On Location: Run Logan Run Traditional Cache
Lone Star Reviewer: Since there has been no response from the cache owner, this cache is being archived.
On Location: Run Logan Run
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Coordinates for downtown caches are approximate at best. The hint will get you to the cache if you need it. Nearby metered parking is difficult to find between 7am-9am and 4pm-6pm. FTF logged by acompofelice, 33 minutes after publishing.
Movie Review
In the mid 70's, if you needed make a movie featuring sleek new architecture, you came to Texas. While much of the country was falling into rust and ruin, Texas was undergoing a building boom fueled by the world’s growing need for energy. Most of Logan's Run was shot in the DFW area; however the lobby bar at the Hyatt Regency served for one scene. The Hyatt (located several blocks west of the cache) was among the best places to take part in the sophisticated urban social life that was becoming known as "Yuppie." Naturally the filmmakers chose it to portray just that kind of living.
One impression of Logan's Run is of a movie that has passed its time, an expensive special effects powerhouse that now looks hopelessly dated. The techniques that comprised the state of the art special effects of the time have been so overwhelmed by computer animation that the modern viewer might wonder how anyone could enjoy something so obviously fake. Still the limitations on what could be shown before the introduction of CGI realism, led to a certain suggestive stylization to set a futuristic mood even when the image itself was lacking. The score for instance, employed chaotic and discordant electronic music to represent the dystopian nature of life inside Logan’s city.
The story follows Logan (Michael York), a man in his mid-twenties whose job it is to hunt and kill "runners," the citizens of his city who reject society’s myth of rebirth and want to live past the mandatory age limit of thirty year old. Logan begins to question the inevitability inherent in his world, weakening the bonds with his fellow policemen/executors, who relish their work and the privilege and social status given to them as enforcers of the ultimate order of society. Following the killing of a runner, Logan is being debriefed by the central computer when it tells him a secret. It seems that the true number of runners has become quite large and they are becoming too successful at breaking free. The computer gives him a covert mission to find where they are going. The assignment further awakes his skepticism and when he asks too many uncomfortable questions, the computer accelerates him to the age of mandatory death. At this point, the only way he can save his life is to find a scantily clad woman (Jenny Agutter) and become a runner himself.
Warning! Spoiler alert!
Logan's run leads the couple through a series of disjointed scenes in search of a mythical place called Sanctuary, a word whose meaning is unknown to them. They go through the hallucinogenic Love Shop and into sealed off parts of the city that have been abandoned by society. On the journey they find children growing up naturally, without the accelerated maturity provided by technology and an ice zone where an unconvincingly filmed robot called Box (Roscoe Lee Browne) completes his formerly useful task of preserving food by freezing runners he catches in his domain. (get it? Ice Box!) Logan and his companion break free and find the way outdoors where they enjoy the warmth of the sun for the first time and skinny dip in what turns out to be the Potomac River before discovering the ruins of Washington D.C. After wondering about the meanings of the vine covered monuments, they meet the last resident of the city, an old man living in the Capitol(Peter Ustinov). As is the way in some tales, the encounter with old wrinkled hermit revives the lost wisdom embodied in the monuments awakening the sterile civilization in the city and freeing its inhabitants from their self-imposed bounds, whether or not everyone wants to be free.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a reused myth punctuated with plot holes and period character acting, both of which are notable features, but it is also a classic story line that needs to be retold every few years as a new audience moves into the time of life where the movies main themes become meaningful. Director Michael Anderson saves the movie by setting a tone in which the film does not take itself too seriously. For today's movie fans, Logan's Run with its aged wrinkled face can serve as the hermit to open our eyes to the cinematographic world that existed before more sophisticated techniques replaced the tantalizing and suggestive with the unabashed. While it won't compel us to tear down our digital city in a bid to regain some lost analog world, the film is an example of a message that needs renewing. The movie also carried an unheeded warning to the Hyatt Yuppies whose lifestyle largely collapsed with the price of oil a few years later. Logan's Run is a creature of its time, but that time has not yet fully past.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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