Bronx Executioner (1989)

"Freeze! Fashion Police!"

Man, this film is cheap, even by the standards of Italian post-apocalyptic films. It's directed by Vanio Amici under Umberto Lenzi's ocassional pseudonym Bob Collins, so sometimes it's misattributed to Lenzi. This is Amici's only film as director although he was editor on some infamous trash like Troll 2 and Black Demons. I guess his editing skills were put to good use here, since over half of the footage was ransacked from another 1984 post-apocalyptic cheapie called The Last Executioner. Not a good sign.

Naturally, it opens with two or three minutes of stock footage; slow pans over early 80s computers dubbed with Atari sound effects and some guy talking some shit about robots. Welcome to the FUTURE. Then an exposition-heavy conversation is narrated to us over some tourist-board footage of a decidedly pre-apocalyptic New York, since I guess they forgot to shoot the actual scene. It seems that a rookie cop named James is being sent into the Bronx as the final stage of his training to become a "Sheriff". Or something.

Cut to a jungle. You know, the Bronx Jungle. James (Gabriele Gori) is being pursued by some faceless guy with a hunting rifle and is saved at the last second by a mysterious stranger. Turns out the hero is James's new boss Warren (Woody Strode), the Sheriff of the Bronx, and he seems to be acutely aware of his role in the film when he says "My name is Warren, but everyone just calls me The Black Man." Nice. He explains that the Bronx is now overrun by two warring factions of malfunctioning robots, the Androids and the Humanoids. What's the difference? Fuck if I know, and as Warren explains "they are the only ones who can tell eachother apart." They aren't allowed to wipe them out for some reason (Warren makes some vague reference to bleeding-heart politicians and scientists), and it's their job to make sure the war doesn't spill over into the human world. Should be pretty easy, since there's only about three humans in the whole film. Well, two, since all of the footage containing Strode was taken from The Last Executioner.

The Androids are led by the evil Margie (Margit Evelyn Newton from Hell of the Living Dead), who slinks around in a red PVC mini-dress and says things like "violence is the best aphrodisiac" and "I only love death" (awkwardly adding "Other people's death, naturally"). Her second-in-command in an Android named Shark who is dressed in studded leather and has a scar on his cheek that looks more like a smear of... well, let's say chocolate. Shark is in love with Margie, who manipulates him and taunts him for being an Android. Wait, so is Margie an Android too? A Humanoid? A human? Honestly, I have no idea. Her monotone voice and blank facial expression are not enough to distinguish her from the rest of the cast.

The peaceful Humanoids are led by the brawny Dakkar, who looks like he should be throwing styrofoam boulders around on a Hercules set somewhere. Wait, is that...? It is! Jakooooodaaa!! Yes, it's Alex Vitale from Strike Commando. While Dakkar and his soldiers are out searching for supplies, Margie and her troops attack the rest of the Humanoids at an abandoned quarry in the middle of nowhere (again, this is supposed to be the Bronx), no doubt the same fucking quarry from every Italian post-apocalyptic film ever made. This provides lots of opportunity for stuntmen to dramatically flip into the air and tumble down the sides of the pit, distracting you from the fact that they couldn't afford stage-blood or squibs.

It turns out that the humans are conducting experiments with the two factions by airdropping cans of food (apparently they eat worms or something) and then observing the Androids and Humanoids as they fight over the supplies on their sweet dirtbikes. Look, I didn't write this thing, okay? James and Warren head to the drop-off point (that quarry again) and while James cowers behind a dune, Warren, who is in his 70s I might add, leaps into the fray for no reason and starts smacking the Androids around with a pipe until they run away. Disgusted by James's undeniable pussiness, Warren takes him back to headquarters and puts him through a brutal training montage. He berates him, insults him and finally tells him that he has failed. Heartbroken, James falls asleep while creepily fondling his pistol, but when he wakes up he finds a letter from Warren saying that they've run out of stock footage so now it's all up to him.

Dakkar, meanwhile, is driving around in a jeep trying to find his human girlfriend. Unfortunately she has been kidnapped by Margie and her men, who rape and kill her. It's a strange scene, because they both fail to remove their pants, but he's an Android so maybe he doesn't understand how intercourse works. Neither does Dakkar, I guess, because he stumbles across her dead, clothed body and also concludes that she has been raped. Dakkar seeks help from James, who says "No, I can't help you", then sits there clenching his jaw for nearly a minute while some of Warren's flashback narration tells him that he must help any Humanoid in need. Then he immediately turns to Dakkar and says "Sorry, yes I'll help you." Awesome.

Dakkar gathers up his remaining men and he and James bust into the the Android's hideout, an old castle in the middle of a forrest. Once again. The Bronx. Once they break into the security center and throw stealth to the wind, the film erupts into an orgy of shamelessly re-used footage. A shot of Dakkar shooting some men on a staircase is looped three times in the span of a couple of minutes, and a first-person scene of James shooting bad guys as they pop out like paper targets is stretched out to comical lengths. After Dakkar hugs some radio-controlled dogs into submission, he has his final confrontation with Shark and Margie. It's pretty boring, but you can make a fun game of watching Margie's hairstyle change from scene-to-scene. It changes more than her expression (so more than once, basically). Ironically, when the credits roll the first on the list is Janet Berger with a wildly undeserved credit for "Continuity".

