I first saw Logan’s Run in a New Jersey movie theater fifty years ago, when I was a boy. The theater, somewhere in the suburban wilds of the Garden State, was packed to the gills with people. I wasn’t sure what to expect with the movie back then—all I cared about that it was a brand new science fiction film, in an age when big budget SF properties on both TV and the big screen was very rare (of course, Star Wars, which would be released the very next year, would change all of that). Based on the 1967 novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, Logan’s Run is a futuristic tale about a man named Logan 5 (Michael York) who has a special job in a place filled with hedonistic leisure. Logan lives within the splendor of a Utopian society whose population dwells within large domes. The interior is presented as a vast, upscale shopping mall where its citizens want for nothing. Every need, every whim, and every fantasy is met.
Of course, there’s a catch. When a person turns thirty years of age—so noted by the flashing red of their life clock, a small jewel in the palm of their right hand—they must report for Renewal, a ritual-like event where they must literally rise up in the air within Carousel to be renewed. But there’s a growing group of dissenters within this society who don’t believe there’s any chance of reincarnation. They believe Renewal is a lie that maintains their society by keeping the population culled. And so, when their life clocks flash red, they run. Logan 5 is a part of a police force known as Sandmen, whose jobs are to hunt down and kill any runners. Clad in black outfits with a gray line across their chests, Sandmen appear dashing, almost heroic, until—as shown over the course of the film—they’re revealed to be nothing more than hit men; armed thugs who provide the muscle for a cold-hearted regime that’s ruled by a super computer.
When Logan’s life clock is tampered with by this super computer in order to recruit him for an undercover mission, he becomes a runner, obstinately hoping to find and destroy the “sanctuary” that many of the runners are hoping to escape to so he can return to his previous life. Logan meets Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter) and the real fun begins. Fifty years after its release, Logan’s Run still holds up as an entertaining movie. The effects—including the creation of a miniature city that was so vast it was practically a sprawling metropolis in its own right—also survived the test of time. One of the best things are the Sandman guns that, when fired, emit a cool X pattern of flames from its muzzle. Michael York and Jenny Agutter lead a solid cast that includes Richard Jordan (The Hunt For Red October) as Logan’s friend and fellow Sandman Francis 7; Peter Ustinov as The Old Man (“Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity!”); and Roscoe Lee Browne as the robot Box ("Fish, and plankton! And sea greens, and protein from the sea!”), a character who nearly stole the film for me.
I have to be honest, here. My warm and fuzzy feelings for Logan’s Run were caused by the fact that I first saw it as an little boy, and it BLEW MY MIND! Aside from the heady SF ideas that intrigued me, Logan’s Run also had kids roaming around this science fiction mall, doing science fictiony things, and I remembered envying them so hard. Logan’s Run also introduced me to Jenny Agutter (Walkabout, An American Werewolf in London), who went scantily clad so often in this flick that the filmmakers insured I would never forget her, and it worked. I watched the TV series as a kid, but it got canceled midway through its first season—and with good reason, the TV series just wasn’t very good. Fifty years after its release, some of the themes in Logan’s Run are weirdly still relevant today—it’s ultimately a warning against having a hedonistic society—but I still re-watch Logan’s Run every now and then because it’s a lot of fun. And it still blows my mind. --SF
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