Soylent Green (1973) Science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer
Soylent Green (1973) is a dystopian science fiction vision of an over-populated world, based on the novel by Harry Harrison. In 2022, New York City is a metropolis with a 40-million+ population. Food is in short supply, and most of the population’s food source comes from synthetics manufactured in factories in the industrial urban periphery. The synthetic meals choices are Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, or Soylent Green. The poor sleep where they can and join together for the daily food riots. The rich live in high-rise furnished apartments that feature unheard-of amenities like hot water and free-flowing electricity and the people who can afford them can also afford black market luxuries like eggs, jam and the rarest of all, real beef. The cops are as corrupt as ever and the government is a branch of the Soylent Corporation; the company that controls two-thirds of the world’s food supply by manufacturing cheap crackers out of chemicals and vegetable matter. There are no trees, there are no animals, water is rationed and the city averages about a hundred murders a day. When an executive in the Soylent Company, is found murdered, police detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) is sent to investigate the case. As the case unfolds Thorn discovers the terrible truth about the real ingredients of Soylent Green: it’s made of people!