Logan's Run (1976)
- Jun 25
- 3 min read
50 years ago this week, LOGAN'S RUN debuted in movie theaters. 50 years!!! A science fiction classic and major box office hit in 1976, the film belongs in the same nostalgic 70's bucket of fond memories for me as "Westworld", 'Soylent Green" and "The Omega Man".
Michael York stars as Logan, a 23rd century Sandman (policeman) who chases down "runners" alongside his partner Francis (Richard Jordan).
In this idyllic, perfect society, everyone lives in domes that offer perfect weather, free love without commitment as desired and every whim that the future can provide.
The only catch is that on your 30th birthday, when you take part in the Carousel ritual, you hope to be "reborn" as an infant to start all over again.
Runners are those intelligent folks that would like to live long enough to get a 31st birthday card, so they try to escape off the grid.
The Sandmen track them down and execute them, at which time they are picked up like yesterday's trash.
One day, Logan discovers a trinket in a runner's hand that he turns in at the end of his shift. He's soon assigned to track down the mysterious "Sanctuary" where all these runners are heading. To help him go undercover, they mark him as a runner.
Logan finds himself paired up with Jessica (Jenny Agutter) as they run for their lives through plenty of episodic adventures.
Farrah Fawcett Majors is gorgeous (but really awful) as an assistant at "New You" which offers a futuristic plastic surgery, Roscoe Lee Brown is "Box" a robot with a penchant for collecting species of every variety and the excellent Peter Ustinov steals every scene he is in as an Old Man they discover outside the dome. Ustinov famously said after the film became a hit that he improvised 99% of his dialogue. It's quirky as hell, funny and Ustinov is a genius. It works flawlessly.
The production design is excellent, with effects that were state of the art then but look pretty tacky now. The scenes outside the domes in a 23rd century Washington DC, now taken back by nature, still hold up and Jerry Goldsmith elevates everything with one of the best music scores of his long career.
As always, Goldsmith makes very specific choices to create the future. During the opening credits, the music features a full, bombastic orchestra with some electronic instruments. For action outside the city, the music is by full orchestra with no electronic instruments. Inside the city, the orchestra consists solely of strings, piano, and electronics. Some metal percussion instruments are heard in the New Face segment. It's a unique score in the Goldsmith legacy and still holds up beautifully.
This is pure fun in seventies mode, with big hair, bright clothes, fantastic sets and large scale models galore.
York is earnest and fine, Agutter gets plenty of young male hearts racing in advance of her most famous turn in "An American Werewolf in London" and its all just plain colorful, classic MGM sci-fi fun.
The infamous "Love Shop" scene originally ran about four minutes long but needed lots of editing to get to the desired PG rating!
Publicity for the film in '76 said that the sets built for this movie were the biggest and most expensive made at MGM Studios since the great musical spectacles of the 1930s and 1940s. The film was a huge hit, earning over $25 million against it's $8 million budget. It spawned a short lived and poorly regarded TV series after its success.
This is one of those 70's classics that i love revisiting. It's hard to believe that we first saw it on the big screen at the Cine Capri in Phoenix opening weekend, 50 years ago this week!
Time's up runner! Logan and company get a nostalgic B.
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