"Run, runner!"

December 10, 2014 2:46 PM

The movie Logan's Run is available in its entirety on Dailymotion. First half. Second half. Also available are all 14 episodes of the TV show Logan's Run. Logan's Run pilot Part 1 and Part 2. Episode 2 The Collectors. Episode 3 Capture. Episode 4 The Innocent. Episode 5 Man Out of Time. Episode 6 Half Life. Episode 7 The Crypt. Episode 8 Fear Factor. Episode 9 The Judas Goat. Episode 10 Futurepast. Episode 11 Carousel. Episode 12 Night Visitors. Episode 13 Turnabout. Episode 14 Stargate.

The movie was based on the book Logan's Run. There have been recent attempts to remake the film. Concept art for the Sandmen.

A close look at the movie poster for Logan's Run, plus additional work created by Charles Moll. Sci-Fi book covers created by Moll. International movie posters for Logan's Run.

Filming locations for the movie. Fort Worth Water Gardens. More. Dallas Market Center.

Relatively recent takes on the movie:
Re-Viewed: Logan's Run changed sci-fi blockbusters forever
Bad Movies We Love: Logan's Run (warning, an annoying trailer begins to play)
TCM: Logan's Run (TCM will be showing Logan's Run Jan. 17, 2015, 4:00 am EST)
Transparency Now: Logan's Run

And what is the character Old Man mumbling? Parts of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.

Previously. This post was inspired by the comments in this recent post.

posted by cwest (75 comments total)

I love you for this.
posted by clavdivs at 2:56 PM on December 10, 2014 [5 favorites]

fantastic.

we watch it in the office at least once a year.

THIS is worth a look see.
posted by bobdow at 3:00 PM on December 10, 2014

Oh wow. Ok!
posted by rtha at 3:01 PM on December 10, 2014

Although I'm familiar with the plot of Logan's Run, the only thing that I can clearly remember from that now legendary day watching it is that the middle school English teacher who showed it to our class forgot that there were some boobs in it.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:03 PM on December 10, 2014 [9 favorites]

fish, and plankton, and sea greens and protein from the sea!
posted by solarion at 3:06 PM on December 10, 2014 [22 favorites]

Nice post.
posted by four panels at 3:09 PM on December 10, 2014

Another curiosity is the soundtrack for the sequel, Logan's Sanctuary. Not that the sequel exists, of course. The soundtrack, though, is actually pretty fun.
posted by artichoke_enthusiast at 3:10 PM on December 10, 2014 [7 favorites]

Thanks to this movie and Walkabout, there was about a four year stretch spanning middle school and high school where it was very dangerous for me to think about Jenny Agutter in public.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:11 PM on December 10, 2014 [22 favorites]

I was obsessed with the novel at about age 9 or 10. It seemed to me to be a very serious and profound work. The movie, I highly anticipated. But they had changed too much for me to really love it. But it may have explained the serious and profound effect that the nurse in "American Werewolf In London" had on me as a teenager.....
posted by thelonius at 3:12 PM on December 10, 2014

Logan's Run is significant to me for forming the basis of my mental image of Paranoia's Alpha Complex, one of the great iconic settings of role-playing games.
posted by JHarris at 3:13 PM on December 10, 2014 [15 favorites]

I wonder how much Dough-Boy paid for the streaming rights. He/she also has some sweet Yogi Bear cartoons. I'll take Yogi to cheesy fantasy that's one step below Barbarella.

Hey, interesting. Logan's Run is the first movie I've seen for sale (rent?) on YouTube. Huh.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:13 PM on December 10, 2014

What makes you think he paid anything?
posted by dilaudid at 3:23 PM on December 10, 2014

Oh, Michael York.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:24 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

Farah and her golden hair of dreams...doh!
posted by clavdivs at 3:33 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Dammit, solarion, you beat me to it!
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 3:33 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

there was about a four year stretch spanning middle school and high school where it was very dangerous for me to think about Jenny Agutter in public.

