Fox Movie Channel

When Dead People Turn To Sugar

Where Have All the People Gone?

Imagine it's the seventies. You have a 70s haircut and cars are really big and made in America. Without warning, the sun sort of blows up, releasing a blinding, earthquaking flare. People start dying - but not you. And not the birds or the trees or the dogs, though they pretty much freak out. After someone dies, he disintegrates, leaving behind a pile of sugar in the outline of what had been his body. You're in the 1974 made-for-TV movie Where Have All the People Gone? A quiet disaster movie. Low-budget, no effects. And that is what makes it fun. Just simple storytelling, building uncertainty, an experiment in our fear of the end. Punctuated by piles of sugar.

I am always pleased when the people who stay alive in the face of cataclysmic movie disasters are capable survivors and give mankind a fighting chance. Seriously, if the world is threatened by hostile CGI aliens or hostile CGI zombies, who better to provide humanity's last stand than Will Smith? Like with this family: lucky for them that the dad, played Peter Graves, is super chilled out and level-headed and virtually immune to stress, and the brother, played by George O'Hanlon, is some sort of physics wunderkind. If everyone was wiped out and only my brother and I remained, we'd be awesome at saving the world, if it depended on our ability to do crossword puzzles and watch Star Trek reruns. Not so sure we'd do that well with operating guns and fixing cars and makeshift medicine. This family, on the other hand, knows how to do everything from testing for radiation to fighting wild dogs.

Father, son, and daughter (a young Kathleen Quinlan) head off to Malibu, hoping to be reunited with their beloved wife and mother. Along the way they encounter widespread sugar, a few other random survivors, and quite a few problems. I get really easily turned off by CGI and almost always prefer practical effects, so I found the sugar kind of charming, and it can even be freaky if you let go and let yourself believe. Or you can think it's totally stupid, in which case it is still amusing. Turns out Malibu is a nice place to go even when everyone is dead. (And imagine how fast you could drive on the freeway with no one else around! It would be sweet.) There is still more trouble ahead for the family, but then the movie kind of peters out and ends on an almost inappropriately upbeat note. Maybe if this movie wasn't made for TV they could've gotten a bit more brutal with it and seen it through to some sort of conclusion, which I would've liked. Then again, the fact that it's really low budget is a big part of its charm. It's a lot more original and engaging than your average made-for-TV movie, and it leaves you wanting more. Check it out next time you need a sugar fix.