No it didn't. It had a very superficial storyline that bore only a passing resemblance to the excellent storyline of the book.
And not even the presence of Peter Ustinov could offset the ill-cast clinkers in the cast like Farrah Fawcett, who apparently had yet to take her first acting lesson. And Roscoe Lee Brown's awesome talent, and even more awesome voice, didn't come off so good in that horrifically bad costume they put him in.
Speaking as a big Goldsmith fan... the Logan's Run soundtrack is so unmemorable that I couldn't hum a single bar of any of the themes if my life depended on it.
I can't imagine how, beyond the somewhat clever use of real holograms, the film featured some of the crappiest miniature work I'd ever seen, terrible wire rig flying effects, and probably the worst robot costumes to hit the silver screen outside of the old movie serials of the 40s and 50s.
Plenty of crappy movies do well at the box office.
Superior to the TV version? Yes, I already admitted as much. It does indeed blow slightly fewer goats than it's television incarnation. It nevertheless blows worse than any of the other SF&F films that came out that year.
1. Do you feel that way about the performances that Michael York, the late Richard Jordan, and Jenny Agutter gave in the Oscar-winning film? If so, you're as blind as a fucking bat! Especially when it comes to Jenny Agutter!
If you can watch this clip and still claim that York or Agutter turns in a decent performance, it is you who is blind, and deaf. Agutter's delivery seriously sucks.
The late, great Gene Siskel gave the movie no stars and called it "the worst major motion picture in seven years of reviewing films." He also cited what he believed to be "cheap special effects" and more importantly
"terrible performances with the exception of Peter Ustinov, whose cameo is expanded to a ridiculous length because he is the only decent thing in the movie."
I agree with him. The performances of the three leads was passable at best (Jordan being the best of the bunch) Agutter's performance was awful, and only made tolerable by the way she filled out that flimsy semi-transparent costume she wore.
2.What the hell is so bad about the outfit that Roscoe Lee Browne wore, when he played BOX? Sure it looked like a rolling vanity mirror, but it still looked cool.
No. It did not. It looked incredibly stupid, which is the very antithesis of cool. It was but a slight step up from the space-helmeted-ape robot in "Robot Monster" (1953)
3. Aside from Futureworld and King Kong, I don't know of any other SF and F film that was released in 1976. But if Logan's Run blew worse, then how do you explain its huge success at the box office and winning two Academy Awards?
Aside from Futureworld and King Kong (both of which are vastly superior to "Logan's Life Iin the Disco Mall", there was also amazing "The Man Who Fell to Earth", the abysmal "Food of the Gods" and the ridiculous "Rollerbabies". As well as "At the Earth's Core", "Track of the Moon-Beast", "Doomsday Machine", "Embryo", "The Astral Factor", "Ape" a cheap Kong knockoff, and a whole shitload of others.
How do I explain its success? Simple... there are plenty of stupid people in the world. Success and quality are often mutually exclusive concepts. Were that not the case, we'd have to accept that "Dancin' with the Stars" was the damn-near the pinnacle of human artistic achievement.
And as for winning 2 academy Awards? Well, first of all, I've checked multiple sources, and it seems that the film only got ONE Academy Award. It was actually nominated for three awards, but lost awards for cinematography and art direction to to "Bound for Glory" and "All the President's Men" respectively. And its sole Academy Award win for "Special Achievement in visual effects" was, as I suggested earlier, strictly for the innovation of being the first film to feature actual holograms.