It was nice to see her in Captain America: Winter Soldier and discover that at 61, damn, the woman has still got it.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 3:36 PM on December 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

I am running out of time to re-watch this!
posted by srboisvert at 3:39 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

I remember the episode of the series with the indestructible robot.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:45 PM on December 10, 2014

Fish, and plankton. And sea greens, and protein from the sea. It's all here, ready. Fresh as harvest day. Fish and sea greens, plankton and protein from the sea. And then it stopped coming. And they came instead. So I store them here. I'm ready. And you're ready. It's my job. To freeze you. Protein, plankton...
posted by Splunge at 3:48 PM on December 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

I didn't see this until a few years ago, and though I really enjoyed the first six and a half hours, the like twelve whole hours after the escape from the city seemed pointless and draggy to me.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:12 PM on December 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

I remember we saw this when I was just a little kid. (It's likely it was even at a drive in movie theater.) The only thing I remembered from it for years was the Carousel scene. Cuz it's freaky. Then a few years ago it showed up on late night cable (possibly TCM) so I watched it and... Actually there's an interesting story in there. But wow, how did we EVER think those special effects looked real?

(I know we watched the TV series at home too, but I remember absolutely none of it.)
posted by dnash at 4:23 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

The book is so bad. Full of sentences like "Trapped!" and "Escape!" I honestly thought it was a novelization of the movie — it reads like one.
posted by pmdboi at 4:39 PM on December 10, 2014

I imagine a re-make with Samuel L. Jackson as 'Box'

Logan: "...but who are you?"

Box: "Are you paraphrasing a rock band Dr. Who."

Logan: " query, who is who?"

Box: "Look, you and Cindy Lou are lost so I'm going to save you the speech because this damn crinkled chromium face plate itches"

Logan: "You have a mask..."

Box: "...you relize I have silver plated nitrogen gun"

Logan: "Yes, have you seen others..."

Box: 💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨
posted by clavdivs at 4:51 PM on December 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is this where I get to say Jenny Agutter over and over?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:53 PM on December 10, 2014 [5 favorites]

A-B button on the remote.
posted by clavdivs at 4:55 PM on December 10, 2014

I would really like to see a remake of Logan's Run, simply because I think there's an actual interesting Science Fiction premise to the story but I can't watch the original without laughing. The cheesy effects just take me out of the movie everytime I catch it on TV these days.

It's mind-boggling to consider that Logan's Run was thought highly enough of to be the visual peak of Science Fiction Cinema (winning a Special Academy Award for Special Effects and being nominated for Best Cinematography) in 1976, only to look like a dated relic just a year later when Star Wars was released. Watch Logan's Run and then watch Star Wars as a double feature. They're not even in the same league, visually. Logan's Run looks like an amateurish attempt to imagine the future while Star Wars looks like something that actually came from the future.
posted by KingEdRa at 5:11 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am so sad this post came up too late for me to watch it. Maybe my Boy is going to be sick tomorrow... and we'll make popcorn and watch Soylent Green too.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 5:14 PM on December 10, 2014

a friend of mine and I watch the movie every year. I love Old Man, Old Man is the greatest character in literature.
posted by dismas at 5:22 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've told this story before on the blue, but in college we somehow got the idea to play Logan's Rum, which is a game where you watch Logan's Run and every time they say "run" you drink rum, and I don't remember much of the actual film per se.
posted by saturday_morning at 5:32 PM on December 10, 2014 [12 favorites]

I second the Logan's Sanctuary Album by Brian Reitzell and Roger Joseph Manning Jr. The Bolero piece (The Silver Garden) is amazing, and sounds more like the Legend of Zelda theme than Ravel's Bolero. Pleasure Dome 12 is also very nice. Very nice.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 5:54 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

The book is so bad. Full of sentences like "Trapped!" and "Escape!" I honestly thought it was a novelization of the movie — it reads like one.

The authors wrote it in a Howard Johnson's, as an experiment to produce a novel in a week.
posted by thelonius at 6:34 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

My (now former but it's totally recent) roommate used to have a copy of the novel of Logan's Run in his car. Like you do. So when we would go on long(ish) trips, I'd pick it up and read random passages out loud. It was virtually unreadable and that's part of the reason he kept it in his car.

I don't think I've ever seen all of the movie. I'm not sure I even knew there was a TV show. But I knew enough to make jokes about the crystals and such.

I do think there's a remake in here. There are certainly a lot of stories playing with the ideas of both celebrating and sacrificing youth in current culture. (But I guess the remake is still ... happening? It seems like it's been in development hell for nearly 20 years.) I don't think it would be good but that's keeping with the rest of it, I suppose.
posted by darksong at 6:54 PM on December 10, 2014

Although I'm familiar with the plot of Logan's Run, the only thing that I can clearly remember from that now legendary day watching it is that the middle school English teacher who showed it to our class forgot that there were some boobs in it.

