The Dystopian Classic, Logan's Run
Logan is a hardworking 'Sandman' in a distant and apparent idyllic future where no one lives longer than to the age of 30. As Sandman Logan hunt down people who, close to the end of their life spans, chose to run away from their inevitable death. Each persons age period is represented with a certain color of clothes and a same colored crystal (run by a time clock) in their hand and when the crystal is red and starts blinking.. your time is up. Logan, who never thought anything more of the way of how the city is managed, gets ordered to infiltrate the community "The Sanctuary" in which, the runners who actually makes it, inhabits. Jessica, a young woman with connections to the sanctuary and the runners, changes the way Logan sees this twisted custom and when they managed to get to the outside and meet an old man and realise they can live their life fully, he starts to fight for the other team.
This 1976 sci-fi classic, with Michael York as the lead, was based on the novel of the same name, written in 1967 by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. And a great dystopian story always always fascinate and captivate me completely. All the actors are great in their parts, however there's one star which dominates every scene he's in, as he always does, and that is one of my all time favourite actors, Peter Ustinov. He brilliantly portrays the lonely man Logan and Jessica encounters on the outside, with playful movements and charming personality he literally lifts the film even further up, maybe it's just me, but thats how great an actor I think he is.
Logan's Run has been adapted in to many different medias, follow up novels, comic books, spin-off series, a video game and even to a soundtrack to an imagined sequel. In 1977 the spin off with the same name was created with Gregory Harrison as Logan. It ran for 13 episodes and was a nice series, but as always the film is better.
Jerry Goldsmith, the composer of the soundtrack is a genius for me. He composed the fantastic music for Star Trek the Motion Picture and several other parts of the Star Trek universe. And in this film he does not disappoint with classic adventurous and futuristic electronic music going through the film.
Sidenote: Goldsmith, also composed music for 4 Twilight Zone episodes.
Sidenote #2: Rod Serling actually wrote an episode to the Twilight Zone (which he rejected) called 'Happy Place' about a society where people were executed when they turned a certain age.
Sidenote #3. Yes, I can manage to bring The Twilight Zone in to every conversation.
