The Virgin President

In The Virgin President, founding members of the Second City comedy group imagine a future documentary of the sad last days of America at the end of the 20th century. Term limits have been abolished and the President for Life has been assassinated by his cabinet, to be succeeded by his vice-president, his son, who has been kept in isolation in a bomb shelter for thirty years. There are a few incisive comments on a political system that thrives on conflict and war, but mostly it is absurdity and silliness for its own sake. I imagine it must have been quite amusing to see at a midnight movie in a crowd of stoned hippies, and it probably appeared at the time to be a damning indictment of the establishment. Time has not been kind to this work, however, and the worst case scenario of fifty years past now seems quite benign in comparison to the atrocious farce we see enacted in reality every day. A very fine print of this has been preserved at Cinemageddon, but frankly there is little reason to seek it out unless you are an obsessive scholar of obscurities like me. In short, mildly amusing, mostly harmless, and a reminder that science fiction of the past often falls far short of predicting the bizarre realities of the present.