Logan’s Run (1976)

Starring: Michael York and a small role from Farrah Fawcett
Grade: B-

Of the thousands of crazy sci-fi movies made in the 70s and 80s, the innovative and interesting Logan’s Run stands out amongst them. Very similar in its tone to the much better Soylent Green, Logan’s Run is another “let’s find the truth about us” type of movie that is all kinds of bizarre.

Summary

Sometime in the 23rd century, the survivors of war, overpopulation, and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything. There’s just one catch: Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of carrousel.

To tell the ages of people and to indicate how close they are to facing Carrousel, each person has a life-clock crystal implanted in their palm that changes color as they get older. When someone approaches their “Last Day”, their crystal begins blinking.

In this domed city lives Logan 5 (York). As he observes some babies in the nursery, his friend and co-worker Francis 7 (Richard Jordan) joins him. They are both “Sandmen”, government soldiers whose sole objective is to capture these bastard citizens that find dying at thirty a bad thing and try to run away. Right away, we see the two attend “Carrousel”, the government’s solution to fixing overpopulation issues. This is where the thirty-year-olds are placed in the center of an arena and launched into a light fixture of sorts to be “renewed”, even though they’re basically murdered. Oddly enough, all of the citizens come to the arena to watch it like it’s the circus. Logan 5 is cool with the day-to-day operations of life in the dome, but he does question some things, which Francis 7 continuously shuts down because he’s a government shill. During Carrousel, Logan gets a notification that they have a “Runner”, someone trying to escape their rite of passage that is death. Logan and Francis kill the guy in the lobby outside, and Logan takes some things found on the body. The body is quickly cleaned up by a special crew designated for it. Later that night, Logan is trying to fuck, so he turns on “The Circuit”. This is where people appear in some pod, like Star Trek when they beam people in, and you decide whether you want to have sex with them or not. 

It’s sort of like Tinder only people get their feelings hurt more because it’s in person.

After passing up on some guy, Logan gets Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter). She’s not in the mood to have sex because she just had friends that died in the Carrousel, and Logan is pissed. She then starts questioning everything wrong with the society they live in, which seems like an odd place to take the conversation after Logan made his intentions clear. Logan gets even more mad, considering he’s a Sandman, and he questions if she’s a Runner. She says no and leaves just as Francis shows up with a couple of girls. The next day, Logan and Francis go to work. After they run into a fellow Sandman that has facial scars from an attack by some “cubs”, they go in and take turns in surrendering objects they’ve found on Runners, giving it to a supercomputer that seems to run the place. When Logan goes by his lonesome to do so, the computer doesn’t incinerate the materials like it did when Francis went. The computer has more questions prepared. It asks Logan if he knows what the “ankh” symbol means because this symbol was found on the Runner, but he doesn’t. It’s explained that it directly relates to a sanctuary Runners find to live the rest of their lives out. Apparently, this place has all the Runners who have not been accounted for.

There are 1,056 unaccounted Runners.

Logan asks the computer how this is possible and how this may be a mistake, suggesting maybe most of them reached life renewal on Carrousel. When the computer doesn’t respond, he realizes that no one actually reaches renewal. The computer then authorizes Logan to penetrate city seals and search outside the dome to find Sanctuary and destroy it. This shocks Logan because he didn’t believe anything existed outside of the dome. Even so, he will not be given a partner and he will accomplish this task by becoming a Runner himself, seeking Sanctuary. To jumpstart things, the computer institutes “retrogram” and changes his red crystal into a blinking one, so it looks as if he’s approaching Last Day to fool everyone. However, this would mean he has bypassed the four years of life he had left. Asking if he will get his four years back once the mission is completed, the computer ignores him and tells him to take the ankh with him for identification.

Logan tries to talk with Francis afterwards, but he deflects any basic questions Logan has. This prompts Logan to use the Circuit again to get Jessica back at his place to question her. He shows her his crystal and talks about his intentions to run. She doesn’t believe him, but he shows her the ankh symbol he has from the Runner he killed. It’s the same as the necklace Jessica is wearing, and he wants her to talk to her friends to help him. When he brings up Sanctuary, she storms out. Sometime after, Jessica is told by her rebel friends they need to kill Logan because he knows too much. At the same time, Francis takes his shift in the control center to oversee the area.

Jessica gets to Logan’s place to help him. On their walk to Arcade, we see her friends follow with the intention to kill him. Just then, he gets a notification of a runner in Cathedral, so he goes to the call with Jessica alongside him. They approach the desolate quadrant and run into a small child. She seems nice but steals Jessica’s bracelet and runs away. Logan and Jessica then get cornered by a rather large group of dangerous outcasts known as the “cubs”. Once he scares them all away with his gun, he finds the Runner but insists he won’t kill her. He asks about Sanctuary and shows her the ankh symbol, but she’s unaware of its origin. Even so, he gives her some blind gas to use on other Sandmen in the case of her potentially getting captured in the future. Francis sees the whole thing and shoots and kills the woman once they leave the room. Afterwards, Jessica admits that she was leading Logan to be killed in Arcade earlier because she didn’t believe him. She believes him now, but she still won’t take her to her friends because they’ll kill him regardless. Following this, Logan goes to get a new face at New You 483 to aide him in his escape. Just as the surgery is about to begin, the doctor heading up the procedure gets a call demanding the death of Logan and how he’s a Runner, confirming what Jessica said to him minutes before. He forces the machine to go haywire, but Logan is able to kill the guy and escape. Before they leave, a threatening Francis shows up and grabs him, telling Logan how he saw him let the Runner go in Cathedral. This forces Logan to fight him off and leave with Jessica.

