December 8, 1999

THERE'S VIDEO IN YOUR FUTURE AND FUTURE IN YOUR VIDEO

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

No inventory of futuristic films could possibly be exhaustive, since the genre ranges from universally known mega-series like the "Star Wars" pictures to unimaginably obscure C-movie residue like "Plan 9 From Outer Space." So the following list is very selective, with an eye to giving you several cinematic approaches to all the things that can go wrong once Jan. 1 has come and gone:

SOYLENT GREEN (1973): Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson (in his last film role) are pals in a dystopian world in which everyone is forced to eat bland green crud and some of Dr. Kevorkian's fondest dreams have come true. The problem is, the “crud" could be someone who owed you money.

CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971): Youngsters take drugs and wreak violence on their elders. Pure fantasy.

THE TIME MACHINE (1960): A Victorian scientist vaults into the extreme future to find humanity divided into an effete leisure class (the Eloi) and a troglodytic proletariat (the Morlocks), in an illustration of what might happen if you don't stay current on your union dues.

STARSHIP TROOPERS (1998): Forget "Star Wars" - this is total warfare in outer space. Novelist Robert Heinlein's reactionary, paranoid ideas about mankind's destiny - fighting to the death against loathsome alien insects - is given the sumptuous, bloody treatment it didn't deserve.

THX 1138 (1970): George Lucas before he was "George Lucas" - not just before "Star Wars" but even before "American Graffiti." Robert Duvall with a shaved head enlists the help of a hologram in busting out of a sterile subterranean world.

WEST WORLD (1973): Michael Crichton before he was "Michael Crichton.” In an early working out of his ambivalent feelings toward amusement parks (see the "Jurassic Park" movies), Crichton has Richard Benjamin and James Brolin trapped in a high-tech theme environment where the Wild West is enacted by androids. After the machines go haywire, android Yul Brynner stalks our hapless heroes with blood in his eye.

TOTAL RECALL (1990): The late novelist Philip K. Dick was one of the great delusional psychotics in recent literary history, and here his fears are given grand treatment with a narrative in which Arnold Schwarzenegger is caught in a series of identity crises on the perilous surface of Mars (or is it just a hallucination?). Watch carefully for the subtle anti-environmentalist political message.

TRANSATLANTIC TUNNEL (1935): The history of our century has borne out the principle that the key to international amity is greater communication and accord between the United States and Britain. That's why this deliriously fascinating tale about the building of a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean to connect the two countries has proven so prophetic.

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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