A post-apocalyptic film, best known for its Landmaster machine, made specifically for the film and existing to this day by a private collector. The car is about three wheels at each corner, which kind of helps it better get out of congestion and conquer stone debris.
The only film adaptation of one of Roger Zelazna's novels. The black version of which he was completely satisfied, but the final, greatly changed and eventually released on the screens version he hated, and it can be understood.
At that time, it was the main project of 21st Century Fox, but against the backdrop of the success of Star Wars, it faded into the background, its release was postponed, and the film itself began to change even further for the worse (at least 10 months were spent on adding laser effects for the “radioactive sky”, which look rather inappropriate, not to mention realistic).
Realism is bad, they didn’t even try. The main characters travel through the allegedly radioactive terrain without any protective suits, always clean and licked (looking like models from the covers of glossy magazines), always full. On the way, they meet the same emasculated characters, but only if they are “good”. If the character is “evil”, then he will necessarily be depicted as a mutt.
There are also big problems with logic, problems with the production of the film and the mountain of cut scenes are further affected. The two scenes at the beginning are particularly ridiculous. The first is when one of the bunkers explodes, and why it is not explained at all in the plot. The cause of the explosion looks extremely idiotic - the man fell asleep with a cigarette, then show the lever and in the next frame BUUH! - the entire giant underground station explodes, from a single man with a cigarette. The second is that one of the heroes on a motorcycle drops the girl to giant scorpions as bait and goes to the base. There, his friend with binoculars is ready to kill him for it, but he invites him to look at the bait again in order to see not a living girl, but a doll. It’s just a spit in the face of the viewer – clearly and clearly seen in the scenes before that, it is absolutely alive, a real actress, especially in the scene, her, in fact, throwing off a motorcycle.
Or the scene of the heroine in the shower (here and with water at all strains there), the footage for 1-2 seconds stretched longer just by taking and ... scrolling this scene back and forth, as in some funny YouTube videos.
Despite everything, watching the adventure of the main characters is interesting. But there are still armored cockroaches...
To sum up, if you think of this film as B-Movie (which it is NOT, it is a big-budget project from a major Hollywood studio), then the review is green. A kindly naive film, to which you do not want to particularly find fault, even though the shoals climb from all the cracks.
But if you take it with all the joints (very global) and pay attention to them, then either white or even red.
I enjoyed watching this movie, so the first option.
Interestingly, an expanded version of this film with cut scenes was once shown on TV once in 1983, but it has never surfaced anywhere since.
In the year of the release of the film, 20th Century Fox studio made a bet on it. Judge for yourself: the work of popular science fiction Roger Zelazny is taken as a basis, George Peppard, who had breakfast with Tiffany, and the budding Jan-Michael Vincent from The Mechanic, are involved in the caste, and it is fueled with 17 million budgets, which at that time was the amount necessary. Some space fiction enthusiast George Lucas was not in this priority.
But time has shown that, where and how, Star Wars has become a cultural phenomenon that is alive and well (the Force was awakened by as much as $ 2 billion), and the Valley of Curses remained. Nothing. Around this tape did not develop a special cult, it did not become an impulse for post-apocalyptic films (compare the list of various works in which Crazy Max is quoted, especially the second, and try to find at least a couple referring to the Valley of Curses), and she did not help the careers of actors, as well as she did not put the bandwagons - that Peppard, that Vincent in the 80s will find their iconic roles on television. As a result, over time, Jack Smythe's painting has become something of one of the many wastelands shown here. Is it fair?
Well, you've got to take a closer look at the tape, so let's leave the ranting and start. The plot is a typical story of people looking for the remnants of civilization among the mountains of debris, dust and remains of those who were not lucky enough to be among the notorious remnants of civilization. Of course, just to drive from point A to point B will not work - and radiation does its nefarious work, growing Satan insects, and dust-water-radiation storms, and marauders nate. In general, a typical set of any self-respecting work touching on the topic of life after a nuclear kirdyk.
That's just worth mentioning that the cost of this very kit does not pull on the declared 17 lemas. Yes, there are effects here - insects of all kinds, and the sky is strange in different flares, and the Landmaster APC, which was emphasized (and quite rightly, it is worth saying), placing it on posters and devoting screen time almost as much as human characters. But it does not take all this on the declared money. Lucas’ budget was even smaller, but the visual part was 150 goals higher. Gerry Goldsmith’s involvement in the case made me very sad here – I’m not likely to find another film with Goldsmith’s music that would sound so rattlingly nasty, except for the one in the final scene. What is it?! Was it written by a man of caliber and boundless talent like Goldsmith? This is just a typical set of trills, suitable for action, but actually unhearable!
The characters are almost entirely typical, so I have nothing to write about them. But there's something to write about the ending of the film - it's not like it's just so rough-sudden-snippets, it's just the climax here is merged. It's like -- usually to a happy-or-not-so-end come after some intense or exciting scene that's missing here. Formally, closer to the finale, there are graters with looters - or who they are - and flooding, but these scenes are simply not staged so properly that we can worry about any of the characters. The most difficult trials are shifted to the first half and middle of the picture, but in the rest, all the tension evaporates, because of which it seems that the heroes came to the cherished goal without much difficulty.
This is the story of “Valley of Curses” – a gray film with gray characters and a gray plot. Of course, there are its advantages here, but the big question is that after some time after watching this picture, it will be able to remain in memory, in addition to perhaps a wonderful amphibious armored car.
