The Rerun Review: The other one where babies are illegal

 

Title: The Last Child

What Year?: 1971

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Runnerup

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

When I started doing movie reviews, one of the first rules I laid down was not to cover TV movies. This has long since become a case of protesting too much, as I have long since covered a number of famous or infamous examples. The big surprise has bee that the floodgates didn’t open as soon as I started a dedicated feature. I decided, however, that I was going to have to make time for at least one wonky TV movie, and I very quickly came up with a very short list of candidates, including one I had to do a substitution for when I decided I couldn’t work with it. This time, I’m back with the alternate of the alternate, and oh boy, it’s about the single most irritating trope in science fiction. I present The Last Child, another movie that cashed in on the overpopulation panic.

Our story begins in what is intoned as the “not too distant future”, which by now would be at least 20 years in the past, where a woman who gets separated from her child in a crowned transit station is taken in when the police discover she is pregnant. We learn that this is still the US, where the government has implemented a one-child limit on family size. That brings us to our protagonists, a married couple (of course attractive and “white”) who are having a new child after their first died in infancy. Of course, the state isn’t making a reasonable exception, nor making the fair argument that losing a baby in 2 weeks in a society with modern healthcare could mean a bigger problem in their genetic codes. The laid-back police prepare to take the expectant mother into custody, but  don’t care enough to stop them from making contact with a bleeding-heart senator. The chase is on as the pair race for the Canadian border- and come on, did you think there was going to be a twist in a 1970s TV movie?

The Last Child was a 1971 made-for-TV movie produced by Aaron Spelling, originally aired by ABC. It was one of the first of several films dealing with overpopulation, preceding ZPG in 1972 and Soylent Green in 1973. The film was directed by John Llewllyn Moxey, a veteran of television shows including Mission Impossible, from a script by Peter S. Fischer. The film starred The Mod Squad’s Michael Cole and Janet Margolin as the couple, with Van Heflin as Senator George and Ed Asner as the lawman. An official credit was given to General Motors for vehicles used in the film. The film received some attention from contemporary genre critics including Philip Strick, who noted the film for its “lack of impact”. The film has been released on VHS and DVD. Fischer went on to write for shows including Murder, She Wrote. Margolin died of ovarian cancer in 1993.

For my experiences, I caught wind of this one while running down ZPG, which would definitely be on my “worst” movies list if I ever do the inevitable follow-up to my list of the best movies I’ve reviewed. In the course of trashing that odious little nothing, I already did plenty of ranting on the overpopulation craze. What I put front and center was simply that those claiming to be concerned about overpopulation were unable to portray the actual consequences of malnutrition, poverty, and overcrowding, at least in the medium of film. Going in, this film at least offered a more rational take on paper, particularly since its scenario was in fact eventually pursued in China. It seemed possible that this would be the one that made some amount of sense. On investigation, it proved to have a whole different set of flaws.

Moving to the movie itself, the one thing that’s beyond question is that this is the conservative counterpart to the allegedly progressive ZPG. The immediate consequence is that it can make its implied arguments in intelligible contemporary terms, rather than justify itself with hypotheticals that aren’t even proven “in universe”. In the process, we get a future fleshed out enough to feel lived despite the limits of its running time. Some of the more intriguing moments seem to allow for societal problems that might have little or nothing to do with overpopulation per se, like passing mentions of loss of life in wars abroad and the decline or general collapse of the automotive industry. Also of interest are the police, who are polite and startlingly restrained, at least when dealing with the middle-class, non-minority protagonists. The one big hole in the world-building is a sort of passive euthanasia program where medical care is discontinued at age 65, which in any foreseeable reality would start a civil war by the AARP. It would make marginally more sense if the politicians and their donors had written loopholes for themselves or were using their money for private care abroad; but then, we mostly just hear about this from the idealistic senator who might not be the most reliable source.

Meanwhile, the biggest problems loom well beyond the cool car chase and undoubted “happy” ending. I personally am a disability self-advocate, “pro-life” and break-the-needle anti-eugenics, and even I would tell this couple it might be a bad idea to have kids. Then there’s the largely unresolved question of whether the problems are local or global. China pursued its policies for reasons that were peculiar to itself, and the same could be true of this future USA. It’s doubtful, however, whether fugitives would simply be welcomed with open arms. Even now, Canada’s as overpopulated as a Norman J. Warren film festival downwind from fertilizer plant (because I don’t make enough Inseminoid references), but it would still be a tall order to deal with millions or tens of millions of new citizens. Then what’s really left undiscussed is the complex nature of healthcare. It's easy to characterize taking care of the old and the weak as a drain on resources, even more so in a socialistic system. What really happens, however, is that medical care generates many jobs, and in the process redistributes wealth through all levels of society as effectively as any communist scheme. Denying medical care even to those who can pay for it is how you cut off your nose to spite your face.

That still leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with the car chase. In the finale, the protagonists acquire a car, which is evidently out of the reach of many or most, and outrun the police. But Asner’s lawman still hasn’t given up, and as things transition from night to day, their vehicles pass fatefully. The part I love about this scene, indeed the whole movie, is the cars. They could have gagged up a few sci fi-looking car. Failing that, they could have gotten a few vehicles that looked advanced for the time, like the Stingray, an early Ferrari, or dinky European oddities like the Reliant Robin or the Messerschmitt Kabinenroller (why not a Mystery Men link?). But no, these cars as 1970s as a tie-dyed VW Bus. We get a good, tense chase as the lawman does a U-turn and gives chase. There’s closeups of the couple and Asner, the latter clearly gleeful but still focused. A hatchback briefly intrudes, which is easily the most futuristic vehicle we see at any point. and gets left behind by both parties after being run off the road.  They have to pay attention when a semi comes into view. The good guys go left, the lawman goes right, and you know what’s coming. The last impressive touch is that the law’s crashed car burns brighter than the actual oil tanker in Duel.

In closing, I come back to the same rants I already gave with ZPG. There were plenty of things we didn’t know in the 1960s and ‘70s, but the overpopulation scare was predicting the past. At best, it was an extreme way for honest proponents of birth control and women’s rights to make a point. At worst, it was a barely veiled defense of the eugenics movement that had already abused thousands in the name of prejudice and pseudoscience. In that context, this was a movie that could at least wring a human story out of it, which is enough to come out far ahead of ZPG. With that, I’m done.