Say what you will about other post-apocalyptic actioners like 1990: Bronx Warriors , Bronx Warriors 2 or even Endgame: Bronx Lotta Finale, at least they looked like the director had seen a picture of the Bronx or at least had it described to them. This film looks like it was shot everywhere except the Bronx. Acting is bad. Dubbing is unbelievably bad. Storyline is incomprehensible. Action scenes are repetitive and boring. We are talking a Joe D'Amato level of incompetence here. This can be recommended only to the hardest of hardcore bad movie afficionados.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

"Help! My hands are caught in my sleeves
and I've spilt pasta sauce everywhere."

Turkey Shoot (aka Escape 2000 aka Blood Camp Thatcher) is another Australian genre film made for international markets, which means it's got a lot of blood, tits and explosions. It's produced by Antony I. Ginnane (duh) and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (The Man From Hong Kong) both of whom have a lot experience with capturing all three on film. It's pure exploitation cheese, but Trenchard-Smith has enough skill behind the camera to make it watchable and generally entertaining.

The movie begins with some stock footage of riots and conflicts from around the world, which is movie shorthand for society going down the shitter. It's the far-flung year of 1995 and a totalitarian government has risen up and taken control of the country (Australia, I guess?), shipping off all youthful dissidents to remote re-education camps. Arriving at one such camp are the multiple-escapee and freedom-fighter Paul (Steve Railsback), prostitute Rita (Lynda Stoner) and the naive, wrongly-accused Chris (Olivia Hussey). They are greeted at the camp by the head warden Thatcher, who gives them a standard welcome-to-hell speech while his Chief Guard Ritter (a bald, moustachioed Roger Ward) slaps around some poor girl for failing to recite the camp rules.

Early on, this film reminded me of a women-in-prison flick. Chris is taken under Rita's wing and taught the ropes. She is forced to do menial tasks like gutting fish and dodge sleazy wardens who try to molest her while she's taking a shower. Thankfully the movie takes a different turn when Thatcher and all his bigwig cronies gather up a number of prisoners (including Paul, Rita and Chris) and send them out into the wilderness to be hunted with exploding crossbows, machine guns, bazookas, bulldozers and silly-looking cars that were probably pretty futuristic-looking back in '82. Dick Cheney would love this shit, although at one point they decide to remove a victim's pinky toe because the big toe would slow him down too much; there's no way Cheney would be that sporting.

A big problem with this film is that I found the villains a lot more interesting than the heroes. There isn't much character development, so all the heroes do is run for their lives while wearing identical yellow jumpsuits. The bad guys, on the other hand, have memorable personalities and unique costumes and weapons. For instance, one of the hunters is a sexy lesbian named Jennifer (Carmen Duncan), who is openly homosexual (despite it being a capital crime). Almost every line out of her mouth is some sort of double entendre about guns, she wields a crossbow with exploding bolts and enjoys hobbies such as customising rifles and assembling machine guns while blindfonded. Rich people are pretty different in the future.

One of the strangest elements of this film is that one of the hunters has a wolf man wrestler as a sidekick. They casually slip in a line that he picked him up at a carnival freakshow, but seriously I don't know what the fuck. Maybe one of the producers owned a wolf man as a child and only agreed to fund the film if they included one in the script to honour his memory. For hours and hours he'd play with Fido in the back yard, feeding him human toes and practising wrestling moves. Well he got his wish, and the wolf man even gets to snap a guy's spine over his knee. Unfortunately things go awry when the hunter tries to attack Paul with a bulldozer, accidentally pinning the wolf man to a tree and cutting his legs off, forcing the hunter to use a rocket launcher that he probably should have used in the first place.

Eventually Chris and Paul team up together, and after a fight with Ritter that ends with Chris chopping off his hands (which she apparently almost did it for real during shooting, misunderstanding Trenchard-Smith's shouts of "cut!"), they get control of a jeep with a mounted machine gun and stage an assault on the camp, busting out the prisoners and leading them in a rebellion against Thatcher. This action sequence is a lot bigger in scope than I was expecting (if a bit ridiculous; there appear to be more camp guards than prisoners) but it's lacking in stuntwork and the gunfire and explosions get slightly repetitive after a while. Thatcher ends up being blown apart by machine gun fire, an effect using an exploding dummy that was totally awesome. A definite rewinder.

According the DVD extras, the film had almost a quarter of it's $3.5 million budget cut at the last minute. Consequently the action sequences were scaled down and a big helicopter chase sequence was scrapped. They also removed some of the so-called "1984" scenes that fleshed-out the totalitarian government, so the political commentary begins and ends with the head warden being named Thatcher (although that fact probably accounted for the brisk ticket sales in the UK, which were the only thing that saved this film from being an epic bomb). Boobs are lacking, mostly confined to a single shower scene, and the movie is quite chaste around the two leading women. Hussey uses an obvious boob double during her only shower scene and they even have a sexy bathing scene where Stoner doesn't remove her jumpsuit.

