Very much in the panic-stricken tradition of SOYLENT GREEN and LOGAN’S RUN (both made years after), Z.P.G. (Zero Population Growth) is another futuristic 1970s movie which played on the fear of famine, pollution and especially over population. This British production (it was actually shot in Denmark) originally released theatrically in the U.S. by Paramount, has mostly been unseen over the years, hardly ever playing on television and receiving a low-key video release many years ago. One would never have thought Z.P.G. would make it onto DVD, but thankfully Legend Films has unburied it from obscurity and has licensed it from Paramount Pictures with a handful of other gems.

In the future, the Earth is a smog-filled planet where citizens wear gasmasks to tolerate the outdoor air. From a spherical craft flying above, the President (Bill Nagy) makes an announcement that due to overpopulation, there will be a thirty year generational moratorium on bearing children, and anyone who attempts pregnancy will be punished by death (in this case, it means being smothered by an airtight dome). In substitution, couples stand in line to receive robotic, talking dolls in which they are to take home and care for as if they where their own offspring. Even after seeing a mother and her young child executed in public, one brave woman, Carol (Geraldine Chaplin), is determined to become pregnant, and her understanding husband Russ (Oliver Reed) consents as long as they proceed with careful planning and caution. Russ hides Carol in the vacant space below their apartment and eventually she has her baby, soon after sneaking off to a friendly aging doctor (David Markham, TALES FROM THE CRYPT) who assures her that the newborn boy is healthy. Carol and Russ’ neighbors (Don Gordon and Diane Cilento) discover their secret, wanting desperately to be a part of the baby’s life, but soon jealousy rears its ugly head.

When watching the earlier moments of Z.P.G., it seems to embrace a number of sci-fi clichés associated with a future society, including everyone wearing the same dull outfits (in this case, dark blue jumpsuits with a medallion around the neck) and eating artificial food from plastic tubes, but the film goes beyond that, and the screenplay by Frank De Felitta and Max Ehrlich, has some clever ideas. A well-attended museum showcases the luxuries and excesses of 20th Century living (circa 1971), displaying stuffed animals, once common, but now extinct in this setting, and showing films of how "ignorant" people ate too much red meat from un-sterilized utensils, among other exhibits. The lead characters (along with their neighbors) are also part of the museum, working in a live exhibit reenacting a swinging couple of the 1970s dining and drinking wine, after which bystanders applaud their realistic performance.

But the main plot device of Z.P.G. is having the freedom of bearing children taken away, and having to cope with the rather creepy alternate of a puppet-like replica. This plotline calls for less glitzy action and more human drama, which can be quite engulfing in itself. Geraldine Chaplin is very believable and compassionate as the young mother, so much so that she won Spain’s Sitges award for “Best Actress,” and the late, great Oliver Reed is actually more somber than usual, but still very good, and as always, absorbing in the role. One of Reed’s best scenes has him researching a forbidden subject on a library computer (pre-dating the internet by some 25 years), with an alarm going off, transporting him into an adjoining room for interrogation. Though not as flashy or high profile as some of the other futuristic fantasies and thrillers of the time, Z.P.G. is definitely recommended for fans of early 1970s science fiction, and it's a shame it didn't get more attention upon release.