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Saturday, October 8, 2011

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. 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. Based upon the sci-fi novel by Roger Zelazny, there's very little of his 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. Directed by Jack Smight (AIRPORT 1975) and with one of Jerry Goldsmith's 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).

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