I suppose I'd recommend this one, if only for the wolfman and the level of skill that Trenchard-Smith brings to the proceedings. It moves at a brisk enough pace and I can't say I was ever bored, but it definitely requires a certain tolerance for campy gore for one to derive any enjoyment out of it. I enjoyed it, but you probably won't.

Fist of the North Star (1995)

"Gary Daniels' line delivery... it hurts!"

I have fond memories of Hokuto No Ken aka Fist of the North Star. The 1986 movie was one of my first exposures to anime, and that brief taste of mind-warping ultra-violence was all it took to hook me. It follows the exploits of Bruce-Lee-wannabe Kenshiro as he wanders a post-apocalyptic wasteland, defending the innocent from Mad Max style punks. He is also a master of Hokuto Shinken, a super powerful martial art that allows him to, among other things, punch someone in various hidden pressure points so that they explode into a fountain of gore. It combined my three favourite things: a post-apocalyptic setting, crazy martial arts battles and lots of exploding heads. It's violence-porn at it's most vapid, but it's fun.

A few years later I was in my local video store and I saw it: Fist of the North Star the live-action movie. Even at that age I knew better than to pick it up. First of all it has some goofy white guy with one hell of a mullet posing on the cover. Is that supposed to be Kenshiro? It looked like an Albert Pyun movie. Secondly it was Direct-to-Video, which is never a good sign. So I never rented it and I never saw it, but part of me always wondered "What if it was actually awesome?" All these years later, with a much higher tolerance for goofy shit, I thought I would give it a chance. I mean, I loved Ricky-Oh: Story of Ricky, which was based on a similarly ultra-violent manga, so if had the same level of cartoonish gore-soaked action it could be a hidden gem.

An abusively long opening credits sequence introduces the film's roster of B-movie regulars. The lead character Kenshiro is played by Direct-to-Video action sensation Gary Daniels (Submerged) and the villain Lord Shin is played by Costas Mandylor. I'm not too hung up on the whitewashing of the cast, it's a grand old Hollywood tradition, but it's hard to ignore the fact that you've got a bunch of whiteys (a Brit and an Australian, no less) running around called Shin and Kenshiro (ironically the only Japanese member of the cast, Isako Washio, plays a character named Julia). The racial miscasting reaches it's peak when Malcolm McDowell appears in a shiny robe as Ryuken, a Buddhist monk. I understand that it's a B-movie so you are required by law to put Malcolm McDowell in there somewhere, but wise old master of an ancient martial art is really stretching it.

Ryuken is the master of Hokuto Shinken and The Fist of the North Star (Kenshiro) and the Fist of the Southern Cross (Shin) are his two senior students. As we are reminded about fifty times, they are bound by the sacred rule that the two should never fight, but Shin breaks the oath when he falls in love with Kenshiro's girlfriend Julia. Shin uses his martial arts powers to poke a bunch of holes in Kenshiro's chest in the shape of the Big Dipper. Hokuto is the Japanese name for the Big Dipper (I guess Fist of the Big Dipper doesn't sound as cool) so I don't know if this was an intentionally themed mutilation, but it's a pretty big coincidence if it wasn't. He kidnaps Julia and leaves Kenshiro for dead.

During the next few years Lord Shin amasses a powerful and vicious army (budgetary reasons prevent them from appearing on-screen, you'll just have to take the narrator's word for it) but has no luck winning over the affections of Julia. Who would have thought that murdering her boyfriend would be such a hot-button issue? Meanwhile Kenshiro aimlessly wanders the wastelands. I don't know why he didn't track down his girlfriend right away, but eventually he is visited by the ghost of Ryuken who says "Get off your ass and fulfill your destiny, you lazy fucker" (paraphrased). Before he can do that, though, he's got to do the usual post-apocalyptic stuff like making friends with an annoying teenager and a little girl, help out some villagers in trouble etc.

The village in question is Paradise Village, a cheap-looking soundstage that represents some sort of strategic advantage to Lord Shin. They are frequently attacked by a bunch of post-apocalyptic punks including Clint Howard in a Soviet Army uniform, who laughs maniacally as he shoots women and children with a service revolver. In fact, they all do a great deal of maniacal laughing as they terrorise the villagers. You can tell these guys really love their job. They are led by Lord Shin's second-in-command Jackal (Chris Penn), a former victim of the Hokuto Shinken who now straps his throbbing head in a leather harness so it doesn't unexpectedly burst.

