ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Although it isn't as exciting as it should have been, director Jack Smight put together a good cast for this screen version of Roger Zelazny's action-filled sci-fi adventure about a post-holocaust age in which atomic bombs have transformed America's midwestern region into a nightmarish, storm-ravaged wasteland.

Driving an ingenious tank-like vehicle, heroes Jan-Michael Vincent and George Peppard carry fellow survivors across the desert in search of civilization. They battle giant mutated scorpions and other monsters -- but the special effects are not overly impressive.

The desert vehicle is well-designed and solidly constructed.



Also starring Paul Winfield, Dominique Sanda, and Jackie Earle Haley.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

The Landmaster is one impressive vehicle.

People still incorrectly claim that it & the Ark II are the same vehicle although done with modifications.

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

[Krel]

The Ark II was built on a truck chassis. The driver looked through the grill in the nose. The driver had very poor visibility, so the nose could be removed and attached to the rear for transportation. It is reported that they never did that! In one episode they exited the Ark II by a hatch in the bottom of the nose, that is how the driver entered, and exited the vehicle.

After the show ended, the Ark II was disassembled, but they kept the nose. That is why it became the nose of the Seeker, they paid all that money to have it made, so they were going to get their money's worth out of it!

David.

[Pow]

The Seeker spacecraft was a fine looking vehicle.
I recall Space Academy had some rather decent FX for its time & budget.

Its interesting to contrast the kind of writing that was done for SA or Ark II to later Saturday morning sf TV shows like Captain Power & Hypernauts.

The scripts on the early shows were innocent,corny,unsophisticated.
The later series were darker,dramatic,more adult.

[Bud Brewster]

I'm a huge Captain Power fan. The FX aren't great, but the stories and characters are terrific.

I tried watching Damnation Alley from a Stagevu download last night and couldn't get through it. Terrible movie. When it got to the part where the characters were giggling like girls while they played slot machines in the remnants of a post holocaust Las Vegas that still had electricity, for no logical reason, I just couldn't take it anymore.

My apologies to the folks who like this movie. Just expressing my opinions.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

[Bogmeister]

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A bigger-budgeted post-holocaust sci-fi picture than the usual seventies efforts, this begins at a desolate air force base and turns into a road movie — a Road Warrior-type road movie.

This film was delayed for a few months due to FX fix-ups (which didn't help it). Then Star Wars came out and the studio executives hoped this would make at least as much money as that Lucas-directed fiasco . . . ah, it didn't.

The studio re-edited the film before release, cutting out scenes and upsetting star Peppard; it failed. Strangely, there wasn't an official DVD release of this until 2011. Oh, and, Roger Zelazny, I hear, hated this film version of his novel.

I'm not surprised to hear that.



ABOVE: Jackie Earle Haley, Dominique Sanda, Jan-Michael

Vincent & George Peppard in front of the Landmaster. Yes, that's the same Haley who would play Rorschach in Watchmen so many years later in 2009.

I also read the book by Zelazny. I think I read it just before seeing the movie back in '77. Zelazny's tale is different from the movie version in terms of the characters. In the book, the main character of Hell Tanner is a Hell's Angel-type of biker outlaw who is forced into the position of being some kind of hero. As for his name, the story goes that when he was born, his father was asked what to name him and the daddy kind of just growled "hell" in disgust as he stalked out.



In the movie, I don't think Tanner has a first name and he's a straight-arrow type, a member of the Air Force. As played by Jan-Michael Vincent, he's the younger, less-disciplined officer to George Peppard's older, more gruff one.

Paul Winfield is a 3rd officer who turns after everything blows up. They set out in a special vehicle from their wrecked base to see what's what in the desolation of the new America. They stop off in Vegas, finding Dominique Sanda all alone in what's left of the gambling capital, and later come across Jackie Earle Haley, a kid who likes to throw rocks.

The special Landmaster vehicle has an earlier, smaller version in the children's sf TV series Ark II, which aired a year before this film.

I liked the film overall when I watched it as a teen. It was a pretty exciting adventure and I thought the giant scorpions were cool (a brief scene, however, and it does not hold up well these days).

I liked the whole post-apocalyptic setting: the 12-wheeled Landmaster super-vehicle (the best character, unfortunately), the irradiated hillbilly villains, some of the FX towards the end, and especially the mutated cockroaches in the most intense sequence in the middle of the film.

