Logan's Run (1976)

 

Released in 1976, Logan’s Run is based on the 1967 novel by William F Nolan and George Clayton Johnson who curiously originally conceived the idea as a film script. The film was adapted by David Zelag Goodman and stars Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan and Peter Ustinov. Its narrative dips into ideas of a society devoted to pleasure, the value of youth versus old age, euthanasia and how people are controlled by invented myths. Just don’t expect these topics to be dealt with  in a lot of detail. While the movie strives to show what everyday life is like in this seemingly perfect future it falls short explaining how or why or indeed any background at all. Nevertheless, it is a sumptuous Seventies production with colour, some excellent direction and good performances making an easy watch. Just don’t ask any difficult questions...

 

In the twenty third century it appears that life is easy. People inhabit huge domes wherein their time is devoted almost exclusively to pleasure. Carefree and sporting summer coloured clothes all year round they seem happy with their lot. When they reach the age of thirty they take part in a ceremony known as renewal, this is to ensure that society has enough resources to carry on. Nobody asks questions about this process except for a few doubters who choose instead to try and escape from this fate. These `runners` are hunted down by law officials known as Sandmen and terminated. Everybody has a small jewel in the palm of their hand which changes colour as they age. When it is red and starts pulsing your time is up.

We see the renewal ceremony early on which has shades of the Roman amphitheatre as people pack in to watch and cheer. The thirty- year olds are lifted into the air by a circular magnetic field and promptly explode when they reach the height of the arena. It doesn’t much look like renewal but everyone believes in the concept without questioning the logic of it and exactly how the renewal happens. As an analogy for life after death, if indeed that’s what it is meant to be, it seems heavy handed.

We follow one of these Sandmen, Logan 6, on a regular day which is abruptly interrupted when he takes the remaining possessions of a terminated runner to the central computer. Instead of the usual debrief he is instructed to find a place called Sanctuary- believed to be where escaped runners head to.  To enable him to run Logan’s indicator is aged up by five years so it pulses red and he will be forced to become a runner himself. It is odd that nobody has been sent on this mission before but then this is one of many plot holes the film has. Logan realises that a girl he recently met, Jessica 5, knows about Sanctuary and they end up fleeing together pursued by Logan’s Sandman buddy Francis who is intrigued by his friend’s erratic behaviour.

Logan’s Run definitely has style, a little dated now in look perhaps, but futuristic enough for Seventies audiences. Director Michael Anderson really captures a sense of vastness by using huge shopping malls (three different ones were filmed in) that would have been less familiar to UK audiences. Dressed with futuristic accoutrements these retail avenues allow the cameras to glide around showing a surprisingly large number of extras in their bright tunics. For the action there is an impressive use of physical effects and realism- a scene where Logan and Jessica are swept away by torrents of water looks painfully real. The Carousel sequence is impressive too as you can’t see the wires and those hoisted up are gymnastically able to convey weightlessness. Even outside the city the movie uses locations well- a chase in a sewage works is the film’s most gripping action sequence – and the decayed interior sets are well dressed.  The pleasure sequences are perhaps less convincingly shot using slow motion perhaps because the film is a 12 certificate there’s a limit to what they could show.

Whole the film’s opening half hour has an air of everyday routine about it, taking care to show us what life is like the whys and wherefores of this world are left vague. I wonder about the timescales for example. Once outside Logan and Jessica meet an old man who has been living alone in what remains of a government building for longer than he can remember yet he does recall an ordinary childhood with his parents. So assuming he’s about seventy five that must mean whatever catastrophe befell humanity happened about sixty years ago? Was it something that only young people survived? Where did they get the resources to construct the futuristic domed world they now inhabit?  What exactly is the authority that runs it?

An encounter with a robot called Box seems unnecessary padding and again its not clear who constructed it and why this one area in which it resides is covered in ice. Also, modern tv pictures pick up both crewmembers reflected on its shiny exterior and the actor inside the prop. I’m sure this must also have been visible on cinema screens back in the day. Box freezes runners who get this far yet it just seems superfluous especially as the last section of the film needs more time. Likewise a sequence in which Logan and Jessica meet escaped citizens who live in abandoned buildings goes nowhere and they are not seen again. I was expecting they would be the kernel of a rebellion and Logan would come back and lead them into the city to force people to listen to the truth.

The meticulous approach early on gives way to something of an episodic mid section as Logan and Jessica escape the city and discover the great outdoors. The film is at its best expressing the wonder of simply seeing the Sun and feeling fresh air which is wholly new to them or meeting a man with wrinkles and grey hair. They are tempted to stay with the old man but Francis’ arrival disrupts the plan. Ultimately Logan, Jessica and the old man go back to instigate one of the quickest rebellions ever seen in fiction. It does rely on that old chestnut of a computer system being so confused by someone’s answers to its questions that it blows a fuse and starts to explode which is what people back then imagined would happen. It makes for a spectacle- billowing sparks, collapsing pillars and mass panic - but the idea that this alone would cause the whole system to collapse so quickly and with no resistance- the Sandmen are nowhere to be seen at the end- just seems incredulous. While I did like the scene in which Logan and Jessica shout their story from a balcony and people take no notice, for me this is the cue for them to instigate something else (say with the tribe of kids they’d met earlier) but this is when the story resorts to the malfunctioning computer.

Michael York stars as Logan later recounting how he turned it down at first until another actor persuaded him it was worthwhile after reading the script. It’s a good thing he did because the movie only works as well as it does because of his committed performance, notably delivering a particularly impassioned speech near the end. He and Jenny Agutter enjoy a palpable on screen chemistry as well. Peter Ustinov is both endearing and prickly as the unnamed old man even if the character suddenly becomes very healthy for the trek back! Richard Jordan brings an intense quality to Francis.

If you can ignore the issues with the narrative - which apparently leaves out huge chunks of the book – Logan’s Run is a film with an impressive sense of scale helped by Jerry Goldsmith’s atmospheric score. The film was a success making $25m against a budget of $8m.  There is a darker version of this story lurking beneath the surface which any remake would doubtless mine though currently the potential is remote as the franchise is said to be in “development hell” for the moment. Perhaps one day we will see the whole story.