Shin's final battle with Kenshiro is of the typical early-90s variety. Two sweaty, muscular, long-haired men whaling on each other with lots of slow-motion kicking. There's a nice effect where Lord Shin punches Kenshiro, causing bloody squibs to erupt on his body like he'd been shot, but it's otherwise unmemorable. There's a few funny homoerotic touches (Jackal is armed with a couple of bola balls that are suspended below an extendable baton and Shin fights Kenshiro while wearing what appears to be a leather minidress) but nothing too outlandish. Actually it's kind of boring.

I'm going to say the same thing about this film that I did about The Reader: The severe lack of head explosions really hampered my enjoyment. There's only two, and one's off-screen. I know you can't expect a glossy, special-effects-laden film from Direct-to-Video, I get that. I can accept murky cinematography, factory settings, green screens and wobbly soundstages. What I won't abide by, though, is a lack of gore in a film based on Hokuto No Ken. A bucket of stage blood and a few latex heads don't cost that much. I could let it slide if the fight scenes were great, but they are unimpressive and spread way too thin. Hopefully one day someone will remake this film and take a more early-Peter-Jackson approach to the gore, but until then I would recommend that you stick with the anime.

Bronx Warriors 2 (1983)

To recreate the experience of watching this film, drink heavily then
stare at this image for 90 minutes while making exploding noises.

Bronx Warriors may have been a near-perfect film, but one of it's few flaws was that it left so many unanswered questions. What happened to Trash now that his motorcycle gang is completely wiped out? How does he maintain his mane of curls in an Escape From New York style wasteland? What kind of parents would name their kid "Trash"? Thankfully, Enzo G. Castellari saw fit to give us another entry in the saga of Trash: Bronx Warriors 2 (aka Escape From the Bronx), a film that answers at least the last of the above questions.

Although he retains the head of hair that made him famous, Trash (Marc Gregory) has gone through a few changes since the first film. He's still got his bike with skull headlamp that he uses to traverse stairwells instead of the traditional walking, but no more sleeveless leather vests. He must have been too busy to work out in between films. He has also traded in his metal club for a tiny six-shooter, which may seem like a step down but in his first scene he uses it to take down a helicopter with a couple of shots. Sure it's a model helicopter, but still, pretty impressive.

The people hunting Trash are the private army of the E.C. Corporation, an evil company that wants to turf out the residents of the Bronx so they can build a gleaming new metropolis. Although they claim they are financially compensating the residents and giving them houses in New Mexico, what they are really doing is sending in a team of silver-jumpsuited "Disinfestors" to roast every resident they can find with a flamethrower. They are led by Floyd Wrangler (Henry Silva, picking up slumming-actor role from Vic Morrow) who hates the Bronx almost as much as he hates sugar in his coffee ("It makes me crazy!!"). Most of the surviving gang members are hiding out underground, led by the violently overacting Dablone (Antonio Sabato).

Among the Bronx natives willing to fight it out above ground are Trash's own parents, no doubt inspired by the enormous poster of their son (a publicity still from Bronx Warriors) that they keep on their living room wall. In hindsight it should have been obvious that Trash's father would be Ratchet from 2019: After the Fall of New York (or the actor who played him anyway), and needless to say he greets the neighbourhood Disinfestation team with a baseball bat to the face. Unfortunately Pa Trash quickly learns that you should never take a baseball bat to a flamethrower fight, and pretty soon Trash's folks are stinking out the building with their barbecued corpses. Although grief is clearly outside his acting range, you can tell Trash is upset because he shoots some scavengers a bunch of times with an angry scowl on his face. Go get 'em, Trash!

Meanwhile, a former-Bronxian reporter thinks the Corporation's cover story is a little suspicious (the fact that they have Disinfestation Annihilation Team written on the side of their trucks was probably her first clue) and during a press conference she launches into an angry rant that she concludes with a succinct "The E.C. Corporation sucks!" before getting tossed on her ass. Subsequently, she sneaks into the Bronx in order to gather photographic evidence of their dastardly deeds. Although her cameraman gets roasted like a Christmas turkey, she joins Trash's crusade against the evil Corporation.

Together they come up with the idea of kidnapping the President of the E.C. Corporation and forcing the Disinfestors to evacuate their gang-run hellhole. As Dablone says, "Nobody will sit on a john full of dynamite." Who knows what that is supposed to mean, but Trash's plan requires enlisting the help of a mercenary named Strike (Giancarlo Prete, last seen getting fucked up the ass by George Eastman in The New Barbarians) and his explosives obsessed son. In his first line this kid called Trash a "fag", so I immediately liked him. Strike is reluctant to take part in Trash's stupid plan, so Trash convinces him by telling him something or other about sitting around and "scratching his balls". "I like scratching my balls", replies Strike. We all do, buddy. We all do.

Together their team treks through the sewers and into Manhattan, where they capture the President during the public opening of the new demolition project. The reporter uses her gift for shrill, hysterical rants to distract the cops while Trash nabs the President, and together they escape into the sewers. One police officer says what we were all thinking about Mark Gregory's bizarre effeminate walk when he remarks "What a fag! Look at him run!", although it's possible that he was referring to Trash's hasty retreat. What follows is almost half an hour of sewer chases and dudes in silver jumpsuits jumping away from explosions in slow motion.