This isn’t a mission anymore. Logan has to become the very thing he’s been employed to stop: a Runner, trying to avoid death. The manhunt has begun, and the goal is to find Sanctuary.

My Thoughts:

Logan’s Run is very dated. Look, I understand how science fiction films were back in the day, so I can appreciate the style of the movie for what it is. It’s got the robot-sounding sci-fi music, crazy tech and wild ideas, and no matter how good or bad you may think it is, it’s a movie that has to be seen to be believed because of how off-the-wall it gets. However, it would be a tough movie to recommend for a passive viewer. In fact, I would love to screen this for a modern audience just because of how funny it would be to see their confusion. The acting is pretty wooden and TV movie-like (especially with star Michael York), it’s a bit slow, the scenes that showcase the nitty gritty of the sci-fi world we’re being introduced to tends to get super weird, and the script gets awkward at times, making the acting look worse than it already is.

At one point, Logan grabs Jessica by the hand and literally says, “Let’s go have sex”.

To be fair, what else would you expect out of a 70s sci-fi movie? If you’ve seen enough of them, you kind of expect it. Then again, I can’t give it a pass either.

The suspense and action are decent, but the shootouts are laughably awful. The first scene in which Logan and Richard chase a Runner demonstrated two of the worst shooting exhibitions I’ve ever seen, easily worse than the stormtroopers from Star Wars. We’re talking point blank range misses. How these two managed to become government officials who shoot and kill on the regular makes me think that the Sandmen aren’t to be feared nearly as much as these citizens make them out to be. It’s stuff like this that makes Logan’s Run this weird enigma of a movie that is unforgettable for all the wrong reasons. Despite the cool name, Logan 5 isn’t the most likable star either. As I mentioned earlier, Michael York’s performance was noticeably awkward. He nailed the desperation stuff once things got deeper, but it was still hard to tell how early he stopped believing in the government mission of disguising himself as a Runner before he actually decided to become a real Runner himself. York wasn’t nearly as likable as he needed to be as the main character whose world is shattered. He felt very one-dimensional throughout.

The maniacal laugh he had when he and Francis chased and murdered a guy was hard to forget too.

What Logan’s Run does right are the themes explored such as overpopulation, euthanasia, hedonism, and many other topics. It enhances the story a lot more when looked at in retrospect. If you have to analyze a film for a college essay, this is the movie to pick. Unfortunately, all the ideas get bogged down because of what the final onscreen product is, giving us an end result that isn’t great. There are also the little things I enjoyed like the set design. I was impressed with how much work was put into each set to really bring this world to life. This alone is worth seeing. Going along with this, the exterior shots of the city were obviously miniatures and looked like a toy set, but it was still cool enough that I appreciated the craftsmanship it took to put it together. Honestly, it would’ve made for an awesome playset for action figures.

Here’s to hoping the production design team let their kids play with it when filming was over.

Even so, for those trying to be locked into the story and believe in what was going on, these “scenic” shots could come off as laughable.

*Peter Ustinov deserves a lot of credit for capturing the essence of what was needed for the role of the innocent old man. The movie slowed down to a halt in his scenes, but it really showed how different the outside world was compared to the fast and hard living of the dome life.*

In the middle of the good and the bad of Logan’s Run, is the most memorable scene of the film: the meeting they have with Box the robot. On one side, it’s unintentionally hilarious, cheesy, and borderline stupid. How Box was able to imprison thousands of Runners in ice while being such a slow piece of machinery boggles my mind. He’s a horrible fighter too and could easily be taken out by someone with the most basic of reflexes. Based off how Box moves, how is it that no one else kicked his ass before Logan showed up? I don’t buy it, especially if Box has a tendency to say the speech that explains his intentions. This would give anyone enough time to realize what’s going on and attack. At the same time, Box is genuinely creepy, and the voice acting by Roscoe Lee Brown was remarkably haunting. Even though it’s never explained why a robot would need to eat humans, nor do we know what Box’s goals are or how he’s connected to the government inside the dome, his general weirdness, intriguing but cheap-looking design, and the aura that surrounds him makes the movie what it is. The “Love Shop” sequence also deserves a special shoutout. This is when Logan and Jessica are chased through a brothel in slow motion. You can’t look away in the moment because it’s so well done, but it also made no sense as to why the two almost succumb to the advances of the naked people in the midst of a chase that could cost them their lives.

The entertainment value in Logan’s Run is seeing the pure, 1970s madness these filmmakers came up with to present to us this giant bubble that these people live under, literally and metaphorically. Some of it is confusing, some of it is unsettling, and some of it is just plain bad. However, it’s always interesting. Enhanced by its weird music and incredible production design, this is a wild adventure for better or worse. Though a lot of its contemporaries are better, Logan’s Run is a fun watch and a must-see for fans of early science fiction and overall cheesiness.

Fun Fact: Robert Redford and Jon Voight were considered for the role of Logan early on. The role of the old man was offered to James Cagney, but he turned it down.