DAMNATION ALLEY

   Film (1977)

   Landers-Roberts/Zeitman/20th Century-Fox. Dir Jack Smight, starring Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Dominique Sanda. Screenplay Alan Sharp, Lukas Heller, based on Damnation Alley (1969) by Roger ZELAZNY. 95 mins cut to 91 mins. Colour.

   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 "land-mobiles", 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.

   PN