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Deadly Harvest

Entry updated 4 April 2017. Tagged: Film.

Film (1977). Burg-Ambassador, Joebeck Production. Directed by Timothy Bond. Written by Martin Lager. Cast includes David Brown, Kim Cattrall, Gary Davies, Nehemiah Persoff and Clint Walker. 87 minutes. Colour.

Deadly Harvest is set in an over-industrialized Near Future America where Climate Change in the form of global cooling has shrunk available farmland. Predictably this leads to chaos, with roving bands out to steal whatever food supplies they can; several such raids are led by Mort Logan (Persoff), who exploits the crisis by selling black-market food to the beleaguered Cities. Hydroponic farmer Grant Franklin (Walker) and his family are among the few people with any food to spare. Charles Ennis (Brown), a wealthy man from Toronto, desperately needs food for his sickly daughter; he obtains some from Franklin, only to be robbed by Logan's gang. Ennis manages at a cost to obtain a very small supply from Logan, then warns Franklin that Logan and his crew plan to take over his farm to fend off their own starvation. Franklin and his son fight off Logan, killing him and his thugs with various types of farm machinery. The film ends on a downbeat note with matters certain to become still worse.

Produced at a time when global warming was not recognized as the most likely outcome of environmental damage caused by human Pollution of the Earth, Deadly Harvest seems odd to modern viewers. Though having a much lower budget, it bears some similarity to No Blade of Grass (1970) and can be considered an early example of Survivalist Fiction in Cinema. [GSt].

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