Run Away

I've been occasionally trying to catch up on the "classics" when I watch movies. That covers not just the award-winning greats, but on this occasion, a sci-fi pinnacle: Logan's Run. It turns out that it simultaneously represents both the best and the worst of science fiction.

In the "best" column, it uses the medium as it should be used -- to propose an alternate existence as a vehicle for telling a story with social relevance that can't be told in a modern, real world setting. In this case, as most of you will probably know, the world is a distant future in which people are executed on their 30th birthday as a means of population control inside their domed city. Not that the movie much explores the social ramifications of this, to be honest, but the building blocks are there.

In the "worst" column, the movie is relentlessly hokey and cheap. I hate it when sci-fi books and films use made up words for things all over the place just to remind you that it's sci-fi. In Logan's Run, you get "protein of the sea" for fish, "Red-6" for 26 years old, and dozens of more examples of preposterous terminology. And even though a fortune must have been spent in 1976 dollars to make this film, it looks terrible; the models for wide establishing shots look like models (water doesn't miniaturize, people!), the costumes look like children's Halloween stuff, every layer of each effects composite is painfully obvious.

The acting is terrible to match. Michael York stars, and is really the best of the lot. Still, when he speaks in disbelief, there's an undercurrent more that he can't believe he's saying this crap more than actually reacting in the moment. The cast is a staircase descent from there, a very steep one with Farrah Fawcett at the bottom, who delivers every line as if reading off a cue card. (At a landing somewhere in the middle, you'll find Peter Ustinov, going on for a full minute of screen time about naming cats.)

The movie seems to ape several classic Star Trek episodes -- and not the good stuff. The hero spends half the movie in a slashed and tattered uniform. People give stilted speeches contrasting one society to another. Fight sequences look phony and robotic.

In short, a good setup at the core is the only thing this movie has going for it. I've heard a fair amount of the original book was changed in the creation of the screenplay. Perhaps that original work is more worthy. This film barely scrapes by with a D-.