The world after the atomic war is unknown by whom the name itself has already begun baffles the fan of fiction, since the answer to this question will not be given. A strange and desert world will open before us, since most of the planet will become a desert, but the air will remain ordinary for some reason. Attention attracts the armored car and this dignity ends. Mutants are insects, simple landscapes, silly statements of heroes and a rapidly changing mood. To this we add ridiculous dialogues, weak acting and brevity of presentation, the film as if compressed in it lost intrigue, and shining skies do not seem so fantastic landscape. Many will say that the budget and the year of release are to blame. Alas, I will not agree, this year the first episode of Star Wars New Hope was released, whose budget was three million less, but it has the best special effects, the plot is complex, the great acting of the actors.
To the overall picture, I add that the author of the original Roger Zhelyazny was dissatisfied with the film adaptation and in the future his works were not tried to transfer to the screen. I don’t even recommend watching fantasy fans.
For its years of release, this film was a full-fledged large-scale blockbuster with a considerable frequent spectacle. For the late 70s, in fact, what is happening is richly worthy of the visual series, sculpting a kind of disaster film on the topical theme of the Cold War with the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Before the “Valley of Curses” and after it, the directors will shoot the stories of the post-apocalypse, but not everyone will be able to compete on equal terms in the “picture” only over the years, when new times of entertainment cinema come, the film will noticeably lose ground.
Perhaps, the approach of the creators of the picture with the construction of a full-fledged all-terrain vehicle is especially impressive - a mandatory permanent participant of any frame, as if he is another character. The mechanical machine on wheels was a great help for adventure-survival in places cursed by radiation. It has missiles, and machine guns, and radars, and even in the fire does not burn, and in the water ... and under it easily swims a submarine!
From the very beginning, the structure of the narrative is interesting, leading a leisurely story about the Third World War on behalf of a certain American base. Usually in such films before the viewer only a given about the deadened global catastrophe, here you can feel the arrangement with the demonstrative actions of the personnel before the launch of nuclear missiles, with the meeting of such enemy weapons, and the sinister growth of poisonous celestial mushrooms of chaos. And then the accompanying text about the world changed beyond recognition.
The middle of the movie up to the final point will take a path of almost realistic threats to the characters, especially posed by the forces of nature. However, for giant mutated insects with armed people, there is a small place. Thus, almost the entire space of timekeeping is occupied by action: from a radioactive hurricane were saved – you get rivers of voracious cockroaches, survived the storm – how about flooding? Fortunately, the mentioned all-terrain vehicle is fabulously practical, invulnerable and roomy, even a built-in shower has!
With the positive aspects, I think, figured out, now it is impossible to keep silent about misfires. And most of all, the viewing upsets, rusha is an excellent post-apocalyptic story - acting. Or rather, with the permission of the director, their emotional distance from the main core of the narrative. After all, it is quite clear and without further words, how is a person obliged to behave when he realizes that two years ago the Third World War destroyed the climate, destroyed the population on a planetary scale, there is no connection with a handful of survivors, and even his native military base was torn by a fire? However, the crumbs of humanity among half a dozen characters, aimlessly following the dead scorched earth, smile tirelessly, their eyes shine with elevated mood, their faces are smoothly shaved, and the shape is ironed! It turns out a harmonious combination of the plot of the film and the performers did not work out; one interferes with the second.
And since actors do not properly understand their role as the last representatives of humanity, their characters with relationships are far from logical behavioral contact. This is especially noticeable in the detached coolness between men and a woman they met, as if they had not been stuck on the base for two years among colleagues of the same sex, and I will give a pond in a ruined world. Psychology is zero, as it is not regrettable to conclude. In addition, the depressing behavior of the actors, and not to list all the blatant nonsense point to the most egregious, where one of the heroes, having met creeping mutant cockroaches (the size of a human thumb), simply did not try to escape, and for some reason climbed into an abandoned car, where voracious insects teem no less than outside! And then it's really bad for me.
But, to sum up, I can not attribute the film to an untenable work. Even now, the spectacle can make you develop excitement after watching the vicissitudes of people amid the storm of nature, if, of course, you realize what the entertainment movie disaster of the late 70s means, and what the visual series will be. In addition, some footage came out bloody, going in contrast to the sweet smiles of the characters. Perhaps most pleasing of all is the finale, symbolizing the proper meeting of Man with Man, as if each is worth his weight in gold, even though he is a stranger. And that before us one of the first large projects of the work in the style of post-apocalypse is also worth considering, at least in the framework of information.
6 out of 10
The film's impressions are contradictory. But I will share it with you.
First, the film is based on the work of Roger Zelazna - a good author, who was practically not filmed.
Secondly, there are very decent actors in the film. Ian-Michael Vincent was a very promising actor after Big Wednesday, and the surname Dominic Sanda did not need additional recommendations.
Thirdly, the plot of the film is really interesting. It combines post-apocalyptic futurism and the usual genre of road Movie. I will not retell in detail all the storylines (of which there are few), I just note that the movie largely anticipated the success of the films Escape from New York, I Am Legend and The Road.
But with these significant advantages, the film does not leave a solid impression. In my opinion, there were almost no key moments in the film that would be remembered. There's practically no intrigue. Until the very end, the film was waiting for the moment when it would be “really interesting.” I revisited the second time, mistakenly thinking that I missed this interesting point.
To be fair, I must say that the film itself is very worthy – post-apocalyptic landscapes are impressive.
Having watched the film twice, I am not surprised that Roger Zelazny treated him badly, and the famous Robert Wise refused to shoot it because of the weakness of the script.
5 out of 10