Acting for Two: Only one LandMaster was actually built for the movie. One of the "twins" gets destroyed early on.
Box Office Bomb: Budget, $17 million. Box office, $4 million. It was expected to be Fox's big summer movie but it was delayed to the fall due to extensive post-production. By that point, Fox's actual big summer movie made its mark and Damnation Alley was left in the dust. Its mixed reviews and dismissal by Roger Zelazny himself for straying from the novel didn't help either.
No Stunt Double: Jan-Michael Vincent did a fair share of his own motorcycle stunts.
Release Date Change: This movie was originally planned as a Christmas, 1976 release. It was held up due to production problems, and the decision to add the "radioactive skies" via post-production special effects, pushing the release date to December, 1977. Realizing this would conflict with the much anticipated release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the release was pushed up to October, 1977.
Technology Marches On: Minor example: the "computer guidance system" on the Landmaster was actually an advanced (for the film's production year) Texas Instruments desk calculator.
The devastated landscapes and giant mutated insects proved to be nearly impossible to create, despite the large budget. For example, a sequence involving giant 8-foot-long (2.4 m) scorpions attacking a motorcycle was first attempted using full-scale scorpion props, but they did not work and the resulting footage was unacceptable. The solution was to use actual scorpions composited onto live action footage using the blue screen process in post-production.
Another action sequence with giant cockroaches used a combination of live Madagascar hissing cockroaches and large numbers of rubber bugs which looked unconvincing onscreen, as the strings pulling mats covered in fake insects were plainly visible.
To complicate matters, according to director Jack Smight in his memoir, studio chief Alan Ladd, Jr. redirected about a quarter of the production budget as completion funds for A New Hope. Smight was not made aware of the budget reduction until he neared its completion, which further compromised most of the remaining special effects work, for which there was now very little money left.
The centerpiece of the film, the 12-wheeled, seven-ton "Landmaster", performed much better than expected. The Landmaster was so convincing, in fact, that Fox demanded that more shots of the Landmaster appear in the film to make up for shortcomings. The decision was also made to add "radioactive skies" in post-production to add the visual excitement of a "post-apocalyptic" world to the film. (Presumably unintentionally, this made the film slightly more faithful to Zelazny's original novel, where the messed-up sky is a fairly major plot-point.)
Because of this last-minute decision, the film was in post-production well past the intended release date of December, 1976 due to the difficult process of superimposing optical effects on the sky in 80 percent of the shots (which was not planned for during filming, resulting in poor execution of the effect). It was during this period that 20th Century Fox went ahead and released their "other" science fiction film for 1977, A New Hope. The studio had planned to release only two science fiction films that year, with this intended to be the blockbuster.
A New Hope became a hit of epic proportions, and forced Fox to further re-address a struggling Damnation Alley, which was languishing in post-production special effects work. In a panic, the release date was delayed to October, while Fox went in to re-edit the entire film. Directorial control was wrestled from Smight, and large sections of the film were edited out by the studio in order to focus more on the "Landmaster" vehicle, and the special effects, in direct response to A New Hope. Excised were several key scenes critical to the storyline, including many scenes with George Peppard (much to his chagrin) and Dominique Sanda, Murray Hamilton (the General of the Missile Base, which rendered his character literally "mute" in the final film, with no lines of dialogue), and critically, a confrontation between Tanner and Denton after the death of Keegan by "killer cockroaches" (in this scene, Tanner blames Denton for not saving his friend from death). The film was finally released on October 21, 1977 to poor reviews and tanked at the box office.
Robert Wise was approached to direct, but turned said offer down because he thought the script was impossible to film.
Steve McQueen (actor) turned down the role of Major Eugene "Sam" Denton due to salary concerns.
Working Title: Filmed as Damnation Alley, the title was changed to Survival Run during post-production re-editing. The title was changed back to the original shortly before release.
by Milton Bradley.