Damnation Alley (1977)

Lt. Jake Tanner (Jan Michael Vincent) and Major Eugene Denton (George Peppard) arrived at Fort Tipton AFB in the Mojave Desert.  Denton warned Tanner that he requested a change of assignment, as he doesn't think their styles mesh.  They had hardly taken their post at the launch controls of a nuclear missile silo when a missile strike from the USSR was detected.  Responding to orders, the pair launch all the Fort Tipton missiles.  World War III is over in an hour.

It had been two years and the survivors of Fort Tipton were isolated.  Jake left the Airforce but still lived on base with Keegan (Paul Winfield), another airman who quit the military.  Jake had a scouted around, but found no other survivors.  Meanwhile, Major Denton was busy working on an experimental military vehicle, the Landmaster.  He had only just received approval from General Landers to take it into the field when the base exploded in a tragic accident.  When the dust settled, only Tanner, Denton, Keegan, and Lt. Tom Perry were still alive.

Over the last two years, there has only been one repeated signal from Albany, NY.  Denton decided that would be their destination.  Of course, much of the area was an irradiated wasteland but their was a path through the destruction, a corridor named Damnation Alley.  With stops in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Detroit, the survivors of Fort Tipton must overcome hostile new lifeforms, extreme weather events, and bandits, while also collecting other survivors: Janice (Dominique Sanda) and Billy (Jackie Earle Haley).

Intended as a sci-fi epic, this was released the same year as Star Wars.  Amazingly, 20th Century Fox expected Star Wars to be the flop and Damnation Alley to be the hit.  The movie fits nicely into the disaster theme that was popular in the 1970s, even borrowing footage from Earthquake (1974), an earlier disaster flick.

Roger Zelazny, who authored the story upon which this was based, hated the film.  Looks like I'm going to have to read the book and find out why.

Anyway, the movie is just okay.  It feels more like a low budget SyFy channel movie than a big studio production.  In fact, I always thought it was made for TV until this latest viewing.