New Release: Damnation Alley on DVD and Blu-Ray

Damnation Alley isn’t a movie that people immediately recognize from just hearing the name. But show them the giant all-terrain Landmaster vehicle and it all comes rushing back (if you’re my age). Growing up, I swear HBO and various Saturday afternoon tv movie matinees on basic cable played this cult classic 3 times a day and I think I caught nearly every broadcast (even though the movie came out in 1977… there’s something about that year…). Back then I had no idea that the little kid would grow up to be Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), but I knew the two adult male leads as Hannibal (George Peppard from the A-Team) and Stringfellow Hawke (Jan-Michael Vincent on Airwolf), so they had my tv action series loving eyeballs in the palm of their cheesy sci-fi movie hands. Throw in some giant scorpions, brutal electrical storms, and hordes of crazed post-apocalypse survivors and it was a safe bet that I’d watch this thing over and over. The film itself doesn’t exactly hold up in comparison to the special effects of today, but the Landmaster is still something the kid in me wants to take a ride in across a nuclear wasteland.

If you get a chance to grab this (and you should if you love post-apocalyptic sci-fi), make sure you catch the various making of documentaries on the disc. One is notable doc is worth watching simply for the completely honest critique that screenwriter Alan Sharp provides on his own work and the final movie itself. You’ll never find a more ambivalent endorsement for a film captured on video (not to worry, Roger Zelazny, the original creator of Damnation Alley wasn’t too pleased with the final product either). It’s funny to watch him struggle to say something nice about the final film. In contrast, if you always loved the massive land cruiser, the behind-the-scenes footage of how it was constructed is a feast for a gadget-loving geek like me.

Get Damnation Alley (DVD) with Bonus Lithograph! now on DVD or Blu-ray directly from Shout! Factory

Or wait until it arrives in stores on July 12th (I’d get it now with the free lithograph if I were you).