I must have seen at least 250 sci-fi movies since I was a child, ranging from old classics like Metropolis to '50s B-movies like Angry Red Planet to more modern post-2001 efforts like Star Wars, Aliens and The Fifth Element. Damnation Alley is, without a doubt, one of the absolute worst sci-fi flicks I have ever seen. From unintentionally funny dialog to wooden acting to lame special effects, this wreck misfires on all cylinders.<br /><br />Planet of the Apes - another post-apocalypse flick - was filmed almost a decade earlier yet looked infinitely better. Star Wars cost half as much to make as Damnation Alley, was produced in the same year and makes this turkey look like an amateur film made by high school students. What a colossal waste of money. Literally 20 minutes of the film is devoted solely to shots of the flimsy-looking Landmaster driving thru the desert, with a dorky laser effect in the sky overhead. Boring.<br /><br />I might be able to forgive the cruddy sets, costumes, props and effects if the story was any good, but this has to be the worst post-apocalypse story ever filmed. It makes Mad Max look like Citizen Kane. The whole motivation for the trip makes no sense right from the start of the film, and it's all downhill from there. Few of the events depicted in the film are remotely plausible, and those which are (such as the encounter with some deranged bad guys at a roadside cafe) are predictable, cheap and ultimately pointless.<br /><br />This dud is absolutely not worth your time. As others have pointed out, the average episode of Airwolf or The A-Team blows it out of the water. It doesn't even have enough B-movie kitsch value to be enjoyable from that perspective. I'd much rather watch 90 minutes of the producers, screenwriters, director and actors being flogged – they've certainly earned some punishment for perpetrating this nuclear disaster on an unsuspecting audience. I'd drive from California to Albany in a jacked up Winnebago just to avoid another screening of this travesty.