No Blade Of Grass - Apocalypse 1970

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00][Music] Hello, my name is Tony. This film was directed, produced, and co-written by Cornell Wild. I'm not going to go into his background here, simply refer you, should you wish to know, to my previous review of The Naked Prey, which covers all that. It was made by his own production company, Theodora, and released and distributed by MGM Europe.

[00:00:31]It's based on John Christopher's modern classic Brit sci-fi eco thriller, The Death of Grass, which was published in 1956. Wild's wife, the actress Gene Wallace, plays the female lead, in what was to be her final feature film. It was filmed mostly on location in the Lake District of the UK. Critics didn't like it. Didn't do very well at the box office. It got slapped with the old shameless exploitation label for its content. Thus, film snobs gave it a wide birth. Now, as bland, vapid intros go, that's got to be in line for some sort of prize or award. Pretty [ __ ] banal, even by my standards. I just wanted to get all that mundane stuff out of the way before I home in on the meat and potatoes and consequently explain why.

[00:01:14]Although on the one hand it is by and large monumentally hamfisted crapola, yet on the other it is subjectively of course so utterly joyously asskickingly brilliant. You see it's like this.

[00:01:27]Imagine wild Cornell not Oscar cut a 100piece jigsaw from a sheet of rusty tin plate. Then couldn't get any of the pieces to fit properly when he went back to put it together. So to facilitate reassembly, he took a lump hammer and a welder's torch to the component parts and melted and pounded them frenzily into place. Then held up the finished article and said, >> "Behold, I give you no blade of grass."

[00:01:50]>> If that depiction doesn't make any sense, have no fear. I'll explain as we go. Film opens with some credits and a song unpredictably titled No Blade of Grass. Surprise! Sung by bearded be spectacled, whistling folky Roger Shitkicker. Then a montage consisting of clips of heavy industry, sewage, waste, filth, affluence, overpopulation, and pollution. Whilst on a ra in tone, some doomy [ __ ] about how mankind has abused mother earth like a careless [ __ ] and caused the global ecosystem to collapse. Grass-based crops have been poisoned and all died out.

[00:02:22]It's an apocalyptic Greta Thunderberg wet dream played out 33 years before she was born. Kid would freak herself to death watching this, but it gets better or worse depending on your perspective.

[00:02:32]Starvation is sweeping the globe.

[00:02:34]Cannibalism is rife. The Chinese nerve gas 300 million of their own people to death because well, it's China and it's Wednesday. At a posh London ery before a huge sumptuous all you can eat buffet, a dry run for a live aid clip of a dying emaciated flyblown African flickers on the TV screen. whilst the news reader dead pans about mega scale death and horror. If you haven't realized by now, subtlety and nuance has been abandoned by this film in favor of a sledgehammer to the face approach. This is significant of the general gestalt of the thing, one that it aderes to until the bitter end, and it's as clumsy as a Pauly trapeze artist with grease palms.

[00:03:12]Wild style in establishing the basis of the narrative is to flash backwards and forwards in time. The focus is on John Cust, Snigel Davenport, and his family.

[00:03:21]That's wife Anne, Jean Wallace, 16-year-old daughter Mary Lynn Frederick in her first film appearance, and son Davey, Nigel Wthbone, who's away at a public boarding school. Add Mary's boyfriend, government scientist Roger John Hamill. Wait a minute. There's at least a seven-year age gap between Mary and Roger, and she is, as the song goes, only 16. Bit of a quiz factor there.

[00:03:43]However, it is made plain and clear that they haven't gotten jiggy with it yet.

[00:03:47]So, nah, still doesn't sit right. And at the time, Lynn Frederick was in fact 15.

[00:03:52]John and Roger have a lunch date with Roger's brother, David Patrick Halt.

[00:03:56]David has a large farm conveniently situated in a valley. And equally conveniently, there's only one way in that could be robustly defended. Should the [ __ ] hit the fan, you know, social collapse, rioting, mass murder, martial law, usual apocalyptic stuff. John Roger and the family should head for David's place where he's managed to protect his arable land from the virus killing the crops. a virus which by the way is of Asian origin. Now there's a turnup. As you can probably guess, it all kicks off and a family leave London picking up Davey from his school on the way as well as his little chum spooks Christopher Loft House whose parents have gone missing abroad somewhere. Getting out of London isn't easy as riers and looters fill the streets throwing molotovs turning over cars shooting others and getting shot by the now armed police.

