Cited by some as the first eco-horror movie, and cited by its own press as "The First Horror Monster Musical!", this groovy 1964 gem features great songs by the Del-Aires#&151;and the bodies of drowned sailors resurrected by illegally dumped atomo-sludge as man-frogs with mouths that look packed with kielbasas. Long before medical waste, used condoms and junkie hypos were as common on beaches as sunburns, this MST3K fave warned us against dumping in the oceans, and reminded us that exposure to Chernobyl-style radioactive material doesn't give you superpowers the way it did for Peter Parker and Matt Murdock.

The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Based on Margaret Atwood's international best-seller, directed by Tim Drum helmer Schlöndorff from a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Noteworthy not only for its depictions of what certain voting blocs would call a utopia, but for its exploration of what happens after, as a result of, an eco-crisis that changes not just the human body but the body politic. "All politics is local." Here, eco-politics is localized in the womb. Pollution strikes women sterile, paving the way for neo-fascist, right-wing ultra-Christian suppression in the United States and the use of the few fertile women as glorified incubators. Take notes. There's a quiz in November '08.

Doomwatch (1972)
Directed by Peter Sasdy

Based on the Luddite-lovin' show dreamed up by Cybermen creators Kit Pedler (a real scientist) and Gerry Davis. A team of scientists go around scientifically scolding other scientists about the dangers of science. This flick depicts an island of fisherfolk who exhibit froglike traits and deformities right out of a Lovecraft story. The culprit isn't breeding with Cthulhu's minions; genetically engineered growth hormones have been dumped into the waters, leading to widespread mental disorders and acromegaly from eating the local catch. Creepy, in that this "Wicker Man with mutants" makes us wonder in this age of synthetic fertilizers what ingesting this kind of crap might do to us.

Zardoz (1974)
Directed by John Boorman

John Boorman's shagedelic 1970s freak-out. Global collapse caused by pollution leads to a colony of intellectuals sealing themselves in The Vortex, where they become immortal while the world outside falls to savagery. Barbarian stud muffin Sean Connery infiltrates The Vortex, leading to a joust between the mythic and the modern that would give Joe Campbell an eye-bleeding embolism. Featuring a world turned into one big Love Canal full of contaminated soil and corroded hulks that suggest what might happen if the corpse of the Industrial Era is left to rot (though the imagery might make folks who grew up in the Rust Belt homesick).

No Blade of Grass (1970)
Directed by Cornell Wilde

Wilde, who'd just made the brutal survival story The Naked Prey, went a little Peckinpah when he filmed this Hugo-nominated adaptation of John Christopher's The Death of Grass. Industrial waste leads to the spawning of a virus that blights all grass, including grains. Scenes of anarchy in the United Kingdom as London riots would give Johnny Rotten pause. Heavy-handed shots of Westerners stuffing their Jabba-jowly faces while watching news reports of the famines beginning in China still manage to drive home the message that if we poison the Earth, we're poisoning our food source, and that slow starvation in a dead countryside isn't much fun. Probably not good for popcorn sales during the initial release.