Arrow Video: Soylent Green (1973) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Video

Ever since Charlton Heston starred in Planet of the Apes in 1968, the actor found himself cast into a plethora of like-minded 1970s dystopian science-fiction and/or disaster adventure movies such as The Omega Man, Airport 1975 and Earthquake as part of the Irwin Allen boom.  One which sort of fell in between the police-procedural actioner and the post-A Clockwork Orange dystopian ruinous Hellscape was stock trade Hollywood filmworker Richard Fleischer’s 1973 film Soylent Green which is more largely remembered for being the final film of co-star Edward G. Robinson.  

Based on the 1966 sci-fi novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison from which Stanley R. Greenberg’s screenplay heavily deviates, it had one foot in seventies exploitation replete with violence towards scantily clad women and another in a The Twilight Zone parable spoken of the same breath as Apes.  Coming to 4K UHD for the first time via Arrow Video in a new limited edition, audiences today have a chance to experience Fleischer’s dabbling in nihilistic grim hard-boiled sci-fi whose implications of commodification and human waste still rings powerfully in today’s climate.

 
In the near-future year of 2022, there’s an ongoing food shortage amidst human overpopulation throughout the world which faces sociological and ecological collapse.  As the elites bask in luxury with normal food and water, the ordinary common people are stuck with leaky water taps and processed food which comes in wagers called Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow ala Brazil and its infamous dinner scene.  However, the hottest new product on the market comes in the form of new green wafers dubbed Soylent Green.  

Meanwhile Detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) finds himself investigating the mysterious murder of one of the Soylent Corporation’s chief executives.  Wading through a world of green mist and decay, Thorn shares a scruffy flat with his former co-worker and professorial friend Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson).  Soon, the paths of both men cross with the Soylent Corporation which harbors a dark and disturbing secret about the origins of the popular green wafer food item.

 
Featuring an unforgettable sequence of Robinson in an ethereal death chamber watching scope widescreen vistas of the natural Earth untainted by humanity and industry set to Tchaikovsky which achieved a kind of meta-power with the actor actually being terminally ill during filming, Soylent Green starts out much like The Omega Man before veering into more haunted territory stemming from A Clockwork Orange’s use of classical music.  For a film mostly bathed in green monochrome and steely quasi-Italian high-lifestyle interiors, the Robinson sequence comes as a sensory shock almost like the Stargate at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  

Lensed in scope 2.35:1 by The Andromeda Strain cinematographer Richard H. Kline and set to an increasingly moody and morbid score by Scarecrow composer Fred Myrow, the feel of the world of Soylent Green is ultra processed and modern borderline brutalist architecture versus the sets of the elites and the Soylent Corporation which looks a bit like a Bond villain’s secret hideout.  Charlton Heston and the supporting cast are fine with Heston more or less carrying over his performance from The Omega Man and his final delivery of the film’s most infamous line has the capacity to send hilarity and horror down the viewers’ spines.  Mostly though, the farewell to Edward G. Robinson on and offscreen in this is really powerful and almost transcendent and again will be the biggest takeaway for most viewers.

 
Completed eighty-four days before Edward G. Robinson’s death who leaves the film with one of his career-best moments whether he intended to or not, Soylent Green while met with mixed critical reception as a film was a decent critical success garnering $3.6 million at the 1973 box office while winning the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, the Grand Prize at Avoriaz International Fantastic Fest and the Nebula Award for Best Script.  Eventually Heston’s trademark exclamation ending the film ranked at 77^th place in the AFI’s list of 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes.  

Very much a product of its time and for one particular actor a timeless farewell whose power still achieves a kind of grandiosity, Soylent Green comes to Arrow Video 4K UHD from a new scan made from the original 35mm camera negative with restored lossless mono audio.  In addition to porting over archival featurettes on the Warner Brothers Blu-ray disc such as press kits, Arrow have furnished new extras including an audio commentary with historian Michael Brooke and author Johnny Mains as well as offering reversible sleeve art and a collector’s booklet of essays.  Again remembered as Robinson’s 101^st and final feature, Soylent Green returns to home video in the best way possible, offering fans and newcomers a glimpse at one of the 1970s grimmest sci-fi parables.

--Andrew Kotwicki