Location: end of a railroad spur at a potash mine near Moab, Utah.

The upper photo (a picture of my TV screen) shows a scene from the movie "Spacehunters: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone." In it, someone is aiming a machine gun at a wind-powered railroad car. The machine gun is set up atop a pile of dirt and rocks. In the movie it was implied thst the track went on for miles and that pile of dirt and rocks was built to facilitate an ambush. A battle ensued.

The lower photo is my re-creation of the movie scene. The real purpose of the dirt pile is to keep freight cars from running off the end of the track. The track is the southern end of Union Pacific's Cane Creek Branch, a line running from Brendel (a railroad site at Crescent Junction) to this location. The potash mine served by the line is out of view to the left. Partially visible to the right of the track berm is the road leading to the Potash boat ramp and on to Canyonlands National Park.

My vantage point was at the center of this WikiMapia aerial view.

BACKGROUND:
"Spacehunters: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" is about the hunt for three young women being held captive on a weird-looking planet.

My interest in duplicating scenes from the movie developed after I read a book about movies made in Moab. The book mentioned "Spacehunters" and I remembered watching that movie years earlier. At the time of viewing I had no idea where the movie had been filmed, but the weird landscape was fascinating. The movie was no award-winner.

Later I discovered a photo I had taken during a visit to Moab: it depicted a place that looked just like one of the movie’s shooting scenes. This prompted me to watch the movie again to see the place I had photographed. The film was even worse the second time, but I recognized some of the shooting locales from my trips to Moab. As the movie played, I snapped pictures of the television screen. The color cast of the screen shots was so bad that I had to convert the images to black-and-white. Grainy black-and-white print-outs were adequate for helping me find shooting locations.

All of my "Spacehunters" photography took place on the property of Intrepid Potash. I had permission of the manager of the mine to be on the property.

20060921_5260 and 20061020_5949