[00:04:42]There are snipers on the roofs and it's all getting a bit out of hand. So the family barely makes it out alive in their two cars. Jon figures they need some guns for protection. So they stop off at the gun emporium of Mr. Sturdivant George Kurus. Sturdivant will have none of it. Not without the proper permit. And when they try to take the firearms by force, the old man's assistant turns up with a pistol and holds them at gunpoint. This is Perry Anthony May who lives and works on the premises with his slutish and promiscuous wife Claraara. Wendy Richard. When Jon explains the situation, Perry believes him about how dire things are and without any further consideration or hesitation shoots Mr. Sturdivan dead. He and his wife will tag along. So, they've now got a threec car convoy trucking through the shite. We're headed out on a twisted, fast-paced road trip, a dark and disturbing odyssey of violence, rape, betrayal, and death through the English countryside. And not everyone is going to make it to the last reel alive. Objectively, it's not a good film. The ideas are good and it stands tall and clear in retrospect as something highly influential on the apocalyptic dystopian movies that followed later. The grassroots sorry similarities in the 28 days, weeks, months, years franchise, all but slap you in the face. If you've seen any of those films, especially the first deja vu will rise in you like the intensity of an absanth and Viagra overdose.

[00:06:02]Likewise, fans of Terry Nation's post-apocalyptic BBC drama series Survivors will get the same funny, familiar, forgotten sensations. The script, which Wild rewrote under the nom de plume Jefferson Pascal, is seriously uneven and slipshot. In keeping with that, a lot of the dialogue is howlingly bad to the extent it would embarrass a six form comprehensive school drama class to entertain speaking it. Then there's Wild's direction. Now, I'm not doubting his passion and his good intentions, but he really takes a wrecking ball to the subject. Pile driving home his messages with visual metaphors and juxtapositions that lack even the meest hint of nuance or refinement. Unsophisticated, artless, crude, intellectually challenged, which can be fine if only some attention was paid to the characterization of the players. They're a game bunch of actors who do their best, but their parts are all written as terribly base and crucially underdeveloped. I'll give you an example. Traveling in the car with Roger, Mary discusses losing her virginity when they get to the farm.

[00:07:01]Bloody cringe. After all, it's a farm in the middle of Nowhere'sville, UK. What else will there be to do to pass the time than [ __ ] constantly? I'm not sure this is how 16-year-old girls need to be represented on film. But anyway, cut to the premonetary flash forward to some thugs attacking and raping Mary and her mother. Cut back to the car. It's a jarring and heavy-handed device intended to give us the heads up on how things are going to go, which are usually at odds with how the characters think they're going to pan out. And it's one hair director uses several times throughout. All it succeeds in doing is fracturing the narrative because now we are distracted from what's happening on screen instead thinking about what's going to happen and how. It's unwieldly and reduces the characters to the status of cinematic puppets whose fates are predetermined. It shatters the essential illusion that they are not because yes they are granted but we don't need to know this information in advance. The story should take us there in due course. Now when we say I knew that was going to happen it's not because we thought or reasoned it. It's because we were shown it beforehand. Not a good idea in my opinion. Too much is revealed too soon. The score by Bernell Wibi is dreadful and pipes up doing all the wrong things at all the wrong moments.

[00:08:14]Wibli's other credits include an uncredited contribution to the soundtrack of Virgin Witch, a softcore British horror cheapo from 71, another softcore outing clinic exclusive the same year, and incidental music for the Tommy Cooper Hour TV show in 1974. His work on Noblade of Grass is presumably up to standard. Cinematography is by HR Thompson, who did lens work on Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes. It's stark and grungy and has that cheap exploitation vibe, whilst quite artfully framing the English countryside as a far less romantic place of buolic splendor to trek through than is usual bleaker by far. I first saw it on the big screen at my hometown venue on a double bill with the mind of Mr. SS again with Nigel Davenport. That was an amicus production I didn't much like and have taken pains not to revisit since. No blade of grass though. I loved today. Despite a slight increase in awareness regarding its shortcomings, the sporadically inep direction, the poor script, lousy music, annoying character traits, idiot spoiler inserts, I still find it to be something of a wonderfully savage sense of baiting dystopian blast of celluloid. Nigel Davenport gives the best performance of the piece as the nononsense patriarch and leader. He sports an eye patch which gives him a paratical air and is a veteran army officer of the Korean War.

[00:09:33]Now a well-off architect, softened by city and domestic life, he soon rediscovers his old combat and leadership core when it comes to protecting his family. Then there's Andrew Perry. Perry is a low-level criminal psychopath and an easy combo of villain and ally. When encountering a roadblock manned by armed soldiers, Jon hesitates in firing on them. Not so Piri. He shoots them all, then finishes off the wounded up close. When confronting the bikers who raped Mary and Anne, he shoots most of them also.

[00:10:01]the one he leaves alive and shoots dead.

[00:10:03]Crossing the line from matronly neurotic to maternal avenger. When a bunch of farmers from a local community way lay our pluckucky gang and relieve them of everything but their clothes, Perry is the only one with the foresight to hide a pistol, which he uses to shoot another farmer when they happen upon his homestead. By which time Custence has toughened up and shotgun blasts the farmer's wife's guts through her spine.

