SILENT RUNNING
Out of his tree
After the phenomenal success of Easy Rider, Universal gambled on giving several young filmmakers small budgets and creative free rein. It didn’t pay off commercially, but did give us this idiosyncratic ecological sci-fi.
Bruce Dern plays Lowell, a crewman on a space freighter – one of three carrying all that survives of Earth’s forests. When an order comes through to jettison and explode the bio-domes, the distraught botanist kills his crewmates to save the last one.