Details

Release year: 1970

Storyline

A gas is let loose upon the world that kills anyone over 25 years old.

Top credits

Directors

Roger Corman

Writers

George Armitage

Cast

Bob Corff — Coel
Elaine Giftos — Cilla
Bud Cort — Hooper
Talia Shire — Coralee

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Did you know

• The film's subtitle comes from an alleged statement of a U.S. Army Major (name unknown) during the Vietnam War who was said to have defended the complete and total destruction of both a Vietnamese town and everyone and everything in it at the hands of Army soldiers who were acting on his orders by supposedly saying "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

• This was the last major film that Roger Corman directed for American International Pictures because of extensive cuts made to it that were ordered by the studio and which he personally did not like at all. Entire lines of dialogue and entire scenes, including those involving a leading character, were all removed. The last straw for Corman, as far as he was concerned, was the removal of the film's final scene (which he personally considered to be the greatest scene that he had ever filmed in his entire career) in which the main character, his girlfriend and 300 extras were on a mesa with a view of 60 to 70 miles to the horizon while God (voiced by Lennie Weinrib using a stereotypical Jewish accent), who was a running character throughout the entire director's cut of the film, made His final comments on what had just happened in it as the camera panned back. Unlike the earlier Corman films The Trip (1967) and Psych-Out (1968), which have had both of their director's cuts (85 minutes and 101 minutes, respectively) restored, remastered and re-released on both DVD and Blu-ray by Olive Films (the first one in 2016 and the second one in 2015, again respectively), this film's unedited director's cut remains unreleased on home video in any way, shape or form to this day. It is also unknown whether any or all of its missing footage (i.e., both video and audio) has even survived intact so that it can be restored in the future, if such a restoration is ever done at all, that is.

• The Warriors football team in the film is the actual name of the Socorro High School football team in Socorro, New Mexico, where part of this film was shot, and the actual Warriors' team colors really are blue and white.