Logan’s Run (1976) - film review

In the 23rd Century, their world ravaged by war and pollution, the last survivors of the human race live in a great domed city.  With all work now undertaken by machines, mankind lives only for pleasure, but at a price.  To maintain the delicate equilibrium on which this perfect society depends, nobody is allowed to live beyond his or her thirtieth birthday.  Having reached this age, everyone is expected to enter the fiery Carrousel, which offers the prospect of rebirth after being burned alive.  Some do not wish to be reborn and attempt to escape the city.  These so-called runners are pursued by armed guards known as the Sandmen, who despatch summary execution.  One Sandman, Logan 5, is instructed by the Computer to venture outside the city and locate the Sanctuary, the place where the runners are believed to be hiding.  Logan’s life clock is advanced by four years so that he too must go on the run, or else end up in the Carrousel...

Logan’s Crawl would have been a more accurate title, so slowly and clumsily does this lurching abomination of a sci-fi movie dawdle along, like an asthmatic one-legged tortoise on a broken Zimmer frame.  This film is good for one thing, and one thing only: to fully appreciate the enormous revolution in sci-fi entertainment that George Lucus and Steven Spielberg brought about with their more inspired offerings in the genre, Star Wars and Close Encounters, both released one year after this substandard mountain of crud.  No one can watch Logan’s Run today and keep a straight face, and that’s assuming the intrepid spectator can stay awake long enough to see it through to the end.

There is certainly some mileage in the film’s basic premise - a society whose citizens must be murdered when they reach a certain age - but the delivery is completely botched, through a dismal screenplay, some truly uninspired direction, risible performances and special effects that manage to be even less convincing than those seen in the weaker installments of the TV series Lost In Space.  The plot has more holes than a Gruyère cheese and defies logic almost as effortlessly as an interview with Sarah Palin, although even this is acceptable when you compare it with the dialogue, which makes Sesame Street look like an Ingmar Bergman film.  Who would think that this grotesque sci-fi misfire was directed by the same man who had helmed such well-regarded classics as The Dam Busters (1955) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)?  Michael York and Jenny Agutter should have put in a claim for compensation - their appearances in this film couldn’t have done their careers much good.

Despite its manifest failings, Logan’s Run is still (inexplicably) considered a classic in some quarters.  The film does have one or two entertaining moments (including a nice histrionic outpouring from Farrah Fawcett) and does offer a sobering reflection on the kind of society we may be at risk of becoming (one that is completely desensitised to sex and violence, whilst being totally subservient to authority).  However, it is so obviously a mere shadow of what it could have been if a more talented production team had got their hands on it.  A remake of the film is currently in preparation, scheduled for release in 2010.  Rumoured to be more faithful to William F. Nolan’s original novel, this looks to be a far better bet than the camp yawn-a-minute monstrosity that somehow found its way on to cinema screens in 1976.

© Chris Alderton 2009

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