Damnation Alley
1977
Based on the book: Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny.
Director: Jack Smight
Cast Includes: Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Dominique Sanda, Paul Winfield, Jackie Earle Haley
The Primal Screen:
Damnation Alley....a truly terrible film (it's a shame that the makers didn't stick to the Roger Zelazny novel on which it was supposed to be based as they would have had something as innovative, cinematically, as Mad Max 2). It does have one memorable sequence though, at the beginning when the nuclear war is in progress: in an underground control bunker a huge illuminated map is showing the cities of America disappearing one by one and the air force personnel are watching this with a matter-of-fact calmness that is chilling.
MS Cinemania 1994 - Leonard Maltin Review:
Five survivors of nuclear wipeout travel cross-country in search of civilization. Futuristic van in which they travel is more interesting than story or characters in this uninspiring sci-fi saga. Distantly related to the Roger Zelazny novel.
The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction:
In this travesty the solitary, snarling, Hell's Angel protagonist of Zelazny's novel has become four fairly decent Air Force officers. There are almost no survivors of WWIII. The officers set out from the western USA to cross the country eastwards in 'landmobiles', seeking viable communities. The holocaust has tilted Earth's axis, turning the sky into a display of glowing radiation and electrical storms, represented by astonishingly garish and inadequate process work from an obviously low-budget special effects department. The encounter with mutated, carnivorous cockroaches stands out in an otherwise wholly laughable and random series of stereotyped adventures with murderous hillbillies, floods, a girl, a feral boy and several deaths.
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updated february 2010