Ditto, the 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet. Oh shit, boobs! Oh shit, a flaccid wigwam!
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:12 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I remember reading Logan's Run and Logan's World, and possibly even Logan's Search, when I was in my very early teens. Was it the first book or the second where they end up trapped underground in a cave and gradually make their way out? I remember the shock as they discovered a fish with eyes, meaning they were close to the outside world. And I think one of the underground railroad stops was an undersea facility and Ballard almost electrocutes them. The second book (or was it the third?), I remember Logan having to cut a pound of flesh out of someone (Jessica, I assume).

I have wondered if Jenny Agutter was cast in Winter Soldier because Joss also remembered her fondly from Logan's Run. (I also was sadly disappointed that she wasn't quite as kick-ass as I would want Nick Fury's boss to be. They should've had Black Widow in disguise as, say, the younger guy.)
posted by rmd1023 at 7:32 PM on December 10, 2014

fish, and plankton, and sea greens and protein from the sea!

Aside from being the most memorable quote of the movie, this is also the exact point at which a reasonably paced film downshifts into compound-low and just oozes the plot forward at a barely observable pace.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 7:33 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

rmd1023, IIRC both the fish with eyes bit and the pound of flesh were from the first book: Logan's Run. I never read any of the sequels and I remember both scenes.
posted by sotonohito at 7:36 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

reasonably paced film downshifts into compound-low and just oozes the plot forward at a barely observable pace.
posted by LastOfHisKind

Agreed but then I remembered all the cats on Capitol Hill who kept old man alive, the return to destroy a dystopia and then the people had life, liberty, and the pursuit of cats.
posted by clavdivs at 7:48 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

The book is so bad. Full of sentences like "Trapped!" and "Escape!" I honestly thought it was a novelization of the movie — it reads like one.

Huh, I wanted to comment about how interesting and innovative I found it (at least the first one, not sure if I want to continue with the series).

It looks like thelonius was (partially) right about the Howard Johnson's:

... from THE HIGHLY UNOFFICIAL LOGAN'S RUN FAQ :

"William F. Nolan came to San Diego State to give a lecture. He told the most amazing story: the novel was written in a Howard Johnson's booth, where Nolan & Johnson holed up for 3 weeks. Yes, they wrote the whole thing in three weeks (and it sorta reads like it ...)

It turns out that Nolan needed college tuition money for one of his kids, and I don't know what Johnson's motive was. The hilarious part is that they collected the bucks they needed, then George Pal (Big Name SF Film Producer) got interested — one would almost say obsessed with — the idea of making a movie from the novel. This would be in the mid-to-late 60s timeframe. But by playing coy, Nolan & Johnson managed to parlay this 3-week hack novel-writing exercise into a ~$500K fee for the film rights.

Nolan went on to comment that Pal's first draft of the film script followed the novel pretty closely, and MGM rejected it, stating that it would cost $100M to build a 22nd century Los Angeles, Crazy Horse Mountain (a real place), Pittsburgh, Undersea City, and Cape Canaveral for the characters to run around through. That's when they started getting interested in the 'domed city' approach.

He was somewhat disappointed that the movie lost what he regarded as the 'deep theme' of the novel — namely, that a youth-dominated culture would be shallow and fadlike, that it takes experience, wisdom, and age to sustain a genuine culture — the young can't impart the essence of the culture to those younger still.

And as to why Logan & Jessica were 26 and 22 in the movie — 'They cast Michael York & Jenny Agutter, and there was no way either of them could pass for 20.'
posted by Auden at 7:48 PM on December 10, 2014 [4 favorites]

It took them 3 weeks? But it's so short.
posted by thelonius at 7:59 PM on December 10, 2014

Ditto, the 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet. Oh shit, boobs! Oh shit, a flaccid wigwam!

They blurred those scenes for us. We booed.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 8:06 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I remember Logan's Run as the first movie I ever saw with B(.)(.)Bs in it. Although I also recall (fondly!) a scene in Three Musketeers (1973) with Raquel Welch's boobs in a carriage window...
posted by spacewrench at 8:07 PM on December 10, 2014

I remember one summer when I was around 11 watching the Logan's Run TV series on, I think, TBS, which was scheduled either before or after episodes of Lost In Space. I recall nothing from the series. Interesting to find out now that D.C. Fontana served as story editor.
posted by audi alteram partem at 8:09 PM on December 10, 2014

Dear god, did noone in 2244 (+30?) wear bras under their diaphanous garments?! No wonder mumble-teen me remembered this movie!
posted by spacewrench at 8:17 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Holy hell! I just finished watching the DVD tonight. This is really freaky! And, to Jenny Agutter, you are one hot tamale! rowr!
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 8:41 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I unashamedly love this movie, toy train and all.

