Jeffery X Martin returns as this week’s Guest Star!

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Some people look forward to the utter destruction of Planet Earth and the societies it hosts like a six-year-old awaiting Winter holidays. Explosions! Fireballs! Tsunamis! Avalanches! Probably all at the same time! Cold War kids have been expecting the missiles to fall for decades, vaporizing continents and turning us all into fine, red ash. Younger people may be waiting for the environment to take a final rebellious stand. Oceans boil. Trees reach down with prehensile branches and eat people. Maybe the aliens will finally come to Earth with their meat harvesters and process us like so much flesh Velveeta. Perhaps Earth will simply become an obstacle, readily demolished by a larger hunk of space rock. 

No more responsibilities, bills, or terrible credit ratings! Maybe some specific deity will make a dramatic return, splitting the skies with a holy cry of thunder! Perhaps the zombie apocalypse will happen, and I can access my overstocked arsenal for a good reason!

But what if the end of the world is boring?

In Antony Weber’s 1973 film, Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death, humanity is doomed. We know this because God tells us so via voiceover during the opening credits. Here’s hoping God got paid scale.

“The year of my son, 2062,” God says over stock footage of nuclear missiles, zooming toward their explosive metropolitan destinations. “This dawn will be the last for my creation, recorded in this ledger under the heading of Man.” 

Humans screwed up the environment and blew each other to smithereens, leaving the One World Government to destroy individuality and creative expression. Those who are left live in inflatable tent-like domes, known as “controlled environment shelters.” Fresh air is piped into those domes, but the supply is running out. Now, those who are left are afraid of becoming “the last person on the planet to survive.” 

Three sides are jockeying for power in this dying world. There are regular people, the “good guys,” in two separate transparent domes that look like Pop-O-Matic dice rollers. Lurking outside are gangs of malevolent, denim-wearing bikers. They’re scavengers, shooting people both for their supplies and for the hell of it. 

Both groups are wary of the State-sanctioned border patrol, who drive a souped-up dune buggy. They wear American flag helmets and shout oppressive and confusing rhetoric. They want to let people who are still loyal to the State have “as much life” as possible, but they’ll shoot anyone for crossing the ill-defined zone between the zones.

Although the planet’s lifeclock is running down, extinction isn’t the survivors’ biggest threat. The real enemy in Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death, is boredom. 

These people did not pack well for the downfall of society. When they aren’t wearing bathrobes made from chartreuse rental couches, the women wear as little as possible. Strips of cloth barely conceal their naughty bits. Belly chains and golden butt-crack covers round out their outfits. Men wear beige ballet tights, usually without a shirt. They can’t go outside without a gas mask, although they often do, simply so they can yell at each other for not wearing a gas mask. These fine people are victims of a world gone mad, and also fashion. 

Sustenance isn’t mentioned. We never see them eat or drink. No one brought anything to read. There’s one chess set that one of the characters plays with by himself. No booze, no weed, there’s not even an eight-track player! It’s like growing up in my hometown. There’s nothing to do but fight and fuck. That might explain why all of the dome-dwellers know kung fu. What else is there to do but learn Tiger Style while waiting for the dry, cold kiss of death?

One thing the radiation and pollution haven’t seemed to affect is their refractory period. These people can, and do, get busy at a moment’s notice. Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death doesn’t hit softcore porn levels by modern standards, but there’s enough nudity to keep viewers’ eyes on the screen. 

In such a dire situation, suicide seems like a viable solution. Not for these folks. General Byron (John Abbott), he of the outstanding mustache, has made everyone promise to stick it out to the gasping end. When a man approaches the domes accompanied by a woman about to give birth, Byron refuses to shelter them. “I will not permit the kind of beauty and hope a child would provide in our last moments,” he says. That’s a dick move, but the General has his own ideas about what the end looks like. 

There’s a misplaced nobility in Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death. General Byron refuses to murder anyone in the domes, even when they beg. And they do. “Kill me!” one woman screams in full frontal nudity. Byron pushes her away. Why does Byron insist on making everyone in the domes endure his misery? We can only assume it’s so he can keep that gorgeous facial hair for as long as possible. 

Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death has fallen into the barrel of obscurity. Besides one DVD release through the greatly missed Something Weird label, the movie has been floating through the lower intestines of FAST channels. It popped up in my Tubi suggestions. That should tell you something about my algorithm. 

But often, it’s the weird stuff that makes you think. 

As audiences, we’ve become accustomed to the Mad Max post-apocalyptic aesthetic. People in leather daddy gear, running around depopulated areas on Frankensteined vehicles, and playing demented roulette games with the lives of others. It’s survival of the fastest in those worlds. Everyone has a flamethrower and a sardonic name. I’m looking at you, Aunty Entity. 

That’s not the case in Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death. It’s the furthest thing from “action-packed.” People are losing their sanity because of extreme ennui. You can tell they’re sailing over the edge when the soundtrack plays Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, III. It’s a good thing that the entire film is only 50 minutes long. Watching these folks fully suffocate would take too long. Watching their dreams and ideals die is difficult enough.

For a science-fiction movie, Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death feels like fact, a psychological study of people facing a slow-moving fate. What would we do if we knew the end of the world was coming and nothing, even God as a voice actor, could help us? I would sit on the porch holding hands with my beloved wife, have a few drinks, and hope dying didn’t hurt. 

The characters in Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death hope for the same thing, although they get to wait it out in bitchin’ bubbles that would make John Travolta jealous. 

For all its plastic-fantastic sensibilities and psychedelic Ken Russell leanings, Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death captures some chilling human emotions. We all know time is finite, and it speeds up the older we get. It’s not something we want to think about, but we’re all zooming towards that final brick wall. This is not an exciting prospect. 

Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death is not a wild thrill ride into some corkscrew rollercoaster Armageddon. It shows us the flipside of The Way of All Things. You can distract yourself with anything. Chess. Sex. Kung fu. But there’s no happy ending for these characters. There’s only a protracted and depressing crawl to the ending credits.

If only they could have had a porch to sit on, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and someone beside them, whistling in the dark. 

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Jeffery X Martin took taekwondo classes when he was a child, but freaked out and quit because he had to perform katas in front of judges to get his next belt. You can find his writings at Biff Bam Pop! and his novels wherever fine publications are sold.