The Final Programme (film)

The Final Programme
Directed by	Robert Fuest
Produced by	John Goldstone Sandy Lieberson executive Nat Cohen Roy Baird David Puttnam
Written by	Robert Fuest
Based on	Novel by Michael Moorcock
Starring	Jon Finch Jenny Runacre Hugh Griffith Patrick Magee
Production company	Goodtimes Enterprises Gladiole Films
Distributed by	Anglo-EMI Film Distributors Ltd./MGM-EMI Distributors Ltd. (UK) New World Pictures (US)
Release date	4 October 1973 (UK) 1974 (US)
Running time	94 mins (UK) 76 mins (US)
Country	UK
Language	English

The Final Programme is a 1973 British fantasy science fiction-thriller film directed by Robert Fuest, and starring Jon Finch and Jenny Runacre. It was based on the first Jerry Cornelius novel (also called The Final Programme) by Michael Moorcock. It was distributed in the United States and elsewhere as The Last Days of Man on Earth. It is the only one of the many Moorcock novels to have reached the screen.

The story opens in Lapland at the funeral pyre of Jerry Cornelius's father, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who has developed the "Final Programme"—a design for a perfect, self-replicating human being. Jerry Cornelius, playboy physicist and dashing secret agent, is in attendance. Afterwards he is questioned by Dr Smiles, who wants to retrieve a microfilm which he knows is in the Cornelius family home in England. Cornelius, a conspicuous counter-culture dandy with addictions to chocolate biscuits and alcohol, threatens to blow up the family house. Flashbacks to Jerry's conversations with Professor Hira about the Kali Yuga inform the narrative, providing a philosophical background of the world in its final days. In various scenes, we learn that the Vatican no longer exists, that Amsterdam has been razed to ash, and we see Trafalgar Square in a post-apocalyptic scenario of wrecked cars piled atop one another.

Back in the UK, a group of scientists led by Dr. Smiles and the formidable Miss Brunner (who consumes her lovers) try to persuade Cornelius to locate the microfilm containing his father's Final Programme. Jerry learns from his family servant that his sister Catherine has been imprisoned by his evil, drug-addicted brother, Frank; Frank has Catherine held captive in their family home, and has addicted her to drugs for unspecified reasons. Jerry, whose relationship with Catherine is implied to be incestuous, instructs his servant John to smuggle Catherine to the lodge on the property's grounds; he will "take care of Frank". He consults Major Wrongway Lindbergh, who supplies him with a high-powered jet, and his old friend "Shades" who can supply him with napalm.