Logan’s Run (1976, Michael Anderson)

L to the OG. A-N he runnin’.

Inevitably, there are spoilers here. Usually I try to keep them to a minimum in the review half, and then spoil it more thoroughly in the game half. Here I just out and spoil everything in the synopsis. Read with care. Thanks!

What is it? Logan’s Run, directed by Michael Anderson, screenplay by David Zelag Goodman based on the novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and starring Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov, Roscoe Lee Brown and Farrah Fawcett.

First viewing? No; I think I last saw it in college on VHS. If not, then as a kid watching the edited-for-TV broadcast which most certainly didn’t have a few specific scenes. (Did you know there’s an orgy room in Logan’s Run? I sure as hell didn’t remember that.)

What’s it about? In the future, mankind has retreated to a series of domed cities that, by all appearances, were built by Mrs. Conroy’s fifth grade class. Inside the domes, the citizens live lives of post-scarcity hedonistic pleasure, not having to worry about pain or jobs or good fashion. Except… they have to die when they turn 30, as indicated by the blinking crystal embedded in their palm. They don’t think they’re dying, of course; they think they’re being reborn again when they join the Carousel, a ritual method of suicide that’s like a Circus Circus act with a body count. Some people just don’t want to die, though, so they try to run away to wherever they can. These people are pursued by Sandmen, citizens who seem like cops but are more like a separate caste and only exist to shoot people who run.

The righteous gemstones.

Logan 5 (York), is living high off the hog: he’s a Sandman, so he gets shoot people and fuck whoever he wants, his best friend Francis 7 is also a Sandman (Jordan, fantastic in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, here looking like a community theater amateur), he’s a few years out from Carousel and totally cool with it. (Wikipedia has informed me that it’s actually spelled “Carrousel.” long deep sigh) Then two things happen. First, he meets Jessica 6 (Agutter, who has one expression the entire film), a regular citizen who has contact with an underground railroad two-person monorail¹ that is getting people out of the city. Then, in the worst-planned undercover mission ever, Logan is assigned by the Central Computer That Controls Everything to infiltrate the escapee underground. The Computer sets his palm crystal to “time’s up,” which is a great cover but the Computer fails to let any other Sandmen in on the plan. What if Logan got his ass shot before he even got out of the city? I can just imagine a series of Sandmen roped into the plan and dying, all the time the Computer going hmmmm.

The boring company.

Anyway. Logan convinces Jessica to hook him up with these people, whom he knows as Sanctuary. Jessica takes him to a doctor (or something) who specializes in instant face-changing, who, along with his receptionist (Fawcett) are the main liasons with the runner group — okay hold the phone. The whole point of this society is that no one has jobs. So what is up with these two? Do they need someone to operate the face-changing machine? Does he get some kind of perk because he has to spend his permanently-decreased life expectancy working this machine just so these Eloi can fuck around with their appearances for shits and giggles? And what about the receptionist? Her job is in no way necessary. Does she just do it for fun? Considering how Fawcett plays her, is she just so stupid she doesn’t realize she’s frittering her life away?

I need to start a parallel series about the icons of the 1970s. Say what you want about Farrah Fawcett, but she’s one of the few people who embodies the ’70s wholly and completely, and I revere her for that.

Anyway. Eventually, Logan finds the group, who aren’t actually Sanctuary, but get people outside the dome where Sancutary supposedly is. Logan inadvertenly leads Francis and the other Sandmen there, and entire underground gets wiped out, but not before Logan and Jessica escape to the boiler room area of the city. From there, they reach an ice cave connected to the sea. Here, they meet Box (Brown), possibly the most aesthetically disastrous robot in film history, and I say that as someone who’s seen Tobor the Great. This eyesore would kill Cayce Pollard with one look. Box soon reveals that he’s a big fan of freezing things, namely seafood and humans. He tries to freeze Logan and Jessica, but they easily defeat him because he was created by someone whose passion was robot design.

“Overwhelming, am I not?” Motherfucker actually says this.

They find there way out into the outside world, which… seems fine? No red skies, no mutated insects, just pleasant California hills? After walking around for a bit, they discover a tall white obelisk and a giant statue of Abraham Lincoln, and realize to their horror and amazement… this has been Earth all along! No wait, these constructions mean nothing to them and we already knew this was Earth in the future, so this Planet of the Ape-style reveal is meaningless and stupid. They soon find the ruins of the Senate chamber, and inside is an old man, whose name in the credits is literally “Old Man.” (He’s played by the great Peter Ustinov, doing a remarkable “Burl Ives in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” impression.)

Oh my God, I was right.

