Z.P.G. (1972) — Triskaidekafiles

Z.P.G.

WRITERS: Max Ehrlich and Frank de Felitta

DIRECTOR: Michael Campus

STARRING: Oliver Reed as Russ

Geraldine Chaplin as Carol

Don Gordon as George

Diane Cilento as Edna

QUICK CUT: A supposed dystopia outlaws babies. Sounds like a utopia to me.

THE MORGUE

Russ - A museum worker/actor who is smart, loyal, charming, and would do almost anything for his wife. He’s not as iconoclastic as other dystopian fighters, but he’s got his quiet rebellious moments.

Carol - Russ’s wife, and pretty much the typical 70s depiction of women. A bit prone to hysterics, must have a child, and loyal to her husband.

Edna - A coworker and friend of Russ and Carol, who is cut from the same cloth as Carol. She’s even more the sort who needs a child to fulfill her.

George - Carol’s husband, and friend to Russ, who is probably the least developed of the quartet.

When you saw only one set of footprints, it’s because I made sure to walk in your steps to fool the trackers.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! This week, it's a bit of a scifi pick from the 70s, called ZPG, and that's short for Zero Population Growth. It's a dystopian story, and I've had it sitting next to me waiting for Trisking, for a good number of years. With the start of spring, it felt like a good time to visit this world where newborn life becomes a rarity. So let's get to it!

The movie opens up in the not too distant future, a smog filled, pollution riddled world, where everyone is wearing masks so they can go outdoors, and they are being addressed by the president of "the society" which sounds hilarious, but is also a great way to not pin things down.

He declares that the nations of the world have come together and decided to fight the overpopulation ruining the planet and straining our resources, that no babies shall be born for the next 30 years. Any newborn found from this day forward shall be killed, and the parents also "liquidated".

They do at least carve out the exception for women who are currently pregnant, since seeing a newborn like that now, might cause trouble. These newborns are registered in the system, and marked with an invisible brand of "BE" or "before edict" I presume. So if anyone tries to haul the parents in, they can be ID’ed properly.

With the setup out of the way, we jump ahead eight or so years, and I'm gonna cut to the chase; the world is still smoggy as hell, people are still fighting over rations, and the world seems no better off. I know this is just shy of a third of the way into this, but their grand experiment does not seem to be going as planned.

The time jump lands us in "Babyland" where couples can go to pick up a robotic child AI so they can continue to feel fulfilled and fill that void. Because yes, this is the 70s, and "a woman needs a child to be whole" was very much the way of things.

The Corps is mother, the Corps is father.

So these 'children' react, they need to be fed, paid attention to, will get sick, and basically what you have here is Cabbage Patch Tamagotchis.

Our lead couple, Oliver Reed...er, Russ, and Carol are in line to pick up a child, but she freaks out at the last second, because it's creepy and not real.

They leave and head to their job at the local museum, but on the way, we see a hint of what is in store for 'transgressors' of the edict; a giant dome is flown in, and would be dropped on top of them, but fortunately, the child is one of the BEs, and they're let go.

Charles Manson went on to have a fulfilling job selling Chucky dolls.

Once we reach the museum, we see it's full of exhibits of all the animals that have been killed as we paved over lakes and oceans and basically turned our planet into Coruscant.

No turtles, no deer, no cats...I dunno, maybe murdering every animal but humans, to the point where we have to eat paste (Although to be fair, that's as much as regulating caloric intake and rations than anything), might have been a larger contributing factor to ruining the planet than ‘lots o’ babies’.

There's also a car, and gasoline pump on display, and I'm gonna avoid any political statements, but it also makes PERFECT sense for the gas crisis they had in the 70s. It's easy to see how they would think the world would end up here.

But the best part of it, Russ and Carol seemingly head home, have dinner with another couple, and it turns out their home is actually PART of the museum, as they recreate life in the 1970s, while people watch on.

This is "beautiful, historic Williamsburg" of the 22nd century. It's also a hilarious way to not have to worry about fashion for half your movie.

We sit in on a brief psychiatric session Carol has, and she expresses her desire to have a baby, a real baby, and the stern, authoritarian doctor tells her "that is not how it is, that is not reality" and this is more Big Brother than anything else.