After some convincing from Wrangler, the Vice President (Paolo Malco, everything) decides to bomb the entire Bronx, President and all, so he can take over the company. This leads to an insane firefight where the remains of the gangs are smoked out of their hidey-hole and pretty much everyone gets a bullet sandwich. I didn't count how many Disinfestors and gang members were shot or exploded, but a conservative estimate would place it at around five billion. More magic bullets are fired that explode vehicles in a single shot.

Bronx Warriors 2 seems to be a much different film that the first. The tone is a lot more bleak and serious. The characters just aren't as interesting, and I'm not sure who could fill the hole left by Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and Vic Morrow, but a bored Henry Silva isn't it. The awesome tap-dancing gang make a brief cameo but unfortunately you don't see them fighting the Disinfestors using the power of dance. It's more action packed than the first film, but it's not as interesting and varied... the guys in silver jumpsuits doing flips in slow motion starts to get a bit repetitive the 100th time around. There aren't as many deliciously quotable lines from Trash this time (I call it "Trash Talk") since he seems content to let his tiny pea-shooter do the talking. I'd consider this an slightly inferior follow-up to Bronx Warriors, but essential viewing for fans of Trash (pretty much everyone).

A Boy and His Dog (1975)

Ever wonder what happened to Tiger after he
disappeared from the Brady Bunch?

The year is 2024, and Phoenix, Arizona has become even more uninhabitable, thanks to a nuclear apocalypse. Roaming this sand-blasted hellscape is a "solo" named Vic (pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson, trading his white suit and loafers for some tattered rags) and his trusty dog Blood. What makes this interesting is that Blood has a telepathic link with Vic, mainly used to provide withering sarcasm. I approve. At first I thought Blood was some sort of robot dog because this mutt is hella smart. I'm sure if my dog could talk it would be something along the lines of "Got any foooood? Got any more foooood?" but this dog knows all about world history and has all the US Presidents memorised ("Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy"). He's definitely the brains of the outfit, while Vic provides the opposable thumbs.

Aside from his intelligence, Blood has another useful ability. He can use his special dog radar to detect nearby human beings. Vic generally uses this ability to ferret out women to rape. After a daring act of thievery, Vic and Blood manage to gather up enough canned goods to buy themselves a night at the movies, a shabby desert camp where a lonely people sit around and watch scratched up copies of sex films. During their night on the town, Blood detects a female in their midst.

Following her back to her underground hiding place, Vic watches her strip down to her bra and granny panties (two luxuries I wouldn't think would be available post-apocalypse) before springing on her. Of course he ends up being charmed by her, but is interrupted when the gang who normally inhabit this underground lair return home. They fight it out, Blood is wounded and they are forced to hole up underground and wait it out. Between bouts of passionate lovemaking (ie fucking), Quilla tries to convince Vic to come with her to Down Under, the underground village where she lives (not Australia). Vic refuses, since he would have to leave Blood behind, so Quilla knocks him unconscious and run away.

When Vic awakes he is driven to follow her and while Blood is unhappy with his decision he agrees to wait at the entrance to the underground complex. The subterranean village is called Topeka, a bizarre parody of small town America, where white-faced people have picnics and preserve contests while loudspeakers blare conformist propaganda all day long. Topeka is run by the Committee, a group of individuals who are more than happy to "farm" anyone who fails to conform to their utopia. Aiding them is their Enforcer, a monstrous cyborg whose face is contorted into a permanent rictus.

Vic is quickly captured, and it is revealed that he was lured down here intentionally in order to act as a "stud" to refresh their gene pool. This doesn't sound too bad to Vic, but unfortunately it entails being strapped to a milking machine, his baby batter collected into vials and distributed to newlyweds right after their wedding ceremony. Eventually Vic is rescued by Quilla, who wants to use him to overthrow the Committee so she can take their place. Vic refuses and escapes, with Quilla in hot pursuit, but as he reaches the desert surface, he finds that his loyal dog has been waiting at the entrance the whole time and is now on the brink of starvation. Vic finds a rather creative solution.

As you might have guessed, despite the title this film isn't for kids. In order to lessen the confusion they added the subtitle "A rather kinky tale of survival", which makes the film seem like a cheesy sex comedy, which it is certainly not. Based on a Harlan Ellison short story, it's a very bleak and nihilistic black comedy. At one point Vic comes across the body of a woman who'd been slashed to ribbons, he's upset because she "could have been used a few more times." And he's the good guy. The only woman they trust ends up betraying them more than once, and in the end Vic chooses his loyal dog over female companionship. This is a moral wasteland as well as a physical one, quite misogynistic, but notions of gender equality go out the window once the bombs hit.

Another thing that makes this film work is the chemistry between Vic and Blood. Blood is voiced by Tim McIntire with the right amount of wry intelligence, and the animal is directed with enough care to make him as believable as any of the human cast. Contrasted with Vic's impulsive and sex-driven actions, it becomes apparent that he needs Blood just as much (if not more) than Blood needs him. I liked the team so much I wish I could see the continued adventures of Vic and Blood. Apparently there are some graphic novels that do just that, so I might try to track them down.

