Nothing Can Stop The Shape Of Things To Come

Consider Wild In The Streets.



I finally saw this movie last night. it's surprisingly difficult to dig up! I put it on my Netflix wish list a year ago, and got tired of waiting so I hunted down a copy on DVD. The day after I order, I check Netflix -- and there it is, available for streaming. Doesn't matter, I'm happy to own a copy. Plus it's double-sided, bracketed with Roger Corman's G-a-s-s-s-s-s.

As an afficianado of kitschy hippie culture, I considered WITS to be essential viewing. It's kind of a science fiction tale, and nothing dates so badly as science fiction. And you can see from the trailer that this thing is saturated in Sunset Strip late sixties patchouli - light shows, love beads, youth youth youth, even Richard Pryor as a token negro. One could expect that the one thing this movie would not have today is relevance.

But it is, in fact, creepily relevant.

The trappings are late-sixties but the basic story is this: a senator enlists the help of an entertainer to bring out the youth vote. But he doesn't know the entertainer has political aspirations of his own. He manages to ride the coattails of this poor politico to get his fringe political views aired and even has crazy laws passed, which have the effect of giving him enough power that he can ascend to power himself and obliterate the American political system, becoming a dictator.

Max Frost even runs as a Republican!



It's pretty ironic that for years people mocked this movie for it's hit song promising that "Nothing can stop the shape of things to come" and then, 40 years later, it all started happening. Expect for spiking the Washington water supply with LSD. And those awful jackets.