[00:10:25]A band are quickly regressing into the survivalist mindset, prepped to do almost anything to maintain their existence. When Perry's a moral wife tries to [ __ ] customs, he intervenes and demands what he calls old justice, boy sexual treachery. He means to execute her. She makes a break. He shoots her in the back. Perry is great. He'll shoot just about anyone or anything. When he takes a shine to Mary, having recently become a widow, he reasons like that's all the justification he needs. Neither Roger nor John can take the risk of opposing him and getting whacked.

[00:10:58]Besides, Mary hardly resists as she says she feels safe with him. Yeah, I hate to point it out, but so did his wife. Along the way, they encounter a large group of travelers who they invite to join them.

[00:11:08]Safety and numbers and all that. The leader, Joe Ashton Mving coming refuses.

[00:11:13]Guess what Piri does? That's right, shoots him. So, they all join up. Even Joe Ashton's wife or widow, as you would unless you wanted a bullet in the face from Piri. One of the women is pregnant.

[00:11:22]two gruelling and graphic birth scene and Anne experiencing pointless sympatical flashbacks to her own labor in hospital. The child is still born just in case you were expecting something good and life affirming to happen. It really isn't that sort of film, you know, an impression that gradually builds. No, actually it doesn't. It starts out grim and stays that way. We know there's going to be a confrontation with a chapter of Hell's Angels as an earlier flash forward told us there was. One of their number is recognized as the soul escape rapist who Perry shot in the ass. There's a thunderously lively, frantic, and very brutal battle with our band of plucky travelers coming out of it victorious.

[00:12:02]Like how? Finally reaching the valley where David's farm is situated. All is not well. It's walled off like a fortress defended by a heavyduty beltfed machine gun. David has his own community and their resources are not sufficient to cater for all the others Jon has brought with him. He tells his brother to sneak only his family and Roger in after dark and leave the rest outside to their fate. Jon has a decision to make.

[00:12:26]Does he prioritize the safety and well-being of his family alone? Or does he marshall his followers together to lay siege to the valley and force their way in, causing the death of his own brother and Perry in the process and taking his place as the leader of the community. Tricky. No, tell him which way he could go. Uh, right. What I like best about No Blade of Grass is the way it takes an uncompromisingly negative view of humanity and sticks with it.

[00:12:54]Didn't someone once say we're only nine missed meals away from utter carnage and chaos? In no time at all, society collapses and in the blink of an eye, we're out there shooting and eating each other. Civilized behavior evaporates to be replaced by brute force and the way of the gun. Survival being the only objective. The film starts out depressing and grim and escalates from there with little quarter given to light, hope, or redemption. It layers on misery and mishap to the point where it almost becomes laughable. I get a nagging sense that Wild is ultimately saying, "Well, you only got yourselves to blame. You deserve this."

[00:13:28]>> And to that end, the characters are put through the ringer to make them suffer and to make his point. What's remarkable looking back is how it foreshadows both global warming and the COVID pandemic with near accuracy. It's not bang on, but his predictions land pretty damn close to home. Not bad for a film made over 50 years ago. Way more precient than all those flicks that envisage flying cars and interstellar space travel. Yeah, like any of that's going to happen. On release, controversy was generated by the violence, tamed by today's standards, and the rape scenes, which still retain the power to shock.

[00:14:01]As I mentioned previously, Lynn Frederick was 15. There were statements issued that a body double was used, but to this day that defense remains unsubstantiated one way or another.

[00:14:12]Whatever publicity was generated at the time didn't help the film any as it bombed financially. Cornell Wild directed one other effort after this Sharks Treasure in 1975. Wonder what helped that one get off the ground. No Blade of Grass is not a classic genre movie, but it has built up a welldeserved cult following over the years. Even so, to date, it's only available on DVD. No Blu-ray remaster, even though you would imagine it's crying out for it. I've learned if not to overlook, but to live with its not insignificant failings, and enjoy it for the joyless, violent, exploitative, pessimistic slap round the chops it ultimately is. If you think you can do the same, give it a spin. If not, then I sincerely advise you don't.

[00:14:56]Immense thanks for your time and attention. Feel free to do whatever you choose to do next. Hit like, don't like, comment, subscribe, check out my early access Patreon thing, or even make a very welcome financial contribution via the thanks button. I suppose some might class blade of grass a survival picture.

[00:15:13]And to some extent, that might be accurate. Luckily, it didn't come out in 1965, which saved me the agony and time burn of shoehorning it into a quadruple bill. Equally, luckily, I'll never have to do one of those. Oh. Oh, that's right. [ __ ]