Worst SFX No.3: Logan's Run (1976)

Martin Anderson

Published on Jan 6, 2009

Never out of my personal top 20 films, but many are mystified that Logan's Run won an Oscar for its special effects. It's far more likely that the Academy were honouring the superb matte paintings of Matthew Yuricich than the Metropolis-style miniatures that open the film. Narrow depth-of-field is absolutely fatal to miniature work involving landscape and architecture - there's no alternative but to stop down the lens, flood the miniature with light and hope the studio doesn't catch fire. Otherwise you get what you'll see in the clip below - foreground/background blur where the mechanics of cinematography just wouldn't permit it. Additionally the initial pan down onto the inner city reveals that the distant parts of the urban landscape are painted on a background strip, an illusion designed to work only from a low angle, and yet allowed to intrude into the frame as the camera descends…