Monday, September 27, 2010

1976 "Logan's Run" article

"Logan's Run" was one of the last of the big-budget science fiction films before Star Wars hit the scene and changed everything. Coming during that time when sci-fi films were not produced often, I was really captured by the world of "Logan's Run" (and Jessica's sideless dress), and collected the novelization, the score LP, and (best of all) a set of large-format lobbycards (which I'll feature in a future post). This time we're looking at an article on the film from issue #2 of Starlog (see cover here) published in November of 1976.
(Click on images to enlarge.)

I managed to see the movie twice when it was first released; once in the theater in Ft. Lauderdale, FL and a few months later in a drive-in in Macon, GA (we moved VERY often), where I taped the sound on my little Radio Shack tape deck. I probably still have the cassettes somewhere in a box. This was one of the first movies I went to see as a teen that show a little skin, which was a bonus at the time!

One thing I noticed was a Star Trek fan extra who snuck in the Vulcan salute at the end! Have you ever seen it? Watch at the end when the young people are reaching for the old man... right in the foreground, one of the raised hands briefly makes the Vulcan hand sign, and it made it in the movie! See my screen capture of the moment below...

My sneaky Trekker friend, whoever you are, I applaud you!
UPDATE: I have heard from the person owning the hand in the above scene! I received an email from Adam Wyse, who wrote this:

Fred,
Thought you might be interested to learn that I was the Vulcan Hand Salute kid in Logan's Run.  My mother was a talent agent in Dallas after we moved here from L.A. in 1970.  I had done many national commercials through an agent there and my mom decided to open an agency in the new film frontier of Dallas.  As a result, she always sent me on extra calls for films made in Dallas at the time like Logan's Run, Phantom of the Paradise, Semi-Tough and others.  I remember working weeks on end on LR culminating to the big finale of filming the destruction of "Dome City" filmed at the Ft. Worth Water Gardens.  We were directed to wait on the far side of a wall for the explosions and then came over to gather around the first old person we'd ever seen, played by the late Peter Ustinov.  I also remember a girl from our agency was selected to be the one to touch the old man's face.  Rumor has it this required a "special audition", but who really knows. Anyway, I was simply wanting to find a way to locate myself in the crowd and didn't do it long, I thought.  I feared it would get noticed and end up on the cutting room floor, but as you mentioned, made the final print.  I had forgotten about this until a friend of mine from back then called me and said the salute had made the Internet.  So, there it is and thanks for the applaud.
Adam
Isn't that cool? Thanks, Adam, for sharing your story! It is neat finding out all these years later who that was that made their mark for Star Trek fans in a sci-fi movie!

6 comments:

  1. Great catch on the vulcan salute. I've seen the film many times and have always missed it.

    The film had quite an impact, and I recall many sci-fi convention goers dressed as Logan or Jessica. There was a vendor at the time that sold good replicas of the Sandman blaster, which would "fire" very realistically as they did in the movie. It used a butane torch insert available at Radio Shack, which was designed to power their portable soldering guns.

    There was an episode of "Columbo" of all things, which showed these guns in action. Columbo was investigating a murder at the sci-fi convention and he ran into a Logan & Jessica as well as Robby The Robot.

    Ah, the 70's. It all made so much sense then...

    Keep up the good work!

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  2. Thank you very much for the scans! Logan's Run is one of my favorite SF movies, I never saw it in theaters but saw it many times on TV and I now own the DVD. I must also correct you when you say you own the novelization, as there never was one. What there was was a reprint of the original novel with the cover being the movie poster, making it a movie tie-in not a novelization. I collect movie tie-ins AND novelizatons so I'm a stickler for these details.

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  3. Luis,
    Thanks for the comment and the clarification! I haven't taken it out in years, so I bow to your recollection of it rather than mine. I did enjoy the sequel book, also.

    Kind of the same situation with the "Planet of the Apes" novel; when I bought it as a kid I was expecting a novelization of the movie, but it was the original novel with movie stills on the cover! All the other Apes books were novelizations, but the first one never had that, sadly.

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  4. One of my favs too. Never noticed the vulcan salute before. Now I have to my copy out and look at it.

    anonymous-Did Columbo have Logans Run people at a convention too? Because there was definitely a Wonder Woman episode with Logan's Run fans using the gun and Robby the Robot was in it too.

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  5. Logan's Run is still my favorite film of all time. It was the first science fiction movie that I saw, and after almost four decades, I still consider it a classic of the genre. It is an adventure that I can watch over and over again, and not ever get bored by it.

    Thanks for posting the Starlog Article about the film. I still have my own copy of that to this day.

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