Violence/Gore: There’s some high-tech ray gun fire exchanged, and more sensitive types might be put off by the sparking hits visible on various human targets. Some kids try to attack Logan and Jessica, Logan and an unscrupulous doctor get lacerated by a laser beam, and we see a dead human body disintegrated into powder. Oh and Francis wields a tattered American flag in a knock-down drag-out battle with Logan.

Sex/Nudity: There’s some suggestive stuff in the city - particularly in the lust-filled Love Shop - and a fleeting glimpse of Logan and Jessica in the altogether as they change clothes in the icy lair of Box, but throughout the film Jessica (Jenny Agutter) is definitely wearing one of the hottest almost-there mini-dresses in the annals of sci-fi.

Best Line: “No one has to die at 30! You could live! LIVE!”

Score:

OK, sure, it has cutaway shots to a tabletop model of a domed city that isn’t fooling anyone. And yes, there are ’70s haircuts galore. But the truth is that only a while after 2001 and just before STAR WARS, the next to last step toward the modern era of science fiction film was taken by a Sandman named Logan and a really sexy British chick named Jessica.

Based on the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, LOGAN’S RUN gives us the world of the 23rd century in which the youthful population lives in a really big mall and enjoys all manner of hedonistic pleasures like rolling around in mist and walking around in mist and milling around escalators. They must be controlled and pacified by something, and they are, but we never get a really direct answer as to who or what is behind this ignorant civilization (it’s a computer, I know, but I’m talking about something more defined). So the kids are all right in the mall and the world is just peachy.

Or not. There’s a bizarre ritual called Carousel in which anyone who reaches the age of 30 has to put on a hooded cloak and a hockey mask and get pulled up into the air by invisible harness wires until they burst into flame. The spectators believe these poor souls are trying for Renewal, but come on - they’re being executed. You see, in this world, no one lives past 30. And if you try to run, to change your fate, you’ll be stopped by one of the Gestapo-like police force known as the Sandmen. One quick blast of their gun and you’re toast. So much for “life begins at 40.”

Logan is a Sandman with a difference (no, not that kind of difference). While all the others seem content to live one day after the next in this pacified society, Logan wonders about…things. And when he finds a peculiar symbol called an Ankh on the body of a terminated Runner, the city computer sets him a task - find Sanctuary, the fabled destination of the Runners, and use the Ankh, which just might be the key to Sanctuary. The computer tells Logan the dark secret at the heart of this idyllic world - not all Runners are terminated. Some have escaped, and now it’s Logan’s duty to find them. And just to give Logan some extra incentive, the computer artificially sets his lifeclock to 30. Now he has to run.

Oh, lifeclock? It’s a blinky light in the palm of every city dweller that indicates your age. And now that Logan’s is blinking “Carousel time,” he has to betray his Sandman colleague and friend Francis, drag along a peculiar but really hot would-be Runner named Jessica, and get to the bottom of all this. Along the way he just might shatter the illusion that holds this world together and uncover the long-forgotten history of Earth. And they’ll also meet an old man with lots of kittens. True story.

My opinion of this quirky, desperate-to-be-epic sci-fi adventure has grown over the years. Some of the effects and set design are very nice, particularly some spectacular matte paintings of a PLANET OF THE APES-esque vine-ridden Washington DC. Jenny Agutter’s increasingly tattered and soaked dress deserves an Oscar all its own, and Peter Ustinov, though occasionally insufferable, nevertheless exudes just enough charm as the Old Man who shows Logan and Jessica what can happen if you just let someone blow out the candles on their 30th birthday.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score is also beautiful and eerily otherworldly, with some familiar motifs of his own that he revisits here and again in other films. And it says something for the nostalgic power of this pre-STAR WARS blockbuster that fans still buy replica ray guns and cavort around in Sandman outfits.

And of course, there’s Michael York. Not only does he manage the steady build-up from idle questioning citizen to manic Runner with a mission, he makes our Best Line choice simultaneously a dramatic high-point and an easy target for some snickering. “No one has to die at thirtyyyyyyyyy!” Brilliant.

There might be some who remember the follow-up TV series fondly, but nothing can beat the sight of a feathered Farrah Fawcett straining to remember her lines through a dense fog of confusion aided by God knows what sort of controlled substances. This is movie magic, folks.

DVD Extras: A fun behind the scenes documentary that was produced at the time of the film’s impending release not only offers a nice look at the making of the movie but a window into the world of cinema publicity circa the mid-’70s.

ATB