) and Sally Kellerman made it somewhat corny.

I wrote the plot description for this on IMDb a million years ago. I tried to demonstrate how horrible this movie was with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek, while giving an accurate description, and not making it a review. Some comments compared ZPG to Logan's Run???? Logan's Run is brilliant and a frightening "what if" scenario for the human race. How about comparing it to 2001: A Space Oddyssy or even Citizen Kane while you are at it? And Soylent Green, though not brilliant, SG is a far better movie than this one, and a more plausible future. This movie should have been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000--only on that show would it have been worth watching. Avoid this film like the plague!

If you are a fan of Logan's Run this film is an interesting must see since it plays as a decent prequel (story wise) to that better known sci-fi film. Since LR was made after ZPG I suppose one should say LR plays like a sequel to ZPG. ZPG takes place in an over-populated future so polluted that people wear gas masks outside (we eventually find out it is war related), animals are found only in a museum (stuffed), and food is found only in paste form. The edict: no more babies (or face death), so those born to already pregnant women have an invisible BE (Before Edict) scanned onto their foreheads. In Logan's Run, much later in the future, babies have small crystals placed in their palms that light when the human turns 30. In ZPG we are introduced to a couple (Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin) who work and live as a 1971 typical swinging couple exhibit in the museum along with another couple (best friends/neighbors). When the couple decides to have a baby anyway they are forced to share it with their neighbors or face certain death. There is a scene where Oliver Reed is checking out premature births in a futuristic library very reminiscent of the scene in Logan's Run where Logan researches Sanctuary. Both films deal with escaping the restrictions of a society so messed up it restricts life itself. Eventually the film becomes an escape picture much like Logan's Run. I can't help but think the baby grows up to be the Peter Ustinov character in Logan's Run. Just a thought.