Double Review: The End of the World as Farce
The Bed Sitting Room
directed by Richard Lester
Gas-s-s-s
directed by Roger Corman
Two apocalypses.
Two tones.
Same uneasy laughter.
1. The Bed Sitting Room (1969)
If Samuel Beckett had directed a nuclear comedy, it might feel like this.
The premise is simple and insane:
Britain has been destroyed by a nuclear war that lasted two minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Civilization is gone. The survivors wander a radioactive wasteland… politely continuing British social rituals.
And then a man begins turning into a bed sitting room.
Literally.
The film comes from the absurdist stage world of The Goon Show writers Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, and you can feel that DNA everywhere.
What makes the movie fascinating:
☢️ Bureaucracy Survives the Bomb
The British army still exists. Sort of.
They keep marching.
Giving orders.
Maintaining rank.
Even though there is no country left to command.
The joke lands like quiet radiation sickness: civilization might end, but institutions keep going anyway.
🛋️ Mutation as Identity
The transformations are surreal:
people turning into objects
language breaking down
logic dissolving
When the character slowly becomes the titular bed sitting room, the movie hits its central idea:
In a shattered world, identity itself mutates.
It's funny, eerie, and oddly touching.
🎬 Lester’s Visual Style
Richard Lester was coming off the anarchic energy of A Hard Day's Night, and he shoots this apocalypse like a surreal documentary.
Rusting London ruins.
Bleached landscapes.
Actors behaving with calm British dignity while the universe collapses around them.
The tone is apocalypse as Monty Python fever dream.
2. Gas-s-s-s (1970)
If Bed Sitting Room is nuclear Beckett…
Gas-s-s-s is psychedelic Mad Magazine.
The premise:
A mysterious gas kills everyone over 25.
The world now belongs entirely to young people.
Cue motorcycles, communes, wandering cults, and the vague feeling that the 1960s just took acid and forgot to come down.
🌎 The Counterculture Test
The film asks a sneaky question:
If the older generation vanished…
would the hippies actually build a better world?
The answer seems to be:
Maybe… but probably not.
The youth factions quickly recreate:
tribes
armies
cult leaders
petty power struggles
It’s the counterculture discovering human nature doesn’t disappear with the establishment.
🎥 Corman in Satire Mode
Roger Corman is best known for Gothic horror like The Masque of the Red Death, but here he’s making something closer to anarchic social satire.
The movie is:
shaggy
episodic
chaotic
But that looseness actually fits the theme.
The world has lost its adults… and the film itself behaves like a teenager skipping school.
The Strange Mirror Between the Films
Bed Sitting Room
Gas-s-s-s
Old world destroyed
Old people destroyed
Society persists absurdly
Society reboots chaotically
British existentialism
American counterculture satire
Beckett energy
underground comic energy
Both movies quietly ask the same question:
If civilization collapses… what parts of us refuse to die?
The answers are bleak and funny:
bureaucracy
ego
tribes
nonsense
Humanity survives the apocalypse… but it doesn’t necessarily improve.
The Shared Mood of 1969–1970
These films come from the same cultural moment:
Vietnam.
Nuclear anxiety.
Youth revolutions.
The sense that the world might end or radically transform any day now.
Instead of making solemn apocalypse movies…
Both directors chose satire.
Because sometimes the only sane reaction to the end of the world is to laugh at it.
Preferably while someone slowly turns into a piece of furniture.
Sometimes the end of the world isn’t solemn. Sometimes it’s British absurdism meets American psychedelic chaos. With a MGM+ free trial, these two films are your ticket to a nuclear and chemical apocalypse that is… oddly domestic.
1️⃣ The Bed Sitting Room (1969)
Director: Richard Lester
Tone: Deadpan British absurdism
Britain is obliterated by a nuclear war that lasts 2 minutes and 28 seconds, but the survivors carry on like polite automatons at a dinner party. And yes—a man literally turns into a bed sitting room.
Highlights:
Civilization survives bureaucracy: The army still gives orders, the institutions still march… but there’s no country left to command.
Surreal identity: Objects, people, and language morph. You laugh. You shiver. You reconsider your own furniture.
