Rachel Carson
Silent Spring and its influence on
Eco-Terror films
By Austin Mitchell
(Who is not ashamed to admit
he's a fan of really bad science
fiction movies)
Rachel Carson changed the world
with her book, Silent Spring, in
1962. Her warning about the
adverse environmental impacts of
pesticides helped launch both the
environmental movement and the
creation of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring also helped launch a wave of
horror films about nature running amok after man upsets the
delicate balance of nature with the overuse of pesticides and
pollution of the earth.
These Eco-terror films began in the 1950s when concern over
atomic testing led to a slew of movies about giant monsters.
But in the 1970s, shortly after Silent Spring was
published, these films focused on the destruction of the
environment from pollution
Let's take a look at some of these films
(click on picture to see each film clip)
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
In Kingdom of the Spiders, pesticides have destroyed the
tarantula's place in the food-chain, so they turn to humans for
food.
Grapes of Death (1978)
A young woman discovers that the pesticide being sprayed on
vineyards is turning people into killer zombies.
Shark Swarm (2008)
A fisherman and his family fight to take down a greedy real
estate developer who has released toxins into the ocean,
turning the area's sharks into bloodthirsty hunters.
"Humanity's going to need a bigger boat."
~ Austin Mitchell
As Rachel Carson herself said:
"The control of nature is a phrase conceived in
arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology
and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature
exists for the convenience of man...
It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a
science has armed itself with the most modern and
terrible weapons, and that in turning them against
the insects it has also tuned them against the
earth."
Is this the End?