Logan’s Run

I snagged Logan’s Run from the library because I’ve not seen it in almost a decade. I can appre­ci­ate it [only slight­ly] more now that I’m old­er.

I find the movie quite enjoy­able, but this time the first thing I noticed is how stu­pid the future looks. Every­thing is glass and chrome and esca­la­tors, every­one wears these ridicu­lous mono­chro­mat­ic out­fits that bare­ly cov­er any­thing [the women espe­cial­ly have these scanty pon­cho things that leave their sides com­plete­ly exposed and just bare­ly go low enough to leave some­thing to the imag­i­na­tion. thanks to the cast­ing and the basic premise of the movie, they are quite easy on the eyes.]

No one is allowed to live past 30. When you reach that age you must basi­cal­ly offer your­self in a form of altru­is­tic sui­cide called ‘carousel.’ Until you reach 30 you can live a life of hedo­nism. The main char­ac­ter, Logan 5 [Michael York] is a Sand­man, basi­cal­ly a kind of cop who chas­es down Run­ners — 30 year olds who try to flee carousel. Logan is charged by the City com­put­er to find a place called Sanc­tu­ary and destroy it. Sanc­tu­ary is where all of the suc­cess­ful Run­ners sup­pos­ed­ly go.

So Logan gets ahold of Jes­si­ca [Jen­ny Agut­ter] who he had dialed up for ran­dom sex the evening before. [Free love is still very much free of con­se­quence in this movie, a true sign that is is pre-HIV and of just how much HIV and all the oth­er STDs have changed our thoughts in this area]. Jes­si­ca knows about Sanc­tu­ary and knows how to help Logan escape the City.

They even­tu­al­ly make it out­side after sev­er­al har­row­ing escapes and some com­plete­ly gra­tu­itous nudi­ty in an ice cav­ern on a bearskin rug. Once out­side they spend a day search­ing for water and when they find it they pork for the first time whilst skin­ny dip­ping. Logan’s best friend, anoth­er Sand­man, tracks them to the ruins of Wash­ing­ton D.C. where they run into a crazy old her­mit [Peter Usti­nov, who will for­ev­er only be the voice of Prince John in Dis­ney’s ani­mat­ed Robin Hood]. The oth­er Sand­man gets killed in a fight with the Amer­i­can flag, Logan and Jes­si­ca con­vince the crazy old her­mit to accom­pa­ny them back to the city where they will free every­one from their 30 year prison sen­tence of sex, drugs and debauch­ery. They suc­ceed, the end.

Far­rah Faw­cett-Majors is in this movie and has to be the most brain­less twit I have ever had the amaze­ment to observe. I don’t real­ly know any­thing about Far­rah Faw­cett except that she was sup­pos­ed­ly a hot­ty back in the 1970s. I find it hard to believe that she could actu­al­ly be so dumb in real life. Is’t pos­si­ble?

There are only white folks in the movie. Appar­ent­ly all the oth­er folks with not-so-eas­i­ly sun­burned skin got nuked in WW III or some­thing.

The film seems lib­er­al [what with all the gra­tu­itous sex, drugs, etc.] but actu­al­ly reaf­firms very con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues of mar­riage, the nuclear fam­i­ly and all that stuff.

Once the city is destroyed and all the young folk escape the movie ends. It ends on a hap­py note right before things are about to get real­ly shit­ty. None of the recent­ly-from-the-city folks know any­thing about sur­viv­ing in a wilder­ness envi­ron­ment. I bet they get quite irate with their new ‘free­dom’ that will restrict their debauch­ery in favor of mind­less drudgery for years and years and years and years until they die of rheuma­toid arthri­tis or gout or mal­nu­tri­tion.

I remem­ber watch­ing the TV show off and on at times. I don’t think I ever real­ly got in to it though. Prob­a­bly was­n’t vio­lent enough for my child­hood taste.