This is a post-apocalyptic film but this is no action-adventure flick filmed with bearded Italians in a disused quarry. There are no muscle-cars, mutants or mohawked punks. George Eastman doesn't appear anywhere in the cast. Instead it's a great piece of pre-Star-Wars sci-fi (back when genre fiction could actually be intelligent and thought-provoking) and essential piece of viewing for anyone who is into 70s cult films.

Endgame: Bronx Lotta Finale (1983)

Get used to this expression,
because you're going to see it a lot.

This film was directed by prolific hack Joe D'Amato, his second entry in the curious subgenre of Italian post-apocalyptic films. By now the popularity of post-apocalyptic films was reaching it's peak in Italy and the conventions of the subgenre were well established. This is evidenced by the opening of the film that has no introductory crawl or voiceover narration, just some simple stock footage of mushroom clouds. The bombs have dropped, civilisation is in ruins, bla, bla, bla, you know the drill. The city is a hellscape of rubble and abandoned buildings (a la Escape From New York) and the countryside is a barren wasteland full of mutants and bikers and mutant bikers (a la Mad Max).

In this case the urban populace are kept docile by terrible corporate-sponsored reality television. What a shocking and frightening future this is. The most popular show is a Running Man style affair called Endgame, and Ron Shannon (Al Cliver, the man of a thousand faces, all of them identical) is the current champion. The three hunters are Aldridge, your standard post-apocalyptic punk, Mantrax, a martial arts expert, and Karnak, a longtime rival of Shannon and the tipped favourite. Karnak is played by George "Big Ape" Eastman. Come on, it's an Italian post-apocalyptic film, you know he had to appear in the cast somewhere. They don their fruity eye makeup (it was the 80s) and start their chase across the city, hidden cameras recording their every move.

Meanwhile, the city's Security Service (SS) storm troopers are in the process of hunting down and exterminating a race of telepathic mutants. Yes, they are actually called the SS, their helmets are emblazoned with the famous twin lightning bolts and everything. There is no room for subtlety in the post-apocalypse. One of these mutants, Lilith (Laura Gemser, from all those Emmanuelle films), approaches Shannon with that most popular of post-apocalyptic propositions: the escort mission. She and a bunch of mutants want to get out of town and to a rendezvous point where they will be whisked away on a unicorn to a land of chocolate and rainbows. Jesus lady, I can understand your urgency, but I think he's a bit busy at the moment. Besides, I can think of better times to discuss your secret mission than during a show that is being broadcast live on national television. Anyway, she uses her telepathic abilities to help him defeat Karnak (the sole remaining hunter by this point), but he decides to spare his life.

After Endgame is wrapped up, Shannon returns Lilith to her family (a little boy named Billy and some neurologist who wants to help the mutants create a utopia) and goes about assembling his crack team of mercenaries. They are strongman Kovack, who bearded fat guy who looks like he wandered in from a LARP session, one-eyed weapons expert Kijawa, knife expert Stark and martial arts master Ninja (Hal Yamanouchi, last seen with Cliver in 2020: Texas Gladiators). The next day they pile the mutants into a white combi-van. Someone mentions that it's an antique, saving the filmmakers the trouble of hot-glueing some silver fins and spikes to it. It does have a gun-turret, though, which certainly comes in handy. Escorting the van are a couple of motorcycles and Shannon's own stupid-looking car.

Pretty soon they run into the bodies of a few mutants. Up until now the mutants have just looked like ordinary humans, but these guys look like apes, or at least Italians in half-assed Planet of the Apes makeup, and there's even a scaly fish-man. The Professor points out that the mutations have had a regressive effect, essentially devolving them. They also come across an abandoned warehouse, where a bunch of blind monks in black robes attack them en masse. Usually a bunch of blind dudes wouldn't be threatening adversaries, but they have captured a telepathic mutant who they force to transmit images to their eyes. Shannon heroically axes their hostage in the head, and soon the monks are blind again, leaving them free to escape.

They take a break in that same quarry from every Italian post-apocalyptic film, and Lilith reveals that Billy is actually a powerful telepath and that she uses her own powers to keep a cap on his. I wonder if that will come in handy later? Next the convoy stumbles across a group of murdered travelers. Lilith bursts out of the van to shout that it's a trap, but it's too late and the professor gets stabbed by a supposedly dead woman. Kovack is angry since Shannon had hidden the fact that their human cargo were mutants, but Shannon appeases him by reminding him of all the gold they're going to get.

They are immediately attacked by a gang of mutant bikers, led by a fish-man in one of those standard post-apocalyptic cars that come factory fitted with chained-up topless women (they're nothing to get excited about but in a post-apocalyptic wasteland you take what you can get). In the ensuing battle everyone is killed save for Shannon and Kijawa. Lilith is captured by the fish-man as an addition to his harem. Karnak, who had been tailing them this whole time, manages to get in the van full of mutants and drive it to safety. That night, Karnak and Shannon reluctantly team up for a rescue attempt.

