My friend let me borrow his copy of the 1976 science fiction movie LOGAN’S RUN, a movie I hadn’t seen since 1979 or so (and only on TV), so seeing this again (and unedited for the first time) was a real treat!
Watching it again, it’s amazing how many images from this movie have endured in my memory. Though the special effects in this movie seem more like they belonged in a TV show than a theatrical release, (and I kept feeling like I was watching a 70’s Glen A. Larson Show!) they must have really rocked my world at the time to have such a lasting effect on my subconscious!
And speaking of the Seventies, where else can you have a Dystopian Society looking so DISCO! I tell you, I’m ALL FOR a culture that features gorgeous women all looking like SOLID GOLD dancers with the appropriate blue eye-shadow that would make even Agnetha of ABBA proud! I was loving it from the moment the movie started!
Of course, a big reason of wanting to watch Logan’s Run after all these years is to see lovely Jenny Agutter. I barely remembered her in Logan’s Run and in fact, it wasn’t until years later when she played Nurse Alex in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON that I fell in love with her, and was excited to see her playing Jessica6 again!
Probably the thing I remembered MOST about Logan’s Run was the robot guard BOX, (and what kid watching this movie didn’t dig him!) and it was cool seeing him (it?) again, looking like a precursor to the later Cylons in Battlestar Galactica!
And while we’re on the subject of that Arctic scene, I have to say that having only seen this movie on television, nothing could have prepared me for the scene where Jessica gets out of her wet clothes into the furs…I almost had a heart attack!
Once on the outside, the images were awakening so many memories for me- the Lincoln Memorial and the State Capitol in ruins, covered with vines, as I saw these scene, my mind was going WHOA! I remember THIS!!! Soooo Impressive to a 10 year old kid!
One thing cooll was that while I remembered that Logan and Jessica had met an old man with a white beard, I hadn’t known that they were in fact IN the State capitol! And I had no inkling that all the snippets of poetry Ustinov was saying was from TS Elliot’s Book Of Cats!
Aw, what awesome memories! Like taking a time-machine back to my childhood, back when movies like 2001, Star Wars, Planet Of The Apes, Logan's Run and Silent Running was filling my head with all the wide-eyed wonders of the amazing possible future! And just think that movies like The Empire Strikes Back and Bladerunner were still to come!
