L'ultima odissea

Damnation Alley was quite an unlucky movie seemingly, it was put out with the idea that it would be another profitable sci-fi b-movie but unfortunately for it, a few weeks before it was released a movie called Star Wars was released which changed the rules for sci-fi forever more. To be honest though, I kind of like this one. It has its own significant factors too, for instance it's quite early in the cycle of post-apocalypse movies - the Mad Max series certainly seems to have borrowed some of its ideas – and so I think it's fair to say that its core look and feel went on to be used in quite a few similar movies in the 80's. Its story starts with a nuclear war devastating the world, leaving a small band of survivors in a desert outpost. After a while they are forced to set off on a journey to try and find other survivors in an all-terrain vehicle.

This one has a plot that boils down to a succession of set-pieces strung together along a hazardous trek. It's essentially a road movie...without a road. Along the way our heroes battle giant scorpions, swarms of flesh-eating cockroaches, mutant feral humans and they endure an electrical storm. They also pick up a woman and an incredibly annoying teenage boy. The film is chock full of corny dialogue and charmingly poor special effects but it remains entertaining nevertheless with good pacing and enough variety of events to ensure things remain interesting. It has to be admitted though that it does end with a very poorly conceived conclusion that felt like it was tagged on because the original idea was too expensive. But on the whole, I found this to be good fun mainly, certainly a fair bit better than its poor reputation suggests.