Damnation Alley (1977)

After WWIII, a small group of survivors make the long trek from a desert Air Force base in California to Albany, New York (where they're receiving radio signals) through a devastated, apocalyptic landscape. Their encounters include giant scorpions, man eating cockroaches and hillbilly rapists. Based on the novel by Roger Zelazny and directed by Jack Smight (AIRPORT 1975). Despite its large (for the time) $18 million dollar budget, it has the cheesiest and shoddiest special effects ever seen in a major motion picture. There's very little of Zelazny's sci-fi novel left in the final product. The hero of Zelazny's book was a convicted murderer offered a pardon which in the film morphs into a motorcycle riding ex-Air Force Lieutenant played by Jan Michael Vincent! The film retains a strong 1970s vibe from the dialogue to the bell bottoms that Paul Winfield wears. Jerry Goldsmith contributes one of his lesser scoring efforts. With George Peppard, Dominique Sanda (THE CONFORMIST) as a songwriter they pick up in Las Vegas, a young Jackie Earle Haley as a boy they also pick up along the way and Murray Hamilton whose part seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor (apparently some TV versions of the films restore some of his scenes).