[4] First Lieutenant Jake Tanner shares ICBM silo duty at a US Air Force missile base in the Mojave Desert in eastern California with senior officer Major Eugene "Sam" Denton.
Two years later, the Earth has been tilted off its axis by the nuclear detonations of World War III; radiation has mutated giant scorpions, the planet is wracked by massive storms, and the sky is in a perpetual aurora borealis-like state.
Tanner has resigned his commission and has been scouting nearby Barstow, California, while Keegan (who has also left the Air Force) has been painting as an artist in one of the base's out-buildings where they have been relegated to.
He and the remaining others set out in two Air Force Landmasters—giant, 12-wheeled armored personnel carriers fitted with rocket launchers, flame throwers and cannons, capable of climbing 60-degree inclines, and operating in water.
Along their journey, one of the Landmasters becomes disabled in a storm (which also kills Perry), and they encounter mutated "killer cockroaches" in the ruins of Salt Lake City that trap and eat Keegan alive.
Denton and Tanner also pick up two survivors: a woman in Las Vegas, Janice, and a teenage boy, Billy, discovered in an abandoned house in the High Plains.
The studio then brought in Alan Sharp to write a revised version to minimize this issue, which left out many of the elements of the original script and Zelazny's book.
[6] With the revised script, and budgeted at US $7.2 million, Damnation Alley was helmed by veteran director Jack Smight, who had scored two consecutive box office hits in the previous two years (Airport 1975 and Midway).
[7] Production was rife with problems from the outset — the first scenes to be filmed were those at the desert missile base set near Borrego Springs, California, where the devastated landscapes and giant mutated insects proved to be very difficult to create in a convincing way, despite the large budget.
To complicate matters, according to director Jack Smight in his memoir, studio chief Alan Ladd, Jr. redirected about a quarter of Damnation Alley's total production budget as completion funds for George Lucas' lower-budgeted film, Star Wars.
Smight was not made aware of the budget reduction on Damnation Alley until he neared its completion, which compromised most of the remaining special effects work, for which there was now very little money left.
Star Wars became a hit of epic proportions, and forced Fox to further delay and re-address a struggling Damnation Alley, which was still languishing in post-production special effects work.
Murray Hamilton was featured prominently in several scenes which were cut, as the now-despondent and alcoholic General in charge of the base (which rendered his character literally "mute" in the final film, with no lines of dialogue).
In spite of these major edits, Fox focused more content on the "Landmaster" vehicle, and the special effects, in direct response to Star Wars.
The film was finally released in the United States on October 21, 1977 to fleeting success when it opened, but poor critical reviews and word of mouth tanked it at the box office.
Jerry Goldsmith's score made good use of the wide stereo separation afforded by Sound 360, particularly in the opening theme, with fanfares emanating from each side of the theater in turn.
In what was a departure from typical motion picture studio practice at the time, Damnation Alley opened in September, 1977 in Japan, one month prior to its release in the United States and more than a year after it was filmed.
The network TV premiere on NBC television on Sunday, June 12, 1983 featured alternate and additional scenes re-inserted (notably, footage of Murray Hamilton and George Peppard, where Denton asks for permission to leave the missile base, as well as additional scenes with Dominique Sanda and Peppard, where Denton tells Janice about his wife who died in the nuclear war).