Karnak disables all their unattended bikes and they sneak into their hideout. I guess part of their mutation is that they sleep very soundly, because Shannon manages to rescue Lilith with no trouble whatsoever. They also find Kovack concreted into the wall as some sort of living trophy, so Karnak goes back and puts him out of his misery by twisting his head off. Unfortunately the dripping blood wakes up one of the mutants (now they wake up?) so Shannon and Lilith heroically leave Karnak behind to die (although to be fair Lilith did warn Shannon that he planned to kill him and steal the gold later).

So, now it's back to that damn quarry (I assume it's supposed to be a different one, though) to deliver the mutants to the tiny little helicopter that will somehow fly them all to the promised land. Unfortunately the SS troops show up, killing Kijawa and capturing Shannon. As the leader of the troops questions him, he convinces Lilith to uncork Billy's powers. Billy pulls a Carrie, crushing the SS troops under styrofoam boulders, parking a car on their heads and gunning them down by telekinetically controlling the van's gun turret. Finally, he makes the leader commit suicide with his own pistol.

The mutants get shipped off to Mutantland or wherever (Shannon declines the offer to join them, for some reason) but right before he can pick up his gold, bullets rake the ground in front of him. It's Karnak, still alive and royally pissed! In a classic final confrontation, they both pull out knives and as they charge one another for the final battle, the screen freezes and the credits roll. I hope Karnak won, he needed a break.

Although hundreds of people die, it's pretty restrained for D'Amato. There's only one rape (fish-man vs Lilith), and it isn't even played for titillation. That's about as family friendly as it gets with him. Al Cliver displays his solitary expression, Laura Gemser is as hot as she always is, and the rest of the cast display the acting abilities you'd expect from softcore porn veterans. D'Amatos first post-apocalyptic film, 2020: Texas Gladiators, shared a lot of elements with Endgame (including, but not limited to, sets, shooting locations, actors and props) but overall I think this is a better film. A few more attempts at the genre and he might have made a good film. Endgame is a bit more out there than 2020, with the fish-men and whatnot, but it's those bizarre touches that make Italian post-apocalyptic films so interesting. Joe D'Amato has gone on record to claim Endgame as his favourite film. That's quite a statement from a guy that directed nearly 200 films, but if you've seen any of his films you'd know it's not exactly high praise. Nevertheless, it's still required viewing for fans of post-apocalytpic films.

Yor, the Hunter From the Future (1983)

YOOOOOOOOOORR!!

What if I told you of a film where a curiously well-groomed caveman beats up paper mache dinosaurs with a stone axe? What about a film where heroic dudes in shiny jumpsuits have violent laser battles with robots? Now, what if I told you it was the same film. Admit buddy, you just had a YORgasm! You like Darth Vader? How about a whole army of Darth Vaders? Paper mache dinosaurs? This film has two. Antonio Margheriti (credited as Anthony M. Dawson to disguise it's origins as a Italian/Turkish co-production) tries to shove in everything that little boys like, stomping through settings and genres like a t-rex, gobbling up any element from successful genre films that can be realised on half a shoestring. The resulting 50 pound turd is Yor, the Hunter From the Future.

As the film opens, Yor is prancing through rocky Turkish terrain while his ridiculous prog-rock theme song states that it's Yor's world and he is, in fact, the man. Yor is played by Reb Brown, a brawny non-actor who looks like a So-Cal surfer that accidently stumbled onto the set. After saving the sexy Ka-Laa and less sexy Pag from the jaws of a villainous tri-stega-tops, he is invited back to their village for a celebration, where Ka-Laa seduces him with a sexy dance. As Ka-Laa asks, "Why is Yor so different from the other men?" Good question. Maybe it's his freshly waxed torso or maybe it's his ridiculous blonde wig, but it's all got something to do with the crappy medallion around his neck. After the entire village, save Ka-Laa and Pag, are wiped out by a rival tribe of hairy, blue-skinned cavemen, the trio set off a quest to discover Yor's origins.

In their travels they come across Roa. She is the subject of worship for a group of desert-dwelling cavemen, and she possesses a medallion much like Yor's. After a battle wipes out the desert tribe, she joins them on their journey. That's the thing about Yor, the ladies can't resist him. They're throwing themselves at him left and right, begging him to take them away. One guy just straight up gives his wife to Yor as a reward. With so many hoes in different area codes, tensions are bound to result, and sure enough Ka-Laa and Roa end up in a battle royale that will hopefully leave their already-revealing garnments scattered to the four winds. Ka-Laa is just being selfish, of course. As Pag states, by their law Yor is allowed to have multiple wives. There's plenty of Yor to go around ladies, no crowding. Luckily for Ka-Laa, a few minutes later their clumsy love triangle is resolved when Roa gets her skull cracked by some evil cavemen.