Nice post, cwest.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:00 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

In the movie, oh god the acting. It's like they were all trying, badly, to do Mercutio for a really low quality production of Shakespeare in the Park.
posted by sotonohito at 9:01 PM on December 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

... they could combine a reboot of Escape from New York with a reboot of Logan's Run. "Carrousel, hipster!" "Snake Plissken!!"
posted by Auden at 9:02 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I always thought the guns in the film were awesome. They were apparently pretty dangerous though.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:10 PM on December 10, 2014

In the book, they had 6-shooters, with different kinds of rounds, with names like the Tangler, the Ripper, and the dreaded Homer, used for the runner kill shots. That's pretty cool when you're 10!
posted by thelonius at 9:20 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

I adore this movie, and must confess I had no idea the 2014 consensus involved quite so much OMG 1970s LOL.

Seriously, are people so allergic to 1970s fashions and pre-ILM special effects that they can't see how great this thing is? Michael York and Jenny Agutter? Box the homicidal android? Carousel? The Old Man with "cracks" in his face, puttering about in the ruins of DC with his books and a gazillion kitty cats? Farrah? The model city with all the little zippy cars in the tubes?

How can you not see the greatness? HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE??

Yeah, the special effects aren't as realistic as Star Wars. But if you tell me you wouldn't kill an orphan to have that freaking city model to display on your coffee table, you are lying.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:14 PM on December 10, 2014 [11 favorites]

Gaze in wonder! GAZE, I SAY!

(Seeing it with the dudes there to give it some scale, I must admit you'd need an awfully big coffee table.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:17 PM on December 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

I was obsessed with the novel at about age 9 or 10.

I read certain parts of the book repeatedly in my early teen years: the sex scenes.
posted by neuron at 10:22 PM on December 10, 2014

Star Wars looks like something that actually came from the future.

Though it was actually historical of course.
posted by biffa at 10:41 PM on December 10, 2014

How can you not see the greatness? HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE??

I think the effects are reasonable for the time period, and parts still look good. My beef is that they spend the first half or so of the film seemingly working up to some big message about ecology or whatever and... then it just sort of dies out. My beef isn't with the look, it's with the plot and script.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 10:53 PM on December 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

It is of my belief there was no beef in the plot. Just kitties and just won't go there, no siree.

No one saying where's the beef.
posted by clavdivs at 11:04 PM on December 10, 2014

Why did they destroy the computer server that was running the shopping complex they worked in, couldn't they have just reprogrammed it ?
posted by Narrative_Historian at 12:00 AM on December 11, 2014

I have a daughter named Logan. Only one however.
posted by mikelieman at 1:52 AM on December 11, 2014

Star Wars looks like something that actually came from the future.

Gosh I disagree so hard with this I'm having an existential crisis
*faints*
posted by glasseyes at 2:45 AM on December 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

How can you not see the greatness? HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE??

This is the first time that it even occurred to me that anyone could like this movie in anything but a MST3K sort of way. I remember thinking it was horrible cheese when it came out and it hasn't aged well.
posted by octothorpe at 3:49 AM on December 11, 2014

The Gun.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:55 AM on December 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

> "Ditto, the 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet."

My high school psychology teacher showed "Pink Floyd: The Wall" to the class. I had to be out that day so I got permission to watch it at home instead. I was ... surprised. I later learned that the, um, parts in question had been skipped for everyone who saw it in the classroom.
posted by kyrademon at 3:57 AM on December 11, 2014

Why did they destroy the computer server that was running the shopping complex they worked in, couldn't they have just reprogrammed it ?

No, as they had no skills to do so.
posted by biffa at 4:56 AM on December 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

In the book, there's a flying motorcycle gang, which is so embarassing to read.
posted by beerbajay at 5:23 AM on December 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

In 9th Grade Economics class (!?), the teacher showed us "Soylent Green", over three days of class. His mounting anticipation of blowing our minds, as the big reveal neared, was palpable.
posted by thelonius at 5:26 AM on December 11, 2014

You'd never get away with that much nudity in a PG movie these days. Probably not even PG-13.
posted by octothorpe at 5:38 AM on December 11, 2014

^ Thanks to this movie and Walkabout, there was about a four year stretch spanning middle school and high school where it was very dangerous for me to think about Jenny Agutter in public.

