Location: an evaporation pond 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, actors Peter Strauss and Molly Ringwald are climbing a short slope to reach higher ground.
In the next scene of the movie, they argue about what to do next.(next photo).

In reality the slope is the west edge of a dirt ramp that runs from a dirt road behind this vantage point to the bottom of an empty potash evaporation pond.In both photos the pond has been harvested of its potash, leaving behind small pools of water. The mountain in the background is Pyramid Butte.

The lower photo is my re-creation of the movie scene. I didn't have a gun with me, so I faked it with a fire extinguisher. The perspectives are slightly different because of the different types of lenses used.

Joe Tripod provided much-needed camera support during the scene re-creation and was unconcerned that he was standing on sloping ground.

BACKGROUND:
"Spacehunters: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" is about the hunt for three cute 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.

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