Utah in Pop Culture

I think I will start a new feature here on this site where I will provide an example of Utah through the lens of pop culture.  I will provide clips or descriptions or links to things you may or may not have seen that my home state played some kind of a role in.

With that in mind I bring you DAMNATION ALLEY.

I'm sure that one of the first things you think of after an apocalypse is a road trip through America, am I right?  D.A. follows some of the people responsible for BILLIONS of deaths on their jaunt through the country on their way to New York.  Along the way they come to SLC and fulfill the unfortunate trope of The Black Guy Always Dies.  Clip below:

Judging by that clip I can see that it was filmed either on State Street or Main however it looks like it is either a composite shot or the statue that is visible at the beginning of the clip was moved at some point in time.  I would lean heavily towards composite as that statue is not that big.  

Damnation Alley, well, it didn't do well and as you can see the special effects were sad.  The swarms of cockroaches being pulled towards our heroes via piled sheet are vying for a top spot in my "least menacing ways to approach something menacingly" award.  Right up there with slow unicycle or juggling mime.

If you decide to watch the whole thing the SLC part comes up at about 47 minutes in.  As you would expect with a movie they play a bit with the geography so other than the piles of rubble and vicious bugs it is not an accurate representation of my current city.

Truthfully it is a little amusing to think that everyone in Salt Lake was devoured by radioactive flesh eating cockroaches.  There are some people here that fit that mold quite nicely.  I don't mean to say that all of my neighbors are radioactive horrors.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nice people here but it is one of those "if  you've lived here, you understand" sort of things.

Next week I think we'll go south to Monument Valley.