“Logan’s Run” (1976)
A remake of “Logan’s Run” is one of the more elusive projects in Hollywood. It’s been in the works for over a decade, with filmmakers including Bryan Singer (who got as far as pre-production back in 2006), Carl Erik Rinsch, Joseph Kosinski and Nicolas Winding Refn, not to mention what feels like a dozen screenwriters coming and going, without the film ever getting any closer to actually getting made. But there’s probably a reason that it continues to be developed; the premise has the perfect mix of great concept, and middling, dated first-time execution. Based on the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, it’s set in 2274, where the last of humanity live in a sealed dome city run by a computer. It’s a carefree life for the inhabitants, but with one catch: at 30 years of age, the denizens inside are vaporized, with the promise that they’ll be reborn. Logan 5 (Michael York) is a Sandman, whose job is to track down those who refuse to accept the ritual of Carousel when they reach the big 3-0, but he falls under the spell of a beautiful Runner (Jenny Agutter, who spends most of the film wearing basically nothing), and is soon out to bring the whole racket crumbling down. The concept of a world of nothing-but-youth is a killer one, but the film (from “Around The World In 80 Days” helmer Michael Anderson) never makes the most of it, preferring to be a fairly standard chase movie, with only a typically excellent Peter Ustinov (as a veteran Runner living outside the dome) giving a sense of what it would really be like. The sets and the fantastical sci-fi milieu are undeniably impressive (even when it’s dated and funny looking), but the filmmaking never really rises to the challenge. Additionally, the film is engaging in its opening (sometimes silly) sci-fi setting, but gets increasingly slow and dull when the characters reach the “real world” (Ustinov can only help so much). Perhaps most crucially, York is clearly too old for the role as it is. This is one case where a remake might be able to improve on the original.
“The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976)
Are we so sure about Ziggy Stardust not being based in reality? David Bowie does a pretty convincing job in Nicolas Roeg’s surrealist sci-fi classic of playing a stranded alien trapped on Earth and forced to become a technology mogul in order to rebuild his spaceship and send resources back to his dying planet. Bowie’s “Thomas Jerome Newton” however, gets lost in the excesses of the era (as, coincidentally, had so many of the period’s finest directors, musicians and actors) his vices eventually swallowing his ambitions and clouding his focus. Gradually his native curiosity turns into an insatiable appetite for alcohol, television and fetishistically exploring his alien pansexuality (cue one of the most fucked-up sex scenes to ever hit the screen) as he slowly, in typically Roeg-ian hypnotic fashion, falls from grace. Featuring great support from Buck Henry, Rip Torn, Candy Clark and even Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell in a cameo, Bowie’s turn, in his first lead performance, is so intense as to feel pretty definitive, though surprisingly he wasn’t the first person considered for the role. That honor goes to the late novelist/director Michael Crichton who, according to Roeg, had the requisite height, because “imagine if aliens came down to Earth, they’d actually be quite tall.” Roeg’s adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel may be surprisingly insular considering the picture’s global implications, but its moody, nightmarish tone and hallucinatory sequences turn “The Man Who Fell to Earth” into a hypnotic, trance-inducing experience beyond your average genre “experiment.”
“No Blade Of Grass” (1970)
“A vision of chaos and destruction that could come true. Perhaps it’s happening now!” So warns the trailer to “No Blade of Grass,” Cornel Wilde‘s British breakdown-of-society exploitation picture. Shot a few years after Wilde’s survivalist masterpiece “The Naked Prey,” “No Blade of Grass” doubles-down on the man vs. nature struggle, with a virus attacking the food supply, plunging the world into anarchy and cannibalism. An eye-patch wearing Nigel Davenport leads his family out of imploding London to the countryside, which he foolishly thinks will be safer. There he runs afoul of biker gangs and rapists. Being British, however, they are at least well-spoken in their threats. “No Blade of Grass” is a nice mix of “Day of the Triffids,” “Mad Max,” environmental panic and anti-Government paranoia (they’re keeping the facts from us, naturally.) Davenport’s tough guy paterfamilias is standard fare for Hollywood, but the British-ness of this film is enough to keep it unique.
“The Omega Man” (1971)
We’ve always advocated that Hollywood should remake bad movies with good premises and for once they listened. Warner Bros.’ “I Am Legend” is a remake of the 1960s post-apocalyptic, “Omega Man,” but if you thought the Will Smith film is lame, typically empty tentpole fodder, you haven’t seen the original. Granted, they’re almost nothing like each other just sharing a basic premise, but there are few even ironic joys in the Boris Sagal-directed version. Starring Charlton Heston as a military scientist (you know, that type that also kick-ass), the basic narratives are the same: U.S. Army Col. Robert Neville, M.D (Heston) is the last man standing on the earth. Set in 1977, a disease has wiped out most of the planet and left it an empty shell of dead bodies which leaves Neville tons of free shit to ransack as the de facto “last man standing” (or so he thinks anyhow). However, while the Francis Lawrence version saw those infected with the virus become superhuman zombie types that only come out at night, the 1960s version sees them transformed into black-hooded, white-haired albino sub-humans that spout rhetoric about abandoning the “old ways” of science, modernity, electricity, etc., in favor of living in the shadows with nothing but torches and hatred for any humans that remain. In short, the antagonists of the picture are comically lame goofballs, in shiny black cloaks whose goal in life is to kill Charlton Heston. Essentially, the “monsters” of the movie are super dated and super silly and therefore not scary, or much of any threat. Heston teams up with a jive-talkin’ afro-militant black woman, but that’s about as ironically compelling as the film gets beyond its interesting concept. For ’70s sci-fi die-hards or Charlton Heston fans (NRA members?) only.
“Phase IV” (1974)
The sole feature film directed by Saul Bass, the genius-level graphic designer behind credit sequences for Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese, among others, “Phase IV” was a much-derided disaster on release, and when seen now, is mostly viewed as a campy mess by the irony crowd (it was featured on “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” for instance). But while it’s far from a success, it’s a fascinating film, far better than its reputation suggests, that makes one wish that Bass had had more chances to direct. Set, unlike most of these films, in the present day (essentially), it involves a group of scientists (most notably Nigel Davenport and Michael Murphy) investigating strange occurrences among the ant population, who seem to have evolved, developed a hive mind, and are seemingly constructing strange buildings in the desert. It’s clearly, a bonkers idea, and it doesn’t help much that Bass treats it with a straight-face, with his actors somewhat struggling as a result. But once you get past the sentient-ant premise, it’s actually quite thought-provoking, and Bass directs the hell out of it, from hugely impressive ant sequences (captured by wildlife photographer Ken Middleham), to unsettling, trippy editing. It’s become a cult classic for the wrong reasons, but it deserves a more straight-faced reevaluation these days.
