Introduced in the pages of British science fiction magazine New Worlds, Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius was a different kind of sci-fi hero: a dandy playboy adventurer. He appeared in numerous Moorcock books, beginning with 1968's The Final Programme, which was adapted into a movie in 1973 by director Robert Fuest, a veteran of The Avengers.
It's a film with some provocative ideas – Nazi mysticism! A scientific messiah! The quest for immortality! – and Fuest brings a terrific eye for design, staging a scene inside a giant pinball machine and presenting a Ballardian pile of abandoned cars against the London skyline.
