Logan's Run (1976)

Logan's Run is besides Soylent Green (1973) and Planet of the Apes (1968) one of my most favorite classic plays of the Dystopian genre.In an ideal society all people's life expectation is limited to 30 and when one reaches 30 he or she is bound to take part in a ceremony called Carousel in which one gets the chance of "renewal" - or termination. Some people try to escape that deadly circle and are called Runners, Michael York plays our hero who is a Sandman, his task: hunting and killing those Runners.Logan's Run is like the mentioned movies one of those movies that I still like to watch from time to time - Logan's Run a timeless classic. Some other recommendations for a younger audience regarding dystopian movies (old guys like me know them by heart):Outland (1981, Sean Connery) Zardoz (1974, Sean Connery again) Silent Running (1972) The Omega Man (1971) Rollerball (1975) Fahrenheit 451 (1966) A Clockwork Orange (1971) Westworld (1973) Dark Star (1974) Stalker (1979)Or check my list with more than 1k of dystopian and apocalyptic movies: Dystopia & Apocalyptica: The Downfall of Man

. . . for decades, which should come as no surprise since LOGAN'S RUN spews forth from the maw of the infamous MGM Gang, purveyors of that mendaciously racist snooze fest GONE WITH THE WIND. About the only thing that Logan's Road Show has going for it are Jenny Agutter's knockers and the fact that it's about two hours shorter than GWTW. However, Fascist Traitors such as Norquist, Rove, and Bannon have frequently threatened to "drown the American Government in a bathtub." This is exactly how LOGAN'S RUN pictures our hallowed Washington, DC. A swamp has been drained INTO our Capital, and its Black Majority are ALL dead and buried!! The Job-Killing Corrupt Fat Cat "Conservative" Corporate Red Commie One Per Centers now live in a totally homogeneous, uniformly White domed city in which robots have replaced Black Slaves\Servants to do the bidding of lazy masters who cannot be bothered to perform a lick of work. Even the robots lose patience with these insufferable Racist White People, with their Youth-based Lookism Society. A robot named "Box" strips 1,056 of these white folks naked for his Ice Cube Art Collection, while the City Computer Bot finally torches most of the remainder like so many campfire marshmallows.

Logan (Michael York) is a Sandman, someone who kills all those who refuse to sacrifice themselves on their 30th birthday. But when his clock starts ticking, Logan and Jessica (Jenny Agutter) make a run for it.I had seen this film in the mid-1990s for a class, and thought it was pretty good. Re-watching it now (2015), I can see why it is a science fiction classic, though some holes are now there. And I do not just mean plot holes (of which there are a few). The city exteriors are obviously a model, and it is almost humorous how easy it is to tell.But the story is very good and now a part of pop culture. The two leads are great, and I wish Agutter had done more horror and sci-fi in the 70s/80s. Farrah Fawcett's role is small and sort of peculiar. Peter Ustinov is great, and nice comedic relief. Now sure what was up with all the nudity, but...

Science Fiction is inherently strange, and it seems like the further back you go, the stranger the movies are, perhaps none stranger than Logan's Run. This film is considered by many to be the one of the best science fiction films of all time, so I decide to watch it for the most recent classics review. My first impression, I've seen weird before, but Logan's Run goes way beyond that, to a point of incomprehensible. After a nuclear war, a group of citizens in what was once Washington D.C., live in a self-sustained domed city. Population control is a big problem, so the builders of the city have convinced the citizen's that at the age of 30, they must enter a device known as carrousel, which will decide if they should be renewed or eliminated, the only thing is, no one has ever been renewed. A group of citizens has figured this out and run from carrousel. They are hunted by a group of officers known as sandmen. Logan 5 (Michael York) is one these sandmen, who goes undercover to try to infiltrate the runners, As his time comes closer, Logan 5 realizes they're right and he joins them, hence the name Logan's Run. The premise here is ingenious and at first I thought I'd enjoy this film, but as it went on, the pace slowed, the quality deteriorated, and the story became ridiculous. For example, after exiting the cave, the worst looking robot I've ever seen, named Box, who looks like a child wearing a box, carries on for fifteen minutes about plankton from the sea, and at that point I almost turned it off. Michael York, better know from his Austin Powers fame, stars and is actually very good, (even though it is never explained why this British guy is in a D.C. city, surrounded by Americans). York was entertaining but the rest of the cast was not, in particular Jenny Agutter, who just complained and carried on the whole time. Farrah Fawcett also makes an appears in the film, in a role that amounts to little more than eye candy. In my opinion, she would have made a much more convincing Jessica. Logan's Run starts out as a terrific futuristic adventure and looks like it's going to earn every bit of acclaim it received, but as the film progresses, it just gets worse and worse to the point of being unwatchable.