One thing I do remember is that you got to see Jenny Agutter's tits, which impressed 13 year old me no end. Of course, for a while there, you got to see them in any movie she was in, which was certainly no hardship! She was, and still is, a very attractive woman, as well as being a more-than-capable actor.
Michael York, who plays Logan, was always one of those actors whose appeal eluded me - He reminds me a lot of Charlton Heston; they seemed to get the lead roles in a lot of the films I ended up watching, but neither of 'em ever bother to act, or if they are, they only know one "character". I find them both irritating to watch, but not irritating enough to spoil a film; in fact, I often find myself laughing at them (in all the wrong spots) more than anything else!
The director, Michael Anderson has some good films in his resumé (he directed The Dam Busters, one of my all time faves). This just isn't one of them.
Faults? Where to start... Let's start with the city. I know we're a little spoilt these days; CGI cityscapes can look amazingly realistic (but they don't always - This is one place where cheap CGI work can really show). The city in Logan's Run never, ever, looks like anything other than what it is; a large model. The most obvious detail is the trees; they are so obviously from a model train supply house. The lack of detail on the buildings also doesn't help with the illusion - Everything looks small; given the low quality of the model-making, you'd think they'd minimise your exposure, but they actually seem to go out of their way to show the outsides of the buildings. Oh well, it was 1976...
The "Carousel" sequence has also aged badly - While there was only one point where I could actually see the wires (there may be more), it was still very obvious that the people were on wires, if only due to the limited range of movement available to them. The force-field effect probably helps to hide the wires, just not well enough. Not as bad as the wires in The Black Hole, though, which is something, at least.
There are several points during their encounter with Box (the robot) where you can see the face within the silver mask, which is less excusable than some of the other technical mistakes; this is the sort of thing which could be easily fixed, even with 1970's SFX technology, if only by reshooting those scenes... And don't even get me started on the terrible super-imposition of the ice-cave collapsing around them. AWFUL!
One thing I noticed, more than anything else, was the pace. It really did feel incredibly slow at many points. What makes this most interesting is in comparison to the original book; William F Nolan's novel is probably the quickest read I've ever found - I can finish it in a couple of hours, easily. The film seemed to take MUCH longer! I can only hope that the upcoming remake sticks a little closer to the book, and doesn't just try to copy the movie version.
The one saving grace of the film (apart from the aforementioned Jenny Agutter's lovely anatomy) is Peter Ustinov, who is pretty much the antithesis of York or Heston; any film he's in, I know I'm at least gonna find him enjoyable. Not enough to save a really bad film, but certainly enough to make it a little bit more tolerable... He gets a strange mixture of really, really good lines, and some truly God-awful ones in this film.
So much for my blast-from-the-past. It's funny how often a film you really enjoyed as a child/teenager turns out to be virtually unwatchable 35 years later... Some of it is the effects, but I often find that a good enough film can transcend this. There are many films from more than 70 years ago that still hold up extremely well, even though there effects are quite laughable - The most important part of ANY film is story. And that's were Logan's Run fails; they took some of the great central ideas from the novel, and ignored what made it good, somehow. I honestly don't know how they managed it. I do know, however, that next time I think of watching it, I'm gonna try to remember to read the book instead. Far more entertaining. And quicker.