Carol visits the future's idea of an old folks home, which is an entire city, thanks to the long lifespans at this point I guess. She visits a doctor who lives there now, the doctor who delivered her, and that's not weird at all.

We see another baby found, this time one that is definitely a newborn, and see what happens to transgressors.

Prepare yourselves for T H E B A B Y D O M E

A giant dome is lowered over them, painted red to obscure the transgressors, and, this gets filled in later, they're left there for a few days, domed over, to think about what they have done, before being suffocated.

This feels ridiculously convoluted, as opposed to arresting them, holding them, and executing them however the society deems fit. Now there's just big red domes sitting in random places?

Oh, and if you turn in babymakers, you get extra rations. Ain't nothing at all fascistic about being paid to turn in your neighbours.

So, Carol and Russ have sex, she vaguely hints at wanting a baby, and he tells her stop thinking like that and to 'go take care of it'. Which I guess means going to use the *home abortion booth* future homes just have installed, these days.

What a cruel twist of fate, to be married to Oliver Reed in a time when you are not allowed to have a baby with him. I mean, the sex is still great, I'm sure.

After seeing their friend Edna ignoring her "baby" until she can't take it anymore, Russ brings home a package of real vegetables for Carol, and they go out to eat. I...don't get what's going on here. The veggies are stolen, and devoured by an old woman and others in the crowd, because they are a coveted item.

Why not just eat them at home, instead of taking the obvious risk of bring out the equivalent of a filet mignon in an impoverished country? Ehh, whatever.

So the not so happy couple head to the store and scroll through the screens to buy themselves a Christmas tree, because tis the season.

Anyways, it's Christmastime, as they decide to have a Real Baby somehow, and while I know that day is the BIRTH of Christ, I still can't help but shout out SYMBOLISM!! at conceiving around Christmas.

Of course, Russ agrees to it as much because she's been pregnant for *four months* as much as he loves her. Also, since they didn’t get a tree from the tree mart, they use this to show us Russ can be a bit of a rule breaker by having him go out and get a tree on his own, which is against the law.

They lay in bed and plot, and Russ decides the best course of action is for Carol to 'leave' him and hide during the pregnancy, a good cover story.

Which still leaves the issue of where will she go, but don't worry! The one couple in the entire world who has decided to break the edict on no babies, just so happens to live over an abandoned bomb shelter!

So, she leaves, and Russ covers for her with their friends with the story. But things get weird when Edna sends her husband and 'child' away, and she tries to make out with Russ.

I mean, if they're supposed to be reenacting living in the 70s, taking up the role of swingers is NOT out of the question.

Oh, and yes, during all this, there IS a group of people watching them, making this...even creepier.

Actually, this is just what happens every time Oliver Reed makes out with someone normally.

So to cut to the chase, the movie jumps ahead five or six months to get the pregnancy out of the way, punctuated by one night where Carol is staying upstairs to get some time out of her bunker.

As they're getting ready to move her back downstairs, they accidentally activate the home telehealth services, and fortunately are able to fumble their way out of it before they notice the pregnant woman.

So Carol heads back to her solitude to slog through the last three weeks or so of her pregnancy, and Russ heads off to the library or something to do some research on tapestries, and then clicks over to learn about premature births.

Geeze, at least put up a painting or something.

The instant he clicks that vid, he is shunted into a hall of mirrors, where he is questioned on why he was watching those files, like he can't just be curious about them??

Look, I can kinda roll with the punches of a lot of this society, but slamming him into the thought police dome because he tried to watch something about premature births is a bit too far.

First of all, why even HAVE those files available if you don't want the information out there? It’s not like he hacked his way to find them. Second of all, why is it illegal to be curious? Bleh.

But aaaanyways, Russ talks his way out of it, and hurries home to help deliver baby Jesse. Huh, that kid got here quick.

However, complications arise as children, especially those being raised in dusty, musty, underground bunkers, tend to get sick.

