Things to Come

Last night I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the exclusive opening film of the SCI-FI-London film festival. The film was a HD remastered extended version of William Cameron Menzies 1936 epic Things to Come based on the H.G. Wells novel.

I was interested to find that the film has a strong post-apocalyptic element that runs for a large chunk of the movie. People always note the plasma screens and the mobile phones from the second half of the film, but what interested me was the impressively believable display of a decaying war weary society. After many years of war the people live in ruins and no longer know who the enemy is.

A warlord rules over the desolate town that is full of shabbily dressed people living in bombed out buildings. Cars are pulled by horse and the warlords leading airman spends his time trying to repair ancient bi-planes despite the lack of petrol. What we see here is a precursor for the small desolate village society that can be seen in nearly all of the 80's PA's . Whats unusual is the fact that despite the good intentions of the leader, he is the real problem holding the society back.

This film has no doubt influenced the post-apocalyptic genre, and I would argue it is just as important as Mad Max 2, indeed some of the scripting is above and beyond any PA's we have had in the past 30 years.

I recognize this is an acquired taste these days, but there is nothing stopping you checking it out as the film is available to watch at Archive.org. Look out for the upcoming DVD release with extra footage and a digitally remastered transfer.

And the cherry on the top? John Landis was there (thats me on the right)!