Live long enough and every memory becomes a memoir. I saw the sci-fi action movie Damnation Alley in the cinema during its initial run at the impressionable age of eight years old. At that time, movies were the epitome of magic. Images that big making sounds so loud, music swelling so loud I could feel it in my ass cheeks, made going to any movie a spiritual experience. Details of that experience stand out to me. There was a large tub of popcorn in my lap and a large Coke in the cupholder. My grandmother sat next to me, clucking and tutting, fiddling with her purse. My stomach tightened as the lights went down and the film started. When Damnation Alley finished, I understood one thing, even with my immature and limited critical thinking skills.
Damnation Alley sucked. And I have been irrationally angry about it ever since.
Nearly forgotten by Movie People (you know who you are), 1977’s Damnation Alley haunts my dreams. It rumbles into my wandering late-night thoughts, unbidden and unwanted. I see the crackling acrid skies, the constant threat of nuclear-infused storms dropping acid rain onto the thirsty mutated earth. I see Jan-Michael Vincent, his long hair raging in the wind as he jumps desert dunes on his awesome motorcycle. I see George Peppard, his anachronistic black mustache providing the antithesis to his short-cropped grey hair, waving his cigar like a professor using a telescoping pointer in a Philosophy 101 seminar.
Like a nerd possessed, I am compelled to watch Damnation Alley every two or three years in the vain hope that I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not a reeking pile of garbage left to rot in the harsh sun. It’s like mushrooms. I know I don’t like them, but I’ll try them every once in a while because what if I like them now? After a recent rewatch, I don’t know if I like Damnation Alley, but it’s not as bad as mushrooms.
I don’t know how y’all eat those things.
Damnation Alley starts with a literal bang as nuclear war breaks out across the globe. On duty in a remote Air Force base in the desert, Major Gene Denton (Peppard) and 1st Lieutenant Jake Tanner (Vincent) do their part and fire back at the enemy in retaliation. Billions of people die as a result of the missile exchange. Earth is knocked off its axis. Those who survive must contend with a newly hostile environment, mutated creatures, and each other. Denton has the idea to travel to Albany, New York, the source of a repeating radio signal. Radio equals life, Denton figures, and the possibility of survivors must be explored.
Enter the Landmasters, two of the greatest customized vehicles of 1970s cinema. Imagine an old aluminum Airstream trailer torched in half, the sections connected with landscaping fabric, equipped with twelve wheels. The ultimate all-terrain vehicles, the Landmasters also have missiles mounted to their roofs. Even if you’re not a car lover, you’ve got to admit that the Landmasters are badass machines. Denton and Tanner man one Landmaster while the other one is piloted by Lieutenant Tom Perry (Kip Niven) and former Air Force officer Keegan (Paul Winfield).
It’s a standard sci-fi plot point. Can this ragtag team of survivors brave the horrible world they’ve inherited (and helped create since Tanner and Denton also launched missiles) and find a mythical promised land? Can they co-exist?
Well, sure they can, except for the ones that die.
Damnation Alley introduces questions in the first act that are never answered. Where did they get the gasoline to power the Landmasters? How is it possible that the Landmasters are driving on well-defined dirt roads after a nuclear apocalypse? How are there stores of booze on the property of an old Air Force base? How long will it be until our heroes meet the radiation-poisoned group of rapey cannibals? [Hint: that doesn’t happen until the third act.]
Except for the giant scorpions and flesh-eating cockroaches, the world doesn’t seem that horrible. There are roads, there’s whiskey, and enough fuel to make the Lord Humongous happy. Capitalism has been dismantled, the Cold War has ended, and any sort of hierarchical pecking order is a sham. The plucky survivors in Damnation Alley are walking around on Earth’s surface two years after the nukes fall although most scientists agree it would take around 10 years for things to settle down enough for humans to live above ground. Where’s that nuclear winter we were promised?
Damnation Alley subtly posits the idea that if you made it through the initial blasts, vaporizing heat, shockwaves, and environmental upheaval, a nuclear disaster places you at ground zero for Utopia. With society eradicated, the world is tabula rasa and you can do whatever you want. I don’t know what Sarah Connor was so worried about.
According to Damnation Alley, if you have the right equipment, surviving the apocalypse isn’t that hard. Put some chains on the tires of your SUV. Get some extra gas, just in case. Avoid the carnivorous cockroaches and gigantic scorpions. Drive until you find a pocket of civilization in the new irradiated paradise, go to the nearest generator-powered pub, have a cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over.
It’s a wish-fulfillment movie, for sure. Facing nuclear devastation, most people would gather their families and drive to the nearest airport to wait for the skies to glow red. Not in Damnation Alley. Human luck and technological ingenuity win out against the worst possible odds and we all pair off in Albany to repopulate the planet. Honestly, it’s stupid. And even decades later, Damnation Alley still sort of sucks. Like mushrooms. But maybe you should watch it every few years.
You know. Just to see.
Damnation Alley is available to rent on streaming platforms like YouTube, Prime Video, and Apple TV. It’s four bucks, y’all. Why not?