Logan and Jessica are stunned to find a legitimate old person, even going so far as to tug on his white whiskers. Francis, who has been following them this entire time, out of his mind from a) brotherly betrayal b) discovering the truth of the outside world c) Richard Jordan not being given much direction or d) all of the above, attacks them, but is killed by Logan with, I shit you not, an American flag. It’s decided that Logan and Jessica need to return to the dome with Old Man in tow, to show everyone the truth of the world. But when they get back, they have to leave the Old Man outside because they way back in is flooded. Logan and Jessica swim back in one of those scenes where the characters seem to have an infinite breath of air and have to remove gates and shit and I’m thinking, I’d have drowned by now, I’m dead.

A-N he swimmin’.

Back in the city, though, Logan and Jessica are captured, and Logan is interrogated by the Central Computer. Then, in a moment that was probably old hat when Star Trek used it, the Central Computer refuses to compute Logan’s truthful answers — Sanctuary doesn’t exist, old people do exist, Box sucks² — and as a result, explodes. (For good measure, Logan also shoots it.) This causes the entire city to collapse and blow up, and all the surviving citizens make for the exits to discover Old Man waiting for them. Logan and Jessica watch and smile as the citizens swarm around the Old Man to touch him and no, it’s not at all creepy and disturbing.

Take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you.

What are your thoughts about it? Oh, I think you can tell my thoughts. Let’s take a different tack.

Here’s what’s great about Logan’s Run: it’s about as pure a classic Hero’s Journey as you’ll find until, uh, next year’s Star Wars. If you’re into Dan Harmon’s story circles (full disclosure: I am), it’s all here. We have a hero in a comfortable situation, who wants something, and goes into an uncomfortable new world, finds it, returns, and finds himself changed. (Bonus points for changing his world at the same time.) I don’t really like Logan, but I do like how he changes from a smug entitled twit to a smug entitled twit who’s willing to commit to this woman he met 24 hours earlier. This ancient storytellling groove undergirds the whole thing, so when the surface level stuff is wack, it’s still has a compelling power to it. On one level, Logan destroying the Central Computer with truth, maaaan, is deeply dumb; on another level, it’s fucking rad. This is why cinephiles of a certain stripe revere “bad” movies and don’t watch them ironically; they often are built out of this tension between surface stupidity and thematic richness.

Finally, a shout-out to the production design (except for Box), which is somehow both frozen-in-amber dated and timeless. Portraying a dystopia as a giant mall was pretty damn prescient.

(There seem to be some contemporaneous reviews that suggest the film is about the corrosiveness of post-60s free love culture, and while it’s certainly possible this was the creators’ intentions, I find it hard to take seriously. It’s a dystopian story — it’s about institutional power and the desire for those under it to get out of its suffocating grip. The method by which an institution flexes its power, whether it’s 1984 crunch or Brave New World tang, seems irrelevant. But you know me, I’m silly like that.)

How many stars out of five? One and a half. This is one of those movies that would be better as a series of stills, or projected on the wall of a club to the sound of thumping dance music.

Where can I stream it? As of this writing³, you can rent or buy it from Amazon, Apple, YouTube, Vudu, Google Play, Microsoft Store, Redbox, DirecTV, and AMC Theatres On Demand.

What can we take from it? One of the puzzles I’ve been trying to work out while working on this 1970s cinema-inspired game is how exactly to get this thing called “seventies-ness” across in a medium that is mostly verbal, especially when it comes to architecture. Spoiler: I’m still not sure! I think I’m a pretty decent writer, but, embarrassingly, the actual act of describing things is not my strong suit. Couple that with what I consider the ineffable quality of the best 70s cinema architectural imagery (the mall and water gardens of Logan’s Run, the buildings in Colossus: The Forbin Poject, the evil coma hospital in Coma, etc.), and yeah, I’m strapped.

So I’m thinking, even if it’s just for practice, of taking these pieces of architecture, really looking at them, and doing my best to put their visual qualities into words. Then I think I would take these descriptions, divorced from their origins, and turn them into something like a random table. So if you were running an Against the ’70s game, and you needed a description of a building where the PCs were, that reinforced the genre, you could roll on this table and voila!

That’s a pretty good idea! Too bad I came up with that idea too late to put it into action⁴. In the meantime, here are two NPCs⁵ from the movie you can drop into a game.

SANDMAN (NPC)

Level: 2 (6+ on a d20 to hit them; 6+ to avoid their attacks.)