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This is the one scene that still creeps me out a bit, even as I know that the 'carpet-swarm' of the deadly critters is less-than-fully-realistic nowadays. But, the whole concept of now-empty cities infested with such nasty vermin sends a little chill down me spine. This concept is not done too much in post-nuclear war film settings, even though everyone believes (or believed) that bugs such as this would be the only ones to possibly thrive in such an aftermath.

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I'm not as impressed with the film nowadays — I last checked it out a couple of years ago. It's a bit too by-the-numbers and the characters are a bit bland. The beginning is ok, but the ending is very uneventful and dull, with a strange turn-for-the-better slant to it that doesn't make all that much sense — it's as if someone decided this needed a positive ending, against all logic.

Trivia From the Alley: uncredited small role for Murray Hamilton as the general in the early scenes. Though most of the killer cockroach scenes were done with fakes on carpets, there were 300 actual Madagascar Cockroaches imported for the scenes, as well. As required, these were shipped back when their scenes were done. However, about 5 years later a few of these were spotted in the rafters where filming took place.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10



BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Krel]

Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches are used by Zoos as feed for animals that eat insects. I learned this at the New Orleans Audubon Zoo, where they had them in the Cockroach tank in the Louisiana Creatures of the Night exhibit. When I asked about them not being Cockroaches*, I was told that Zoos use Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches as feed insects. At one time they were being sold as pets!

David.

*I never did find out why there were no Cockroaches in the Cockroach tank.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production,
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~ This was 20th Century-Fox's big-budget science-fiction project in 1976. Hoping it would be a success, the studio made an effort to focus all the marketing on this film. At the same time, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was a little-publicized modest film, and the studio was convinced that it would fail. Ironically, Damnation Alley bombed while Star Wars became the bigger hit.

Note from me: I'm not surprised that the Fox "suits" underestimated the popularity of Star Wars, but I am surprised that they thought Damnation Alley was going to be a big hit.

~ Roger Zelazny, the author of the novel "Damnation Alley", hated the film version.

Note from me: I read the novel years ago and liked it.

~ The "Landmaster"'s "guidance system" consists of an ordinary Texas Instruments desk calculator. To the left of the driver's seat, is an ordinary "water depth finder," ordinarily found on a fishing boat.

Note from me: Yes indeed, no rugged, super-advanced all-terrain vehicle in a post-apocalyptic world would be complete without a calculator and a depth finder!

~ 20th Century-Fox "developed" a rival to Universal's gimmicky "Sensurround" sound process (popularized in the theatrical release of Earthquake (1974)) that was only used for the theatrical release of "Damnation Alley" called "Sound 360." This process was basically a variation of Magnetic-Optical Stereo sound.

This technical advancement/gimmick in sound did not last past "Damnation Alley", although it was planned for Walter Hill's The Driver (1978) and Damien: Omen II (1978). If you look at the one sheet of "Damnation Alley" the "Sound 360" declaration and logo are prominent at the bottom.

Note from me: As I mentioned in a post I made a few days ago about Outland, I remember seeing Earthquake, and the theatrical versions of the pilots for Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers which had that thunderous sound process.

It was more annoying than impressive . . .

~ The sequence in which Tanner evades the giant scorpions on his motorcycle was originally filmed with full-sized animatronic scorpions. When the end result was deemed unsatisfying, footage of real scorpions was superimposed over the animatronic ones during post-production. Although not seen in the actual film, the original full-sized scorpions did appear in publicity photos which circulated when "Damnation Alley" was released.

Note from me: It's a shame that time and money was spent to develop something which didn't work well, thus making it necessary to substitute a less convincing special effect.

__ Everything you need to know about Damnation Alley


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

The Landmaster was a two-part vehicle, the flexible joint was just for show, as the there was no opening between the two sections. Anytime you see the Landmaster interior that runs from front to back, it is a set. Of course most large, and small functioning vehicles in movies and TV have separate interior sets for ease of filming.

My favorite line in the movie was George Peppard at the wheel of the Landmaster as it races through the city. He is barking into the radio about the city being infested with killer cockroaches in that southern accent!

David,

[Pow]

"Damnation Alley" budget : $8,000,000.
''Star Wars : A New Hope" budget : $11,000,000.

Always thought that it was a shame that the Landmaster was not reused by some other film or television production.

Captain Power, Space: Above & Beyond, and Battlestar Galactica (Rebooted version) are three sci~fi TV shows that the Landmaster would have fit in perfectly.

[Krel]

It was used in two productions that I can think of. it was the robot Paperboy 2000 in "Get A Life", and it was a armored personnel carrier in the 1994 movie "A.P.E.X.". I have to admit that I had to look for the name of movie.

David.