No Blade of Grass

“It came from a brilliant book, but Cornel Wilde, God rest his soul, I don't think he did it justice when it came to the screenplay. He seemed to go over the top and get some bits of egg on his face.”

– Wendy Richard

Cornel Wilde’s view of a global pandemic, this one a virus that destroys crops, reveals the shallowness of his aggressive masculinity and nihilistic view of humanity as merely meat puppets with vague social contracts threatening to implode at any second. There’s a kernel of a great idea here, most of it borrowed from the source material, done in the most overblown grindhouse way imaginable. You almost respect its uneasy juxtaposition of cheesy theme song and shocking rape scene for sheer film-making chutzpah alone. There was clearly plenty of effort involved here. Except it is in service of a truly ugly worldview and plays as something near camp with its excesses. No Blade of Grass throws everything it can think of – environmental worry, marauding gangs, murder, societal collapse, pollution – in service of a tonally confused product.