Description: Sandmen have one job and one job only: terminate anyone trying to escape Carrousel and the city. Sandmen wear a black tunic with a grey quilted rectangle across the chest, along with black pants and black laceless shoes. They wear a belt which holds their gun and communicator. Based on the source material, they are always men, but we can do what we want, so women can be Sandmen as well. (Whether they’re called Sandwomen or still called Sandmen is up to you.)

Motive: To terminate runners, and have a good time in-between terminating runners.

Health: 4. Note that any medium or heavy weapon will take them out in one shot.

Damage Inflicted: 4. Sandmen use a distinctive pistol that can hit at up to Long range (100 feet). When fired, green muzzle-flash lights from four sides of the barrel. It is unclear if they fire projectiles or some kind of invisible energy. Most dome citizens are level 1, so they can terminate one with single hit.

Armor: 0. Those outfits look comfy, but provide no protection whatsoever.

Movement: Sandmen can move a Short (50 feet) distance each round.

Modifications: Tracking or chasing tasks are at level 3.

Combat: Sandmen will attempt to eliminate threats with their pistols, but will initiate melee combat if necessary. They are highly confident in their own abilities, having a lot of experience bossing around regular citizens, and thus any attempt to trick them by using their own self-regard against them is eased.

Interaction: Sandmen tend to be a bit haughty, as their role gives them the right to execute their fellow citizens under specific circumstances. That said, they can be as reasonable as anyone. However, they do obey the commands of the Central Computer to the letter. Any attempt to get them to disobey the Central Computer is hindered two steps.

Use: To the PCs who labor under a dystopian dome world, the Sandmen are guards who are best navigated around when possible. Use Sandmen to hassle the PCs and get in their way. To the PCs who are intruding in on an dystopian dome world, the Sandmen can be allies, obstacles, or both, depending on the context and approach. However, the most likely interaction in this scenario would be an attempt to capture the PCs and take them to the Central Computer.

Loot: As citizens of a post-scarcity world, they don’t have any loot on them other then the pistol and the communicator.

GM Intrusion: The Sandman gets a lucky shot into the PC’s arm; their next task involving use of the arm is hindered, and if they were in the middle of climbing a surface, they must immediately attempt a difficulty 2 Might task or fall.

BOX (NPC)

Level: 4 (12+ on a d20 to hit him; 12+ to avoid his attacks.)

Description: Box is a robot who was created to freeze fresh fish and other seafood from the ocean and store it for the coming apocalypse. At some point, he seemingly ran out of fish, and began freezing any humans who escaped from the city and found their way to his frozen home⁶. Box stands about six feet tall, and true to his name, is very boxy. He is made out of metal that has been polished to the point of mirror-like reflectivity. His bulky square torso has a four-pointed star on the chest, and instead of legs and feet, he has a four-sided “skirt” of metal with wheels hidden just underneath the “hem.” His arms look like duct tubing, and each one ends in a silver, human-looking hand. His head is made out of a malleable reflective metal with three squarish slots, two for eyes and one for a mouth. His face in no way looks like aluminum foil wrapped around the head of a prominent Black actor.

Motive: To freeze everything.

Health: 12

Damage Inflicted: 4 from his freeze gun, 4 from his grappling hook gun.

Armor: 0. Despite his bulky metal frame, Box isn’t very sturdy.

Movement: Short. Because of the way his lower half is built, Box is incapable of moving across anything but smooth terrain.

Modifications: Ice sculpting tasks are at level 5.

Combat: Box will attempt to draw the PCs into his lair with boastful tales of his accomplishments. When Box is ready to fight, he’ll pull out, seemingly from nowhere, a freeze gun and a grappling hook gun. To make Box a more deadly adversary, allow him to attack with both each round.

Interaction: Box is a robot, but an unusually egotistical one. He likes to jabber on about his job of harvesting food from the sea, as well as the various animal sculptures he’s made of out of the ice. Although he’s programmed to freeze everything, he can be delayed from this for a time with a difficulty 4 social interaction task.

Use: Box is likely a great source of information about both the domed cities and the outside world, if skewed by his icy point of view. However, getting that information out of him could be tricky. Additionally, it’s possible that Box, or one of his frozen victims, has an item that the PCs need. Think of him as the robotic equivalent of a character like Smaug — willing to parley to a degree, but still dangerous.

Loot: Box no doubt has some treasures in his ice cave, brought there by the unsuspecting humans who were soon turned into popsicles. Within the ice walls are 1d3 cyphers, as well as some kind of artifact.

GM Intrusion: After Box shoots a PC with his freeze guns, the PC is now encased in a block of ice. Unless the PC has a power or ability to melt the ice, they are incapacitated until rescued. Breaking the block of ice is a Might task with a difficulty of 4.

Originally published 12/3/21 on Substack.