THX 1138

featuring

Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie,

Francis Ford Coppola was only thirty when he opened his own independent production company, American Zoetrope, in 1969; its debut was a low-budget, dystopian science fiction film directed by another young Bay Area director: George Lucas. Robert Duvall stars as a rebel in a future where sex is illegal, robots are everywhere, and television monitors keep the populace both sedated and eternally monitored. More 1984 than Star Wars, fascinating as a glimpse into Lucas’s early talents, THX 1138 also serves as a screen history of Bay Area transit, with locales including the Caldecott Tunnel, the Posey Tube, and the then-unfinished BART tunnel under the Bay.

Jason Sanders
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • George Lucas
  • Walter Murch
Cinematographer
  • Dave Meyers
  • Albert Kihn
Print Info
  • Color
  • Digital
  • 88 mins
Source
  • Warner Bros. Classics