Damnation Alley

I never miss a George Peppard, Jan-Micheal Vincent, Jackie Earle Haley and Paul Winfield movie and what do you know, all four of them are in this craptastic 1977 feature. Its one of the first apocalypse movies that would soon become all the rage after the success of 'The Road Warrior'. Around this time the home movie market was hungry for anything to put on the video store shelves. These box covers alone would have caught the eye of any store patron. The movie begins with a launch of nuclear missiles and we are not told the reasons for using them. Only that most of the major US cities were destroyed. Two years later four guys in their modified motor homes (just like it would happen in real life) start a journey from California to Albany, New York, the only place they have gotten a signal from. They follow a narrow corridor without much radiation they call Damnation Alley (hence the title). In Vegas they pick up a pretty singer who has been there all alone. In the next town the travellers are attacked by millions of killer cockroaches. Watching Winfield pick them off himself with his bloody hands freaked the crap out of me, especially when he has one chewing on his eye. In this world nature has become the enemy. If the wild storms don't get you then anything that survived the nuclear holocaust will. Soon they are joined by Jackie Earle Haley of Rorchach and 'Watchmen' fame. After a confrontation with unfriendly survivors the Landmaster (what they call the supped up motor homes) manages to get our heroes to the 'promise land'. The End. For the time the effects are okay. Personally I would have liked to have seen more mutant people and creatures and better scenery that reflected the location they were driving through. All we get is the same Arizona desert over and over again. For a big screen movie it plays like a small screen film.