LOGAN'S
RUN
  
STARRING:
Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov,
Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Roscoe Lee Browne
1976, 120 Minutes, Directed by: Michael Anderson
 Description:
Set in the year 2274, when ecological disaster has driven civilization to the
protection of domed cities, the story revolves around a society that holds a
ceremonial death ritual for all citizens who reach the age of 30. In a
diseaseless city where free sex is encouraged and old age is virtually unknown,
Logan (Michael York) is a "sandman," one who enforces this radical method of
population control (but he's about to turn 30 and he doesn't want to die).
Escaping from the domed city via a network of underground passages, Logan is
joined by another "runner" named Jessica (Jenny Agutter), while his former
sandman partner (Richard Jordan) is determined to terminate Logan's rebellion. —
Amazon.com
One
doesn't always realize how much Star Wars has
changed movie-making unless one happens to see films like Logan's
Run.
Made in 1976 (i.e., a year before Star Wars) Logan's
Run represented the state-of-the-art special effects of its
time. (It actually received an Oscar for it.) However, today the
special effects look cheap and the 1970s fashions achingly
embarrassing. Unlike Star Wars, Logan's Run aged
badly. But that doesn't make it a bad movie. In fact, it is more
sci-fi than most of the efforts that get foisted upon us
nowadays.
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"What the future was thought to be like back in the 1970s . . ." |
Nowadays, sci-fi movies are little else than action
movies dressed up with a thin futuristic veil. Logan's Run
goes for the "chase movie" option about halfway through
the movie (also incidentally its weakest half, especially for
modern audiences weaned on action extravaganzas like Terminator
2 - Judgment and The
Rock).
In
the first half an interesting future is depicted: a domed city in
the 23rd century which is a virtual utopia. Unending
pleasure, an utterly controlled environment, etc. Nobody grows
old either - but that is the catch: everybody has to go for
"renewal" (i.e., die) at the age of 30.
Obviously not
everybody is too enchanted with this idea and so-called
"runners" often try to flee the city for a place called
"Sanctuary." These runners are pursued by futuristic
policemen called "Sandmen". When a sandman named Logan
Five (played by Michael York) decides to run, he and an
accomplice (Jenny Agutter in a very skimpy outfit) discovers the
truth about what is "outside" and about Sanctuary.
Based
on a novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, Logan's
Run later on inspired a short television series of the same
name. (Which for budgetary reasons I suppose choose to focus on
events during their time on the outside rather than on events
directly after the movie - that is if my memory serves me
correctly.)
Despite
some dreary bits, Logan's Run isn't bad sci-fi and is an
interesting exercise in what the future was thought to be like
back in the 1970s: all high-tech and sanitized with clean and
efficient energy, not the grungy dystopian futures depicted in
films of the 1980s like Blade
Runner and its
ilk. Back then people still believed in a glitzier and better future . . .
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