Trivia for
Damnation Alley (1977) More at IMDbPro »

• The "Landmaster" later had a cameo in Chris Elliott's sitcom "Get a Life" (1990) in which it was an automatic newspaper-delivering machine (called the Paperboy 2000) that, of course, went haywire.
  
  
• The 12-wheeled "Landmaster" vehicle used in the film was created by Jefferies Automotive in Universal City, California. Despite the appearance of two "Landmasters" in the film, only one was built at a cost of $300,000 in 1976. The Landmaster is powered by a 391 cubic-inch Ford industrial engine, and features a fully-functional, custom-built "tristar" wheel arrangement, which could actually help it "crawl" over boulders. It also used an innovative steering mechanism that guided the vehicle, not by the front wheels, but by "bending" the middle section with hydraulic rams to affect a turn. The Landmaster's bodywork was made with 3/8-inch steel plating, which helped it tip the scales at over 10 tons. It was so tough, in fact, that it survived a 25-foot jump during testing with no damage. As of today, the original "Landmaster" is alive and well, and resides in the lot at the Jefferies Automotive shop on Cahuenga Blvd. near Barham Blvd. It has been somewhat modified from its original appearance in "Damnation Alley," with the enlargement of the driver and passenger side windows, and the removal of the flexible center section cover. The Landmaster was sold to a private owner in 2005, and is currently undergoing restoration to its original condition.
  
  
• The infamous armor-plated "killer cockroaches" are in fact Madagascar "hissing" cockroaches. In reality, they are three-inches long (as seen in the film), and are quite benign. They make the "hissing" sound to communicate with one another, and when they are agitated. Live roaches were used in close up shots, but rubber mock ups were used in the wide and group shots.
  
  
• The movie sat on the shelf at 20th Century Fox for some time after production was completed in 1976. Fox had high hopes for it on its release in 1977, expecting it to do better at the box office in comparison to Fox' other sci-fi release scheduled for that year... Star Wars (1977)
  
  
• The bizarre, colorful patterns in the sky seen during the post-war scenes were accomplished by filming lasers hitting various types of material, and using the blue sky in the live-action footage as a "key" to insert the resulting patterns. This time-consuming process is what kept the film in post-production longer than expected
  
  
• Originally published as a short story in the October 1967 issue of Galaxy Magazine which was later expanded into a novel in 1969, then into a movie in 1977.
  
  
• The destruction of the missile base used stock footage from another George Peppard film, Operation Crossbow (1965).
  
  
• After poor initial box office returns, was packaged as a double feature with the similarly under-performing Wizards (1977).
  
  
• The "Landmaster" later had a cameo in Phillip J. Roth's A.P.E.X. (1994).
  
  
• Roger Zelazny, the author of the novel "Damnation Alley", hated the film version.
  
  
• Damnation Alley was 20th Century-Fox's big-budget science fiction project in 1976 while Star Wars (1977) was a little-publicized modest film in production for the studio at the same time.
  
  

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