Thursday, February 05, 2009

Damnation Alley

Damnation Alley is a 1977 post-apocalyptic science fiction film starring Jan Michael Vincent. I can't remember the last time I saw or heard of him, but he made a big impression on me when I saw him in Sandcastles in high school. Also starring are George Peppard and Paul Winfield (who has a Star Trek connection). Jerry Goldsmith did the music. It's very loosely based on the Zelazny novel with the same name. It was never released on DVD, and the VHS version is out of print.

I like it fine, and at least it doesn't have a love triangle. Vincent and Winfield get to sing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". You don't want to miss that, now do you?

Youtube has it in 10 sections. Part 1:

part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10

1000 Misspent Hours closes by saying that "It’s certainly no classic, but it doesn’t strike me as an outright failure, either." StompTokyo doesn't have much positive to say. Foster on Film says it's a "soul sucking, career-destroying joke".

Moria calls the movie "a travesty" and "a real Grade Z film" and calls Jan-Michael Vincent's performance "dull". They say,
Damnation Alley has been held up as the perfect example of Hollywood’s lack of understanding of science-fiction literature and a case illustration of what happens when filmmakers decide they know better.

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