Damnation Alley

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland where all that remains is Morton's salt, Texas Instruments calculators posing as army-engineered navigation systems, and a Las Vegas that mysteriously generates its own power, only an actor of George Peppard's caliber can pull off a line like "The town's infested with killer cockroaches! Repeat, killer cockroaches!" What will happen in the final showdown when our weary heroes are pitted against a vile jammed door, armed with nothing but a crowbar and their wits!?

Two years after WW3 reduces America to a rubble strewn desert, a small group of survivors in California decide to drive a hulking military vehicle to Albany for no real reason. Along the way, they fight shotgun toting hillbillies, giant scorpions and flesh eating roaches. This is a terrible movie with some of the shoddiest effects I've ever seen, and a putrid script that bears zero resemblance to the source novel. Way too much random footage of Jan-Michael Vincent riding a dirt bike around.

The movie is pretty bad, but I'm subtracting extra points just for changing the book's premise into something so bland. The actual story would make for a pretty kick-ass film; a race against time, high stakes, more danger. While it was brave to try and recreate a trippy post-apocalyptic America with the available tools in 1977, most of it looks laughable. I also wanted to punch Jan-Michael Vincent in the face. Right in his stupid, smirking face. Punch him so hard his mullet would explode. Gah!

With its ambitious but broken effects and its lumpy pacing of the desert stuff, it's like a glimpse at what Star Wars almost was with a bit less skill and luck.

I understand there are theatrical and telemovie versions. No idea which I saw but it's hard to imagine a re-cut could save it.

Liked it as a kid.

The sfx are laughable bad. Which could be forgiven, until you realize this did have a big budget and was meant to be the blockbuster hit of the year instead of Star Wars. Even more reason is that the movie is written even worse. There is not one reason to give a damn about these characters and their journey. The opposites working together trope rarely been executed more poorly.

even though the gruesome George Peppard is in it, I have fond memories when I was a young'un of those carnivorous cockroaches, and it's with this biased childhood perspective that I rate this about fifty points higher than I normally would have.

I viewed the 90-minute cut of "Damnation Alley," but unfortunately, I was disappointed. Rather than reflecting the high-budget film it was supposed to be, it seemed more akin to a subpar TV production. What should've been a powerful adaptation of a compelling story instead was an unimpressive effort that needed to be more entertaining.

Pretty silly stuff, although Vincent and Sanda are attacked by a giant scorpion and Winfield is devoured by mutant cockroaches so it's not a total loss.

It's been a LONG time since I've seen this, but there were some changes from the book that made this such a far less interesting propostion (our main character was originally a Hells angel on his chopper)

Not good.

A personal fav from childhood.

I don't get it. Who the hell is this crap aimed at? More to the point why did more than one person recommend this crap?!