Change Your Image
public-971-833411
Reviews
Logan's Run (1976)
Freedom's just another word for nothing' left to lose
When this movie came out, it made such a huge impression on me that I went and made my own "ankh" and carried it in my pocket all the time, as if it might be the key to my own escape somehow. Then I got "born again" and I saw the movie as being atheist propaganda (there is no heaven), so I threw my ankh into the Sound. When a movie connects with a viewer that deeply, it's real art.
Maybe it was the right movie at the right time for a trapped teenager. I'm not so sure it was the product of its age. By 1976, the revolution had already failed, there was no age of Aquarius, and the Summer of Love was just a silly phase a few people had gone through back when they were young. The reality of the mid-70s was inflation, gas lines, and disco music, not the search for freedom and the questioning of faith.
I was astounded to see they made this whole movie for only $15 million. A decade ago, they paid Pierce Brosnan $15 million just to read his lines (actual acting would have cost more, presumably) in "Dante's Peak". Even though the model city with its model trains is pretty much straight out of "Metropolis", and actual locations were juxtaposed rather incongruously (California chaparral next to Texas water park next to kudzu-covered city), the sets are pretty good and do convey the sense of a very clean, pleasurable, Caucasian, and definitely indoor, society -- a suburban shopping mall, in other words. If nothing else, the concept and the story telling are good enough that they transcend some economies of production, and I'm the kind of guy who looks at the flashpots and wonders if the greenish tint is from zinc dust or barium chlorate.
There isn't near so much '70s camp in LR as there was in, say, the Planet of the Apes sequels -- no ridiculous sideburns, unzipped shirts on male chests, urban-cool stereotype black guys, platform shoes, and polyester. I actually kind of like the idea of having a shopping mall stand in for the social and religious center of beautifully-trapped people. Shortly after the movie came out, a new shopping mall was built in Federal Way, and when I walked in and saw the sunken circular central court with its circular ceiling detail overhead, I thought I was walking into the Carousel and almost expected to be lifted up in the air.
I do wonder what kids these days think about a period-piece like Logan's Run. It's all about freedom, but these days it's connectivity, rather than freedom, that seems important to the young people.
Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar (1967)
Log drive on the Clearwater
This is one of those movies you just watch for the pictures. There isn't much of a story and there isn't much acting, aside from the animals, but the scenery is great and it's amazing they can train animals like that.
It's worth watching just to see actual footage of one of the last log drives on the Clearwater river. Not long after the movie was made, the Clearwater was dammed up, and that whole beautiful valley was killed by the muck and slack-water behind Dworshak dam. If they tried to make a movie like this these days, they'd have to do it with CGI, because you just can't pile up 600,000 feet of old-growth logs and dump them in a river any more, even if you could find one that wasn't dammed up. The animal rights people would probably have something to say about having a cougar jump into a pen full of sheep and run over top of a bunch of piglets, too.
There are some hokey parts of the production such as the "moonlight" cougar romp under a bright sunny sky, and the dynamiting of a small pile of driftwood that is supposed to be a "log jam" (after lighting the "wick", no less), but in the genre of "animal pictures" this is one of the best.