Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Nothing in common with the book by Roger Zelazny except the title and a cross-country expedition. And even the book was one of Zelazny's weakest, which he admitted. In book, story starts years after the war. Reason for expedition cross-country change. Destination change. Characters added. Principal character drastically changed. Events along route change. Ending had no relationship with original story. Star of the film became the Landmaster versus the actual story and characters. This movie shows how Hollywood Sci-fi movie budgets of 1950-2000 period usually influenced most Sci-fi scripts, usually for the worse. Putting special effects ahead of the story.

Based on Roger Zelazny's novel, film tells the story of a sudden nuclear war that breaks out between the U.S. & Russia, leaving a devastated world which has tipped on its axis. Despite this calamity, a group of survivors at a missile bunker(among them George Peppard & Jan Michael Vincent) must take to the road in armored RVs after the bunker is accidentally destroyed, where they encounter weird weather, hostile people, and killer cockroaches...all the while trying to reach the safe haven of New Jersey.Strange film has a good cast, and effective action scenes(not to mention an impressive RV, the film's highlight) but an ultimately silly and absurd story, that doesn't bother with things like plausibility and scientific accuracy. A real shame, because the elements were there, it just doesn't come together satisfactorily.

Throughout the beginning of the last half of the 20th century, multiple films have been made that were based off of novels that took place in dystopic wastelands after nuclear fallout. This was all due to the U.S. and Russia being two of the biggest super powers at the time and were currently having a cold war over it. Well this science fiction genre film is no different in that aspect. But everything else about it isn't entertaining at all.Damnation Alley (1977) is a film adaptation of novelist Roger Zelazny's short story of the same name. And honestly, I think Zelazny's work was more enjoyable than this. This whole movie is just one giant traveling expedition. There is no plot. Did the writers bother to even jot down the plot or did they just create dialog for the characters? I mean Lukas Heller, the screenwriter from The Dirty Dozen (1967) was on the crew list! Did he become lazy and decide to let Alan Sharp do all the work? And that's just the plot, let's dive into the characters.The storyline follows Major Eugene Denton played by George Peppard and a small band of misfit characters. That's right, John Hannibal Smith from the original A-Team (1983) stars in this film. Unfortunately, he did not make a wise choice to join this slog of a mess. Along with Peppard is a young Jan-Michael Vincent, who earlier starred in the classic The Mechanic (1972), Paul Winfield who later would play a role in Schwarzenegger's The Terminator (1984) and even Jackie Earle Haley has a part as a homeless kid. Yes! Even the actor who plays Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) remake and Rorschach from Zack Snyder's Watchmen (2009) plays in this movie.Oh and I have no idea how this girl named Janice (Dominique Sanda) even held her own at Las Vegas inside a gambling building with a bunch of sand. Not to mention but she's just there to be an annoying damsel in distress. Not needed. But enough about her. Here there's barely anything for these characters to expand on. What's made up for lost time, is filler with either traveling through wasteland or trying to survive radioactive storms. Isn't it amazing how well the cast was put together even before half these actors were famous and still this movie couldn't get much of anything right? Truly sad.The writers are really to blame for this film. Every ten minutes it would be a reoccurring plot point. Travel a little, stop a little, and every time they stopped, they'd either run into someone or something. Sometimes it's human, other times they're over-sized killer animals. It's just lame. Oh and let's not forget that every time they stop, Jan- Michael Vincent has to pull out his trusty motorcycle to solve all his problems. He uses it for everything! Not even composer Jerry Goldsmith could save this movie. Never have I heard a score so weird that it I couldn't tell what it was trying to represent. The music sounds like a cross between a video game and real orchestra music. Also it didn't help that for majority of the time, the music was absent. The score is so minimal it is barely even used in any of the important scenes. Even the introduction had me sitting awkward. Nuclear warheads are blowing up the country and there's no music going on at all?! I mean, that's what it would be like in real life but this is a movie! It's supposed to enhance that experience.The only points I do give it, is for having the really cool looking landmaster vehicle and a couple good special effects. The effects were standard but SOME of the way the sky's were constructed. They were rather neat. I was more interested in that than the story or characters. The landmaster was also cool. Twelve wheels, rockets, could even be used in the ocean and an extended cabin? What a fortress. That is definitely a vehicle that could withstand nuclear fallout. Besides this, the film is a wreck unfortunately.This science fiction film adaptation is a boring trek about a story that's not even being told. The whole film is just random events put together.

I can personally guarantee that if you saw this thing in 1981 when you were 10 years old, you thought it was the coolest thing ever. Outside that rather limited demographic, Damnation Alley is just another 70s flick that has aged badly. From an assload of stock footage to an ending that feels like they just cut off the last 30 pages of the script when the production ran out of money, this movie is a reminder that schlock has always been around in Hollywood.After an opening 10 minutes that plays out like the alternate ending to War Games, we find the Earth devastated by a nuclear war. At one lone remaining outpost in California, Major Eugene Denton (George Peppard) has finally gotten ready to launch an expedition to the only other place he's gotten any sign of life from…Albany, New York. Joined by Tanner and Keegan (Jan-Michael Vincent and Paul Winfield), two former officers who ditched the military when the world went up in smoke, they clamber aboard a military superbus and set off on the only cross country path not steaming with radiation. This brave new world includes giant scorpions, flesh-eating cockroaches, super storms and gun-toting hillbillies, yet much of the movie consists of very undramatic driving scenes underscored by extremely dramatic music from Jerry Goldsmith. Our intrepid trio find a surviving female in Las Vegas and the future Rorschach in a shack, only to have all their problems solved when the Earth suddenly heals itself overnight.The highlights of Damnation Alley are George Peppard admirably making an effort to do more here than just cash a paycheck and the aforementioned superbus, which the even more aforementioned 10 year old in 1981 absolutely thought was the neatest thing he'd ever seen. With a missile rack on top, a flexible middle and a tri-wheel drive system that appeared to actually work in real life, the superbus was an pre-adolescent's dream car. I would also guess building it consumed about 75% of the budget for this motion picture. At least that's the only acceptable reason I can come up with for the incredibly cheap look of everything else.The lowlights include what may be one of the first "black guy as designated victim in a sci-fi/horror film" roles, Jan-Michael Vincent trying to play an edgy rebel and giving the character all the emotional anguish of a Tiger Beat cover boy, and that anachronistic 70s thing where big screen films now look like bad TV movies. I'm not sure why or how it happened, but a lot of 70s cinema was made with bad sets and hackneyed camera work. You don't see it in the 60s, where even low-budget crap is still recognizable as intended for the big screen. You don't see it in the 80s, where a sheen of technical sameness crept over the industry. But in the 70s it became weirdly common to see sets that look like something out of the Carol Burnett Show and direction that screams "I was an intern for one season on McMillan and Wife!"Unfortunately, Damnation Alley doesn't sink so low it qualifies as "so bad it's good". This is just plain old bad, poorly plotted dreck. Unless you're a 10 year old in 1981 somehow reading this review through a space-time vortex, find something better to watch.