MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: DAMNATION ALLEY (1977)

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Thursday, October 13, 2022

DAMNATION ALLEY (1977)

Infamous as the pricey flop 20th/Fox figured would be the big Sci-Fi hit of 1977, studio execs dissing that cheap, goofy thing George Lucas had opening a few months earlier, you really didn’t need hindsight to spot this as a nothing burger.* A post-nuclear holocaust road pic that’s almost shockingly incompetent. (A small group of survivors from one of the last functioning military defense stations drive cross-country in a rough-and-ready tank to reach what’s left of civilization.) A dud on every level: acting, story construction, special effects. Naturally killing off their one Black principal, a sacred ‘70s film tradition. More interesting than anything on screen is figuring out how anyone could have watched this and STAR WARS, their ‘other’ Sci-Fi release that year, than decide to push DAMNATION ALLEY, imagining the other film would quietly die. Of course, the answer is: they didn’t see STAR WARS. They probably didn’t bother to look at either film. (These are important Hollywood execs! You think they have time to watch movies?) What they did see were box-office reports on hack journeyman director Jack Smight’s last two films before this, AIRPORT 75/’74 and MIDWAY/’75. Typical commercial crap from Universal Studios under the Lew Wasserman regime. Both made money. That they were horrible films never entered into the equation . . . or showed on the money flow charts. The former a sequel to a wildly popular film; the latter an all-star WWII actioner outfitted with Universal’s rumbling ‘Sensurround’ gimmick woofers. (That they took notice of, shaking theater walls with Fox’s own Sound 360° . . . whatever that was.) Amuse yourself imagining Dominique Sanda’s C.V. after this failed attempt at Hollywood stardom: Directors I’ve worked with include De Sica, Visconti, Bertolucci & Smight.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *They really could read box-office reports; quickly reviving old Double-Bill models to pair this with an honest to goodness B-pic made with one-tenth the budget. See poster.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For a post-nuclear dystopian road pic, there’s MAD MAX and its various sequels.

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Thursday, October 13, 2022

DAMNATION ALLEY (1977)

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