Damnation Alley (1977)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
1st Lt. Jake Tanner	Jan-Michael Vincent
Major Eugene "Sam" Denton	George Peppard	½
Janice	Dominique Sanda	½
Keegan	Paul Winfield
Billy	Jackie Earle Haley	½

Review

This post-apocalyptic road-movie, a bastard offspring of the disaster genre, battles visual effects that are so bad they'd hamper almost any 1950s B-movie – something which is remarkable considering the fact that Damnation Alley was a rather big-budget project for 20th Century Fox back when it went into production in 1976. While one of the film's "stars", an armoured, 12-wheeled, caterpillar-like vehicle called the "Landmaster", quite evidently was given the royal treatment, and still looks and feels as futuristic as it is meant to be, the blue-screen compositing made to create mutant killer-bugs and the rumbling sky is downright appalling, even by 1970s standards. Keep in mind that great-looking sci-fi classics like Star Wars and Superman were made at the same time, the former even on a smaller budget than Damnation Alley's.

So it only helps a little, therefore, that the script has some purpose and director Jack Smight adds a little flair and warmth at times. The players are not bad, either, especially little Jackie Earl Haley, whose introduction livens up the proceedings. The film was loosely based on a novel of the same name by Roger Zelazny, who was reportedly not happy about the script changes. PS! If you like seeing Jan-Michael Vincent riding a motorbike, just continue down his filmography to Hooper the following year, and you'll get a lot more of it.