REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks and their comic-book adaptations… — UPDATED 6/23/26: It’s the 50th anniversary of Logan’s Run — still one of the grooviest sci-fi films ever. (It opened June 23, 1976.) This piece first ran in 2017 — perfect time to reprint it. Also check out Walt Grogan’s 13 WAYS GEORGE PEREZ Brought More Magic to LOGAN’S RUN. Dig it! — Dan — By ROB KELLY It’s the year 2274, and life is perfect: No one has to work. You don’t have to do anything, really, except enjoy yourself all day, every day. All your basic needs — food, shelter, entertainment, companionship — are met. There’s only one catch: Life ends when you’re 30. But even then, it’s not so bad. Life doesn’t really end, exactly. Once the crystal embedded in your palm starts to blink red, you’re ready for “Last Day,” which means it’s time for “Renewal” — a process in which you and other fellow citizens are subjected to a public ceremony that vaporizes your old body, and you’re reborn. At least, that’s the official story. Logan 5 (Michael York) is a Sandman, a member of a police unit that tracks down “Runners” — people who don’t want to be reborn and try and escape. After he and his fellow Sandman Francis 7 (Richard Jordan) hunt down one such runner, Logan finds a small, mysterious ankh among the man’s possessions. Later that night, after he meets the ravishing Jessica 6 (Jenny Agutter), who wears the same symbol. He investigates, and the massive computer system that runs everything tells him that the ankh is a symbol of “Sanctuary,” a mythical place to which Runners escape—1,056 of them so far. Logan is instructed to go undercover as a Runner to find Sanctuary — and destroy it. Directed by Michael Anderson (who also helmed Doc Savage: Man of Bronze, a film we’ve previously covered on REEL RETRO CINEMA), and based on a 1967 book by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, Logan’s Run stands pretty much as the last example of Old Hollywood’s attempts at making adult sci-fi epics before George Lucas changed the world with Star Wars just a year later. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of the late-60’s hippie movement and the incipient Me Generation, taken to extreme, apocalyptic lengths. Everything seems great to the people who live in the collection of geodesic domes that make up the sealed city. They are told...