Lester’s style: Think Monty Python fever dream meets A Hard Day’s Night-era energy—rusted London, pale landscapes, humans in calm existential denial.
Mood Check:
Nuclear devastation… served with tea and deadpan absurdity.
2️⃣ Gas-s-s-s (1970)
Director: Roger Corman
Tone: Psychedelic counterculture satire
A mysterious gas wipes out everyone over 25, leaving the Earth to the youth. Cue motorcycles, communes, chaotic tribes, and a haze of acid-tinged idealism.
Highlights:
Counterculture stress test: With the older generation gone, hippies attempt a utopia… only to recreate egos, armies, and petty squabbles.
Corman in freewheeling mode: Episodic, chaotic, and shaggy, the film mirrors the unruly collapse of society it depicts.
Visual chaos: Sun-baked landscapes, vibrant colors, and anarchic energy make the world feel high on its own freedom.
Mood Check:
The 60s went nuclear, and someone forgot to come down.
Why These Films Pair Perfectly
| Bed Sitting Room | Gas-s-s-s |
|---|---|
| Old world destroyed | Old people destroyed |
| Society persists absurdly | Society reinvents chaos |
| British existentialism | American counterculture satire |
| Calm absurdity | Psychedelic disorder |
Both films ask:
When the world ends, what parts of humanity refuse to die?
And the answer is messy, hilarious, and slightly horrifying: bureaucracy, ego, tribes, and nonsense.
Viewing Ritual
Start with The Bed Sitting Room → let absurdism slowly destabilize your brain.
Pause → meditate on the fragility of identity… and furniture.
Hit Gas-s-s-s → watch counterculture go fully off the rails.
Optional finale: The Last Man On Earth→ desert survival and the last human left to… become something else entirely. 🦎
Verdict:
This isn’t doom porn. It’s apocalypse as farce, chaos as comedy, and a reminder that humans, no matter the disaster, will keep being weirdly human.
☢️ British deadpan + American psychedelia = double-feature perfection.
Bonus Feature Review
The Last Man on Earth 🧛♂️🌆
Directed by: Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow
Starring: Vincent Price
Based on: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Apocalypse Gets Quiet
After the surreal comedy of The Bed Sitting Room and the counterculture chaos of Gas-s-s-s, this film feels like stepping into a ghost town at sunrise.
A plague has wiped out humanity.
Everyone else has become something like vampires.
And one man remains.
Every day he repeats the same ritual:
wake up alone
search abandoned houses
stake the infected
board up the windows before nightfall
It’s the end of the world as routine.
Vincent Price’s Quiet Tragedy
This might be the most subdued performance of Vincent Price’s career.
Instead of flamboyant Gothic villainy, he gives us something closer to cosmic exhaustion.
His character moves through the empty city like a man trapped inside the echo of civilization.
You feel:
the boredom
the grief
the creeping doubt that he might be the monster now
The First True I Am Legend Adaptation
Unlike later versions like:
The Omega Man
I Am Legend
this one stays closest to the bleak philosophical heart of Matheson’s story.
The idea that lands hardest:
The last man on Earth is not a hero.
He is a relic.
The world has moved on.
Something new is evolving.
And he is the ghost haunting their future.
The Mood
The film’s black-and-white photography gives everything a documentary eeriness.
Empty streets.
Silent houses.
Church bells ringing for no one.
It’s less action movie and more existential nightmare.
The apocalypse here isn’t explosive.
It’s lonely.
The Strange Trilogy
| Film | Apocalypse Type | Tone |
|---|---|---|
| The Bed Sitting Room | Nuclear war | Absurdist satire |
| Gas-s-s-s | Youth plague | Psychedelic comedy |
| The Last Man on Earth | Vampire pandemic | Existential horror |
Three different answers to the same question:
What happens after civilization ends?
Britain turns it into a bureaucratic joke.
America turns it into a counterculture experiment.
Vincent Price turns it into a diary of loneliness.
Final Verdict
If the double feature was apocalypse as farce, this third film adds the missing flavor:
apocalypse as melancholy.
Together they form a strange cinematic arc from the 1960s:
Society collapses.
Youth tries to rebuild it.
The last man realizes the future might not need him.
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