Review of Damnation Alley (1977) by Christopher M — 29 Mar 2010
What an awesome piece of schlock! The story goes 20th Century Fox had scheduled 2 Sci-Fi movies for 1977. This one - their "A" movie, and their "B" movie: some wierd space epic about a boy, his two pet robots travelling with a wizard in a dilapidated old freighter piloted by a scoundrel and a 7ft tall walking carpet to rescue some princess with bagels on the side of her head! Anyway there were production problems on this film and t got stuck in post production - so they had to release the other as the blockbuster.
Anyway, back to the film in question. It is a post apocalyptic colour-by-numbers. Lets see: main ingredients.
* Mismatched buddies - check.
* Young heartthrob who is a rebel and a hothead (Jan Michael Vincent) - check.
* Old, crusty, square, play-by-the-rules, military man who thinks the younger guy has an attitude problem - check.
* This is the mid to late 70s so we have to have missile silos - check.
* Oh and of course the Russians strike first, it's not the American's fault - check.
* Mutant bugs - check.
* Yeah, Yeah and dirt bikes are cool, so we gotta have one of those - check.
* This is a post-apocalypse road movie so the vehicle has to be some gargantuan monster built by the military - check.
* Of the four who take on the journey we have: The mismatched buddies, a token black dude, who is cool and as another talent (art in this case), and another square military type (classic Star Trek Redshirt) - check.
* The other two have to die - check.
* The RedShirt dies by following the rules whilst the young dude survives by being reckless - check.
* They pick up a couple of other survivors, a beautiful woman and a young kid - check.
The post production problems involved the special effects which are awful, and that's being polite. The big-ass vehicle was better than the producers expected and become the other star of the film, and offset the dodgy effects somewhat.
All in all, great for a laugh - but no great landmark in the history of film-making.
This review of Damnation Alley (1977) was written by Christopher M on 29 Mar 2010.
Damnation Alley has generally received mixed reviews.
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