You dodged a bullet given that American Werewolf in London isn't on that list.

Fantastic post. I love this movie; it's one of the last of the "We Have Seen the Future and It Sucks" genre that died out after Star Wars.
posted by Gelatin at 6:29 AM on December 11, 2014

The Dissolve's awesome series "Laser Age" covers Logan's Run (and Sleeper and Rollerball) here.
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:03 AM on December 11, 2014

Missing from the end of "Logan's Run" is the aftermath where most of them starve to death.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:32 AM on December 11, 2014

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon : The Gun.

I had seriously considered building a working DS Pistol a while back, and my research brought me to this same page; for those that didn't read it, the thing that makes this prop so neat (and so much different that almost every prop gun used before or since) was that it actually fired... sort of.

The cool muzzle flash you see? That's carbide and water mixing, and creating a real, actual dangerous-as-hell flame, that looked fantastic on film. But, there were some problems with the trigger on early models (possibly leading to an actor getting burned as he drew it from the holster) and valve leaks, which the author speculates is why the actors look so grim and tight-fisted whenever they used one.

Most movies either use real, but disabled, guns to fire blanks, or just put the laser, blaster, phaser, etc effect in post production. This one opted for something different, and it makes the move look much less cheap than it could have.

It doesn't have the aesthetic beauty of Deckard's Blaster, or the iconic-ness of the Star Wars' re-purposed World War One and Two weapons, but it is ugly and functional. Exactly the kind of thing you'd see in this universe.

It's still one of my favorite movie props.
posted by quin at 7:55 AM on December 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

it's one of the last of the "We Have Seen the Future and It Sucks" genre that died out after Star Wars.

It may be very much a 1970's movie, but movies like Divergent and the Hunger Games show that dystopian movies are far from dead.

Otherwise, if I'm not mistaken, the movie was one of the first to be sold on LaserDisc, and also has one of the first examples of a commentary track, with Michael York.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:13 AM on December 11, 2014

> "... dystopian movies are far from dead."

Yeah, I mean ... 12 Monkeys, A Scanner Darkly, Battle Royale, Blade Runner, Brazil, Children of Men, Cloud Atlas, Dark City, Death Race, Demolition Man, Elysium, Escape from New York, Judge Dredd, The Maze Runner, The Matrix, Oblivion, The Running Man, V for Vendetta, Alien, 28 Days Later, Delicatessen, I Am Legend, The Road Warrior, it's really kind of hard to argue that the "we have seen the future and it sucks" genre died out with the 70's.
posted by kyrademon at 10:32 AM on December 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

We watched this last night. It stands up really, really well to what I remember of countless "caught in the middle on TV" viewings. It was always on, and I always pretty much stopped what I was doing to see what bit was left. It is amazingly quick and makes its point without a lot of claptrap. Yeah, the acting is wooden; yeah, the dialogue is Lucas-esque; yeah, those miniatures are totally unconvincing. But damn if it doesn't spark a feeling of dread as the figures spin upwards in Carousel, and as the ice robot is talking. (That is the creepiest scene in the movie, arguably, but I don't think I have to argue that hard here.)

I absolutely do not want to see a remake of this, and thankfully it appears to be dead in the water, for now. They'll just make it darker and lard it up with all sorts of backstory and subplots and psychological nuances. They'll show us just what the Circuit is like, when I would just rather imagine. They'll give you some awful rendition of Carousel. They'll make the Sandman chases excruciatingly long and the Runner deaths requisitely gruesome. Ugh, just no no no! This is a tone poem of a sci fi dystopian movie.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:47 PM on December 11, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm a bit surprised to see all the ridicule for the book/film here. Luckily, it appears I am not the only one who loved both the movie and the book. The film has an obvious 70s aesthetic, but that's part of its charm. As for the book, I read it when I was a teenager and so maybe that's why I don't remember it being terribly written, but rather that it was a very short read.
posted by mysterpigg at 10:05 AM on December 12, 2014

it's one of the last of the "We Have Seen the Future and It Sucks" genre that died out after Star Wars.

It may be very much a 1970's movie, but movies like Divergent and the Hunger Games show that dystopian movies are far from dead.

I think they're more a case of "We Have Seen the Future of publishing and It Sucks"
posted by biffa at 3:26 PM on December 12, 2014

"I hate outside! I hate outside! I hate outside!"

What a great movie.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 10:37 PM on December 12, 2014