Damnation Alley (1977)

Nothing in common with the book by Roger Zelazny except the title and a cross-country expedition. And even the book was one of Zelazny's weakest, which he admitted. In book, story starts years after the war. Reason for expedition cross-country change. Destination change. Characters added. Principal character drastically changed. Events along route change. Ending had no relationship with original story. Star of the film became the Landmaster versus the actual story and characters. This movie shows how Hollywood Sci-fi movie budgets of 1950-2000 period usually influenced most Sci-fi scripts, usually for the worse. Putting special effects ahead of the story.

Damnation Alley was quite an unlucky movie seemingly, it was put out with the idea that it would be another profitable sci-fi b-movie but unfortunately for it, a few weeks before it was released a movie called Star Wars was released which changed the rules for sci-fi forever more. To be honest though, I kind of like this one. It has its own significant factors too, for instance it's quite early in the cycle of post-apocalypse movies - the Mad Max series certainly seems to have borrowed some of its ideas – and so I think it's fair to say that its core look and feel went on to be used in quite a few similar movies in the 80's. Its story starts with a nuclear war devastating the world, leaving a small band of survivors in a desert outpost. After a while they are forced to set off on a journey to try and find other survivors in an all-terrain vehicle.This one has a plot that boils down to a succession of set-pieces strung together along a hazardous trek. It's essentially a road movie...without a road. Along the way our heroes battle giant scorpions, swarms of flesh-eating cockroaches, mutant feral humans and they endure an electrical storm. They also pick up a woman and an incredibly annoying teenage boy. The film is chock full of corny dialogue and charmingly poor special effects but it remains entertaining nevertheless with good pacing and enough variety of events to ensure things remain interesting. It has to be admitted though that it does end with a very poorly conceived conclusion that felt like it was tagged on because the original idea was too expensive. But on the whole, I found this to be good fun mainly, certainly a fair bit better than its poor reputation suggests.

Silly post-apocalypse road movie is amusing enough to give it some sort of cult status, even though it's really not that good. The actors giving the better performances tend to get less screen time. One can see that the filmmakers, led by director Jack Smight, are clearly working against the limits of special effects technology at the time, rendering this more of a cheese fest than anything else. Those light shows in the stormy skies ARE pretty trippy, though. Pacing is adequate enough; this runs a scant 92 minutes long. But that makes one wish that more could have been done with the source material, a novel by Roger Zelazny (adapted for the big screen by Alan Sharp ("Night Moves" '75) and Lukas Heller ("What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?")). The movie is modestly diverting, but also disappointing.WWIII causes complete devastation throughout the continental United States. A team of Air Force personnel who have designed ultra cool tanks / vans dubbed "Landmasters" decide to take the safest path possible (which one of them has named "Damnation Alley") to Albany, the only place from which they've ever received a radio signal. The characters include domineering tough guy Denton (George Peppard), cheerful Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent), leading lady Janice (Dominique Sanda), easygoing Keegan (Paul Winfield) and teenager Billy (Jackie Earle Haley).The odd lack of continuity creates some guffaw-inducing WTF moments; watch as switches are made from real people to dummies. The visual effects can charitably be described as negotiable. Still, there's some fun to be had in seeing giant scorpions super imposed on the desert settings. And if people aren't squirming from seeing those, there's an onslaught of killer armour-plated cockroaches that make quick work of one poor guy. Hell, there's even a bunch of survivalist rednecks (led by Robert Donner, who sports a hilariously ridiculous looking beard) with which to contend.Co-starring Kip Niven ("New Year's Evil") as another of the military guys, this also features Murray Hamilton in a noticeable but non-speaking uncredited role.At the very least, this has some decent widescreen photography by Harry Stradling Jr. and a typically excellent score by the always reliable Jerry Goldsmith.This is one of the rare cases where it would be interesting to see somebody attempt another version of the tale.Six out of 10.

If you have never seen this film, don't bother. Read the book, one of the best post apocalyptic stories written. The special effects in this film would have embarrassed a 1930's Flash Gordon episode. I've seen some reviews that try to defend the SFX by saying it's an old film, hey 1977? What other film came out that year? Oh yeah, Star Wars! You can't say the SFX in that were bad. Acting, it seems that it was such a low budget film that they could not afford to pay the actors to act, just say the unconvincing lines. If it didn't try to latch on to Roger Zelazny's story by using his title and nothing else it would pass as a slightly below average B-movie. Could only give it one star as it is such a bad adaptation of the book, even Roger Zelazny hated it.