So last night I settled in for something a little meaty and without a lot of the fast paced editing, pointless explosions, and gratuitous action that so plagues genres films today, Logan’s Run.

Logan’s Run is a 1976 Science-Fiction film made before that great behemoth Star Wars derailed Science-Fiction films for a generation. The film, based on a novel of the same name written by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, is set in a utopian 23^rd century. Crime, disease, hunger, war, and pollution, are all problems of a literally forgotten past. The story is set in an unnamed city, protected from the war-torn hell that scars the Earth by massive domes, where the citizens lead lives dedicated to frivolity and hedonistic pleasures. Families no longer exist, and people are raised in crèches without ever knowing their parents. All their needs are met, the city is government by a benevolent computer system called the Network, and it all works seamlessly.

Of course if it all worked seamlessly there would be no conflict, no plot, and no story. Logan 6, the main character, is a Sandman. He is a Blade Runner long before that term ever came into existence, except he doesn’t hunt down wayward androids with dreams of electric sheep, he hunts down people who refuse to willing die on their ‘last day.’ You see this perfectly machined society works in total balance because everyone dies at thirty. The crystal in your hand flashes and it’s time for you to ride the carousel, where in theory you have a chance or resetting your clock, but in reality it’s where you die. If you don’t ride the Carousel you run, and then the Sandmen chase you down and kill you.

The system isn’t as perfect as everyone accepts and Logan is soon charged with finding the hiding place of over a thousand runners who have successfully evaded the Sandmen and vanished from the Network’s omniscient eye. To do this He’ll have to play the part of a runner, that most dangerous of assignments for any cop, undercover with the enemy.

The movie stars Michael York as Logan 6, Jenny Agutter as Jessica 5 a woman who knows something of the hidden runner (and I saw her in a feature film just this year, can you name it?), and Richard Jordan as Francis 7, Logan’s best friend and fellow Sandman. While many of the effect are truly dated, this is a film that has something interesting to say. It is a film made during that time when SF was growing up in Hollywood and many of the plots stopped being for children or teenagers and turned to truly adult themes. Sadly that period ended under the crushing weight of Star Wars’ box office take.