Apparently, this film was adapted from a book that was a bit darker and gritty than what we get here. What that is precisely, cheese. That being said, I also have to mention that I enjoy cheese so I enjoyed this film. Some of the effects are very dated now and when watching it again there are a few number of scenes in this one that were clearly padding, but I still enjoy it. Jan-Michael Vincent and George Peppard star in this movie, but the kid that turns up in the film was Jackie Earle Haley who was in Watchmen as Rorschach and suffice to say, you can definitely tell that it is him!
The story of this one has the world going through World War III which not only causes radiation, but also causes the world to shift its axis which causes storms the likes of which man has never seen before. Survivors at a military base decide to trek across country after an incident destroys and kills most of the men at the base in the hopes of making it to Albany where they had received a signal indicating that there may be more people alive. They go across country in two huge all terrain vehicles, but one of them is taken out rather early by a storm. They find a couple of other survivors along the way as well as a town infested with roaches, radiated rednecks and even more storms!
The film pretty much has them traveling through the wasteland with there being a few stops here and there and generally when there were stops, they either found something or there was trouble! We see Las Vegas, then Salt Lake City, but then we are not really shown where they are until they make it to Detroit. They kind of skipped ahead a bit as they make Albany kind of quickly. Granted, who wants to see every thing that happens, but it would have been cool to see a few more obstacles along the way!
In the end, I enjoyed the film. I liked the characters of Tanner and Denton as they do not exactly become good friends during the course of their journey, but the relationship improves as it goes. I really liked the cockroaches of Salt Lake as it was a better done scene than anything in the movie, "The Nest" which was about roaches! The vehicles were rather cool and overall it was a fun movie. The effects are not the greatest in the movie, but they do make the world seem like it is in the aftermath of a nuclear war, that is, until the end where it looks like everything is pretty much normal. I doubt everything would be completely back to normal in such a short time frame. Still, it is a nice distraction for an hour and a half and typical of those weird 70's science fiction films, just not quite as weird.
The story of this one has the world going through World War III which not only causes radiation, but also causes the world to shift its axis which causes storms the likes of which man has never seen before. Survivors at a military base decide to trek across country after an incident destroys and kills most of the men at the base in the hopes of making it to Albany where they had received a signal indicating that there may be more people alive. They go across country in two huge all terrain vehicles, but one of them is taken out rather early by a storm. They find a couple of other survivors along the way as well as a town infested with roaches, radiated rednecks and even more storms!
The film pretty much has them traveling through the wasteland with there being a few stops here and there and generally when there were stops, they either found something or there was trouble! We see Las Vegas, then Salt Lake City, but then we are not really shown where they are until they make it to Detroit. They kind of skipped ahead a bit as they make Albany kind of quickly. Granted, who wants to see every thing that happens, but it would have been cool to see a few more obstacles along the way!
In the end, I enjoyed the film. I liked the characters of Tanner and Denton as they do not exactly become good friends during the course of their journey, but the relationship improves as it goes. I really liked the cockroaches of Salt Lake as it was a better done scene than anything in the movie, "The Nest" which was about roaches! The vehicles were rather cool and overall it was a fun movie. The effects are not the greatest in the movie, but they do make the world seem like it is in the aftermath of a nuclear war, that is, until the end where it looks like everything is pretty much normal. I doubt everything would be completely back to normal in such a short time frame. Still, it is a nice distraction for an hour and a half and typical of those weird 70's science fiction films, just not quite as weird.