“In the not too distant future, wars will no longer exist. But there will be Rollerball.”

That I remember was the tag-line on the UK poster for this 1975 sci-fi classic. This French poster doesn’t bother with any of that, instead relying on a powerful graphic image which pretty well sums up the movie! 

The movie stars James Caan as Jonathan E, a key player of the ultra-violent titular game, who becomes so popular with fans that its corporate sponsors decide to try kill him on track, in order to demonstrate the futility of individualism. Needless to say, he doesn’t plan to go quietly….

It is a strange movie – the non-Rollerball sequences are slow and rather dull (perhaps deliberately), in comparison to the very realistic, all-action Rollerball games. (Games that were so popular that there were attempts at the time to create real Rollerball leagues – somewhat ironic considering the point of the movie is about the insanity of contact sports!).

I sold this poster earlier this year, but I still have the soundtrack album for this movie, which is unusual in that most of the tracks are classical pieces, conducted by Andre Previn, notably Bach’s epic organ piece Toccata and Fugue in D minor.