‘The naming of cats is a difficult matter, it’s not just one of your holiday games…’
While my indifference towards musicals and westerns is well documented, what’s lesser known is that I’m not actually a massive sci-fi fan. I think Blade Runner is overrated. I’ve fallen out of love with Star Wars in recent years. I never really liked Star Trek. And this cult sci-fi ‘classic’ has done very little to dispel this notion…
The plot. Hmmm. It’s a tough one. Logan (Michael York) is a sandman. This is some kind of authority figure in the domed utopian city in which he lives. For reasons that I never really got to grips with, he is forced to run away. He brings freedom fighter Jessica (Jenny Agutter) along for the ride.
The whole first half of the film is barely coherent sci-fi nonsense with wonky special effects, stilted dialogue and a complete lack of intentional humour. Reader, I nearly turned the damn thing off. Once they escape the city, things do improve, however. First, they come across a preposterous-looking robot who keeps rambling on about eating fish, and then they meet a wonderful old man (Peter Ustinov) surrounded by meowing cats. As he seems to only have the meowing cats for company, he has gone a bit mad. This bit of the film is genuinely great, and I suspect it is the cat-based scenes that have allowed Logan’s Run to endure despite the fact that it is clearly not very good.
I’m not the target audience for Logan’s Run, and while I’m glad finally I’ve seen it as it’s been stinking up my watchlist for ages now, I’ll never watch it again. A distinctly average film.