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Loosely adapted from Roger Zelanzy's 1969 short story, Damnation Alley arrives on blu-ray courtesy of those B-movie lovers over at Shout! Factory. The film, originally made in 1977, cost more to make than Star Wars: A New Hope did and looks about a thousand times cheaper. Odd, I know, but when oversized scorpions threaten a motorcyclist courtesy of some low-budget optical effects, Damnation Alley makes the campy science fiction movies of the 1950s look like Avatar. Yet, the film has its own merits when viewed as an insane post-apocalyptic journey across America.
Lt. Jake Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Maj. Sam Denton (George Peppard) can barely stand each other. Working together as Air Force officers sharing ICBM silo shifts deep underground, the two are caught off-guard when WWIII begins and America’s missile defenses aren’t strong enough to stop the bombardment of nuclear bombs hitting various cities across the United States.
A nuclear holocaust is what they witness and what they survive. Eventually they abandon the silos for land adventures along with Keegan (Paul Winfield) and Perry (Kip Niven) in super-sized 12-wheeled Hummers. Their goal is to look for other survivors - Janice (Dominique Sanda) and Billy (Jackie Earle Haley) - and get to Albany, New York in one piece. Yet, flesh-eating cockroaches, sand storms, weird skies, and trippy wild-eyed sandbillies stand in their way.
While logic largely leaves this narrative with little direction, the sense of cinematic fun and child-like ‘what if’ moments keeps the picture from being a total waste of time. This is pure B-movie mayhem and magic with glorious amounts of goopy cheese heaped on it for good measure. With craters in the plain states and bleeding radiation sores in a roadside diner, Damnation Alley could seriously give a damn about answering any questions its audience might have about exactly how this movie operates. It’s making up the rules as it goes along.
Stock footage is used for explosions, models are sent floating in bathtub water, and bizarre sky effects are used quite extensively. The film barrels in full-throttle at an easy 90 minutes, but – due to large narrative gaps and time loss – it’s rather suspect. Certainly, there is more footage we were meant to see that got whopped off in favor of making the film a little more kid friendly.
Directed by Jack Smight, Damnation Alley gets most of its science and logic wrong. This isn’t a movie known for its musings on surviving an unholy war on an unholy planet. Hell, there’s no explanation of how the Air Force has uncontaminated water two years after the world blew up. Yet, the gonzo heart of this dim-witted farcical pile of science fiction hokum keeps it from being, for lack of a better word, a total bomb.
MPAA Rating: PG - parental guidance is suggested.
