Deadly Harvest (1977 film)

In an over-industrialized near future,[1] climate change in the form of global cooling has shrunk available farmland and a worldwide famine has ensued. Government neither informs its citizens nor does anything to avert or even ameliorate the looming catastrophe.

In the countryside, cattle-thieving black marketeer Mort Logan (Nehemiah Persoff) raids at will, slaughtering scarce livestock. In response, some of the country folk act to protect their diminishing resources by forming a militia. Hydroponic farmer Grant Franklin (Clint Walker) and his family are among the few people with any food to spare, but the stoic farmer refuses to fight, avoiding trouble as he sees it. When his eldest daughter Susan (Kim Cattrall) loses their only cow to marauders from the city, he takes this, too, in his stride, though it would have fed the family for a long time. Michael, Grant's impetuous son (Geraint Wyn Davies), eager for action, joins the local militia.

Tensions rise in Toronto: there are food riots. Computer consultant Charles Ennis (David Brown) and his frail father (Tim Whelan) drive out from the city, begging for produce for his sickly sister (Nuala Fitzgerald): the shops in the city are empty. Suspicious at first, Grant yields after his daughter makes pleas on their behalf. The Franklins assemble a produce basket for the starving pair, off-handedly mentioning the wedding spread they are preparing for Susan the following day.

Ennis and his father are waylaid by militia men who accuse them of stealing the food, confiscating it. The elder Ennis, badly frightened, dies of a heart attack. His angry son goes back to Toronto and seeks out Logan, offering him a map to the Franklin wedding in exchange for a very small supply of food. Logan and his crew go to the wedding, unexpectedly exchanging gunfire with the militia. Grant's wife (Dawn Greenhalgh) and Susan's groom are both killed, galvanizing Grant. Michael fights off Logan, killing one of his thugs. Finding an address on the back of the discarded map, Franklin drives to Toronto seeking revenge on Ennis.

Logan delivers to Ennis a bag of food stolen from the wedding and vows to raid all of the surrounding farms before leaving. Franklin finds and begins to assault Ennis in his office until Ennis reveals that his father Tim was killed when Franklin's son Michael stole back the food Franklin had given them. Ennis shows Franklin data on his computer indicating that there are only 27 days of food reserves remaining for urban life support in North America.

Franklin races home; meanwhile, Logan and his crew return to the Franklin farm and a gun battle ensues.

It seems likely that this is not the end of the family's troubles - nor of the world's.

In addition, the cast includes Rebecca Lager, Hoah Cowan, Brad Spurgeon, Stan Lesk, Richard Ayres, John-Peter Linton, Marcel Bérubé, and Terry Martin.

Notes

Deadly Harvest was Clint Walker's final lead role;[6] after its theatrical release he went into semi-retirement, accepting only occasional acting roles.[8] The feature also marked the film debut of Geraint Wyn Davies[9] and of Dwayne McLean.[10]

English critic Kim Newman

Kim Newman places Deadly Harvest alongside other 1970s end of the world films frequently drawn from 1950s or 1960s science fiction novels,[11] typically pitting ecology-conscious characters ("hippie communes") against "contaminated violence freaks". An organizer of the Stiff Legged Film Festival suggests that these kinds of films, concerned with environmental disaster, have this in common: "Whether we're already stuck in this future, as in No Blade of Grass, we time-travel to it, like Idaho Transfer, or we see it unfold in real-time, like Deadly Harvest, these films show that all hope is both lost and not lost, that the impulse to survive ... is always built into the human condition."[12]

Andrew Burke calls Deadly Harvest a "key Canadian contribution to this genre".[3] The film is an example of a contemporaneous "Canuxsploitation" trend,[4] or "Canadian Tax Shelter exploitation movie".[12] In an interview with Natalie Edwards shortly after principal photography was complete, producer Tony Kramreither played down the catastrophic aspect of Deadly Harvest, insisting the story was kept on "a human scale; little people, a small community".[13]

Ezekiel Crago remarks how Deadly Harvest is a rare example in film of urban class struggle transposed to a rural setting, in which the alienated farmers live in the rural space "even though they can no longer grow anything as they attempt to hold onto what food they have", struggling against "agents of organized crime from the city who operate a black market (a threat from the urban upper-class coded as parasites on society), ultimately using their massive farm machinery itself to defeat their foes; in this rather populist film, the silent majority wins over the urban elite."[14]

The film had its premiere at the first Montreal World Film Festival,[2][19] on 21 August 1977.[2]

A number of outlets, including music magazine The Quietus reported about or engaged in speculation by fans or music scholars interested in Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada that the title and sound of their fourth studio album, Tomorrow's Harvest (2013), was inspired by Deadly Harvest, noting that "this idea seems to be reflected by the song titles", in particular "Cold Earth", "Sick Times" and "New Seeds", and that "the album sleeve and the overall mood of the record" were thematically similar.[30]

The album's dominant themes, environmental collapse and the degradation and decay of the landscape, fit closely with a strain of genre cinema from the 1970s and 1980s. Most significant perhaps ... Deadly Harvest released on VHS, an eco-thriller about dwindling resources that features an eerie synth score by John Mills-Cockell.[31]

Erwann Perchoc suggests Mills-Cockell's score anticipates both the sound of the duo[7] and common themes such as agricultural revolt and the end of the world.[32] Boards of Canada have denied that Tomorrow's Harvest deals with post-apocalyptic themes, stating "it is about an inevitable stage that lies in front of us."[33]

• No Blade of Grass (film)

• Deadly Harvest on IMDb