Since they smartly picked up one of the fake babies to justify their new lifestyle, and the return of Carol into Russ's life, she's at least able to concoct a plan to sneak the child across town in the stroller, and visit her doctor friend in Twilight City, where the grass is paved and the girls are senior citizens, to check on him.

Seriously, what is the smoke budget on this movie??

Of course, things do not go smoothly, and Edna wants to see her new fake child. Carol bolts and loses her, but once she returns home, Edna is there waiting for her. So, the jig is up.

There's also a scene where she tries to hide in a theatre, and the whole group is just watching historical videos about our 'almost criminal addiction to food" in the late 20th century. Watching these people barely able to hide wanting to lick their lips at slabs of meat and lavish spreads says more than almost anything else about this oppressed society.

Anyways, once Edna sees the child, she promises she won't say anything, and she just wants to see him, what with wanting that whole motherly bonding experience you just can't get from RealDoll Junior.

This is honestly just porn to an oppressed society.

Later, Edna brings her husband over, letting him in on the secret. This is where the final act kicks off, and things begin to fall apart.

And these two are so hungry for a child, they are very insistent on wanting to *share the child* amongst them. It all sounds innocent enough, helping change diapers, look after the tyke, Russ and Carol can't do EVERYthing. Right?

But it devolves quickly from there, demanding the child stay with them every so often, and using their knowledge of the child to blackmail them into letting it happen.

This all comes to a head, with Russ concocting a plan to get them out of there, and into safety. If you can call being on the run 'safety', but that comes a bit later.

Russ and Carol use the blackmail to their advantage, pushing the other couple to call their bluff, when Edna and George insist they are going to keep the baby, for its own good.

When the rightful parents refuse, Edna rushes around calling down the baby police. They drag the trio off to the nearest 'execution square' and that's a detail that would've been nice to know earlier on when I was asking about this.

So they get placed in a babydome, it gets painted over so they will be completely invisible, and after 12 hours to think about what they've done, they will be suffocated.

Of course, now that they are totally obscured from view, and with time on their hands, Russ breaks out some tools, and digs down into the dirt, right into the tunnel he's been digging from their bomb shelter, knowing this was the most likely point they'd be murdered.

This exposes a rather giant flaw in this judiciary system, if I may say so.

So the couple pile into a raft, ride down the sewers, and make their way to the desert wastelands of the blasted Earth, where hopefully they run into Judge Dredd. But for our purposes, this is where the movie ends.

As they run across the desert, they run past ruins of a past society, and that these are locations where bombs have been stored away in the interest of peace.

I'm not the man you thought I was, Oliver. Right my wrongs.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It could be worse, and is about what I’d expect from an indie 70s movie, so I can’t complain. The biggest issue is there’s so much smoke!

Audio: Sounds just fine, and there’s some good use of surrounds with the overhead announcements.

Body Count: Well, there’s really only one moment with any death, about 22 minutes in when the one couple and their baby are found out, and they get domed.

Best Corpse: None, we don’t see anything.

Blood Type - F: Nary a drop.

Sex Appeal: Nothing besides Oliver Reed

Drink Up! every time someone says the word baby.

Movie Review: I mostly quite like this. I am a sucker for socially conscious science fiction movies, and this one has it’s heart in the right place, with something to say. Or it thinks it does. It has bad things happening, but it doesn’t really have anything to SAY about them. Yes, banning birth is bad, but what is the alternative? Is THAT bad, or is there a more endemic problem with this society? Yes, the whole oppressive fascism is also bad, but it’s not the focus. Also, this is what I like to call a World Of Tropes, where the premise comes first, in this case “a world where no one can give birth” and they have to try and cobble together a world to fit it. And typically with these worlds, it’s tough to imagine us ever getting there. This movie is a LITTLE better in that regard, because unlike something like Divergent, this feels more rooted in reality. It’s a well made movie, most of the acting is good, but it does suffer from being a bit too slow, and too 70s. It’s got some good meat, but there’s just not a whole lot here. Three out of five tubes of paste.

Entertainment Value: It’s a bit too bland to be super entertaining, but it’s just entertaining enough, with good performances, and some interesting ideas. But much like the movie itself, it needs a little more. Two out of five baby domes.