Damnation Alley

Watching Damnation Alley is almost like looking into a parallel universe. I don't mean that in the sense that the post-apocalyptic story could be an alternative version of our world, I mean that the film itself represents how sci-fi filmmaking could've gone if it hadn't have been for Star Wars. In 1977, 20th Century Fox had two major sci-fi films on their roster of releases and (for reasons that will baffle and confound film historians for centuries to come) they chose to throw all their marketing and distribution weight behind Damnation Alley rather than Star Wars.

Why did they do this?

Well, Damnation Alley was based on a novel by an established author, featured recognisable American stars in George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent, and had a bigger budget. Star Wars, by comparison, was a more left-field creation from a director-writer who only had two low-budget pastiches under his belt. And so Damnation Alley was thought to be the higher quality and more surefire hit. Unparalleled audience reaction to Star Wars would change all that, and the future of sci-fi films was changed forever. If Star Wars had never happened, Damnation Alley is probably a pretty good indication of what filmmakers would've kept doing with the genre throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Tapping into the usual Cold War fears of nuclear armaggedon, Damnation Alley posits a scenario in which an hour or so of sudden nuclear warfare leaves America reduced to a desert-like wasteland. Flash forward two years, and one military base of survivors are building two awesome super-vehicles to help take them to a possible pocket of civilisation in Boston. A freak accident sees the base destroyed and Major Denton (George Peppard) must team up with the only other survivors, two desertees named Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent) and Keegan (Paul Winfield). Together they travel down 'Damnation Alley', a geographical pathway across America made up of places unaffected by radiation.

First of all, for any post-apocalyptic fiction fans reading, it's more Planet of the Apes than Mad Max. This vision of the end of the world is ambitious but poorly realised. On their adventures, our crew of heroes encounter hordes of armour-plated flesh-eating cockroaches, giant scorpions, crazy storms, and a few other survivors. Some of it stretches credibility - the giant scorpions in particular look quite cheesy, and it's highly unlikely that such creatures would evolve in just two years (or result from atomic fallout). The film also isn't above using stock footage on occasion. The biggest selling point is the full scale all-terrain vehicle that features throughout - the director tries his best to make it look like there are two of these but they're never actually on the screen at the same tiime.

Central to the drama is the clash of personalities between Denton and Tanner. This is set up in the opening pre-apocalypse sequences, and revisited in a tokenistic way throughout the rest of the film but with no real resolution or depth. The female character is useless and bland as well, she's clearly juust there to balance the genders a bit. She's so bland that I can't even be bothered looking up her name, though she does serve a tertiary purpose in that she's shown to be a talented musician. Another supporting character, Keegan, is artistic and paints a giant mural on the military base after the nuclear war. Both of these allusions to the arts are representative of civilisation, and functions as a subtext regarding the question of whether art is relevant without a society to enjoy it. Damnation Alley doesn't cover this in much depth, but it's there and it's a subconscious trope of a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction.

This is a fun sci-fi adventure but it couldn't be more different to Star Wars. A large part of the film's budget and lengthy post-production was spent on rendering the sky to make it look like it was a swirling ocean of fire and nuclear light. This aspect of the film is actually quite impressive, and if you enjoy the idea of a rollicking slab of adventure through the creepy post-war ruins of Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, you'll enjoy it.

DIRECTOR: Jack Smight
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Alan Sharp and Lukas Heller, based on a novel by Robert Zelazny.
KEY ACTORS: George Peppard, Jan-Michael Vincent, Jackie Earle Haley, Paul Winfield, Dominique Sanda

RELATED TEXTS:
- Robert Zelazny first wrote Damnation Alley as a short story in 1967, before re-adapting it as a full-length novel in 1969.
- The novel inspired an album and song by the band Hawkwind, a sci-fi novel by Walter Jon Williams called Hardwired and a story-arc in the Judge Dredd comics.
- Other post-apocalyptic films along similar lines: Inferno, The Road Warrior, The Day After, Testament, A Boy and His Dog, The Last Man on Earth, Omega Man, I Am Legend and The Quiet Earth.