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The Quiet Earth

The movie The Quiet Earth was based on the book The Quiet Earth.

Which one did you like better, the movie or the book?  There are 9 votes for the book, and 6 votes for the movie.

Movie details for The Quiet Earth

The movie was released in 1985 and directed by Geoff Murphy, who also directed Freejack (1992). The Quiet Earth was produced by Anchor Bay. More information on the movie is available on Amazon.com and also IMDb.

Actors on this movie include Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, Pete Smith (III), Anzac Wallace, Norman Fletcher and Tom Hyde.

 

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The "last man on Earth" sci-fi sub-genre is reasonably well represented by director Geoff Murphy's The Quiet Earth, a 1985 film from New Zealand that earned plenty of Kiwi kudos in its day but still fails to measure up to the great expectations engendered... Read More
The "last man on Earth" sci-fi sub-genre is reasonably well represented by director Geoff Murphy's The Quiet Earth, a 1985 film from New Zealand that earned plenty of Kiwi kudos in its day but still fails to measure up to the great expectations engendered by its premise. Bruno Lawrence is Zac Hobson, a techie who's involved in "Project Flashlight," a vast energy grid that allows war planes to circle the planet without ever refueling (leave it to "the Americans," who are blamed for the whole ensuing mess, to come up with such a diabolical idea). When what Zac drolly describes as "a malfunction" (thereafter known as "the Effect") occurs early one morning, he awakens to discover that he's apparently the only survivor, human or otherwise, of a catastrophe that has altered the very fabric of the universe. Lawrence is terrific in these early scenes, which find him gradually losing his marbles as the gravity of his situation sets in; wearing nothing but a woman's slip, he stands on a balcony and grandly addresses an "audience" of cardboard standups (from Queen Elizabeth and Hitler to Bob Marley and Alfred Hitchcock), declaring himself "president of this quiet Earth." But effectively sustaining such weirdness is tough, and although Murphy, to his credit, doesn't over-rely on special effects and scientific gobbledygook, the film isn't up to it. Turns out Zac isn't the only survivor, and when first a pretty young woman (Alison Routledge) and then a Maori man (Peter Smith) appear, the director tries to balance the human dynamics with the sci-fi elements (seems the Effect may not be over after all) to awkward and unsatisfying effect, and the film loses most of its momentum. As for the ending, well, safe to say that it will leave some viewers perplexed, others feeling that they've been bamboozled, and still others thinking that its mystery and lack of explicable closure are perfect. --Sam Graham

Book details for The Quiet Earth

The Quiet Earth was written by Craig Harrison. The book was published in 1981 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. More information on the book is available on Amazon.com.

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