It should be pretty clear how Yor and hunting figure into all of this, but what about the Future? Well, here's where the film takes a sharp left into crazy town. After sailing to a mysterious island in a ridiculous straw boat, our heroes are captured by robots. You see it seems that this isn't prehistoric Earth, but in fact post-nuke Earth. Doesn't really explain the dinosaurs, but a small pocket of civilisation still remains. This futuristic facility (as played by some factory basement in Turkey) is presided over by the aptly named Overlord, who intends to create a master race of emotionless cyborgs using Yor's DNA. He commands a loyal army of robots who look more than a little like a certain character from a certain popular sci-fi franchise. I won't say who, but it rhymes with Marth Mader. It also turns out that Yor's father was leader of a rebellious faction that made overtures to overthrow the Overlord, but crashed his spaceship, leaving Yor (and Roa) to grow up alone in the wilderness. Now Yor has to lead a group of plucky rebels to victory, destroying the Overlord and flying to a distant planet so they can start civilisation again.

Apparently this film was cut down from a four-part tv series. As a result it moves very quickly, Yor and company only staying in a location long enough for the next action sequence. It's a family friendly film, so nudity is limited to skimpy outfits and copious shots of Yor's ass. Although there is a lot of violence, there is very little blood. Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis (aka Oliver Onions) provide the soundtrack, the highlight being Yor's theme, a piece of synth-heavy Euro rock that poorly echoes Queen's contribution to Flash Gordon. Every time Yor does something heroic, using the corpse of a giant bat to hang glide into a cave for instance, we are treated to a triumphant blast of "Yor's world, he's the maaaan!" in heavily-accented English.

Antonio Margheriti wasn't content to rip off a single film, he tried to rip off almost every genre film in cinema history. It's hard to choke down the bitter concoction he produced, but you've got to admire his enthusiasm. Even if the spaceships are wobbly scale models and a climactic swing across a gaping chasm is achieved primarily through the use action figures, the whole film has a very earnest quality about it. The clean cut, heroic Yor is nothing like the vicious amoral barbarians we are used to. He's like a big, dumb, shaggy dog that has bad breath and shits on the carpet, but you love him anyway. It truly is Yor's world, and he is the man.

2020: Texas Gladiators (1982)

Who ordered the beefcake?

You know what kind of of film you are in for when the first shot is a guy getting a throwing knife in the skull. The awesome kind! Sleaze king Joe D'Amato directs (under a pseudonym, but that's implied with D'Amato) yet another post-apocalyptic knock-off. Watching this film you might get a sense of deja vu, since D'Amato re-used many of the actors, locations and props from his earlier post-apocalyptic film Endgame. Hey, why make a film once when you can make it twice?

As everyone knows, once the bombs drop it's every man for himself, and it's not long before dirty faced mutants start fussin' and a-fightin', invading ruined churches to rape nuns, crucify priests etc. Luckily there's the Rangers, a gang of five topless, greased up vigilantes, and if there's one thing they hate more than wearing shirts it's filthy mutants. They consist of Nisus (Al Cliver), Jab (Harrison Muller Jr.), Halakron (Peter Hooten), Red Wolfe (Hal Yamanouchi) and Catch Dog (Daniel Stephen). Surprisingly George Eastman does not make an appearance, though he did pull writing duties.

Cowering in a corner is the beautiful Maida (Sabrina Siani) and the sight of her exposed nipple is too much for Catch Dog. When the rest of the gang catch him in the act (of rape) they chastise him for breaking their code of honour. They kick him out of the gang and Nisus runs away with Maida to live a life of non-violence.

Years later Nisus is wearing a shirt and working at a power plant, cementing his "hero" status by stopping a leak of exsplosive[sic] gas. Soon after, their commune is attacked by a gang of post-apocalyptic bikers, led by Catch Dog himself. They manage to repel the raiders, despite heavy casualties on both sides, but before they can exchange high-fives they are attacked by the armoured stormtroopers of the New Order, a totalitarian regime led by the Black One (Donal O'Brien from Zombie Holocaust). They break through the plant's defences, thanks to shields that emit a bullet-repelling force field. The New Order take control of the power plant, and Nisus is killed when he intervenes to stop his wife from being raped (again). Hm, didn't expect that.

The films over already? No sir, it's just begun. We now cut to Jab and Halakron entering a saloon straight out of a spaghetti Western, complete with pinball machines and a Defender cabinet in the corner. Two guys are playing Russian Roulette (apparently all the playing cards were burnt up in the apocalypse) and the loser, a guy in a very Deer-Hunter-esque red headband, blows his brains all over the wall. Jab and Halakron notice that the winner has one of their special Ranger medallions and Maida, and win them both back by cheating. Afterwards they get into a bar-room brawl and are sent to the salt mines for their troubles.

They are busted out by Red Wolfe and chased by Catch Dog and his crew into the same fucking quarry that's in every one of these Italian post-apocalyptic films. It's interesting to note that although most people are armed with a wide variety of historical firearms, Catch Dog is armed with a stupid-looking laser gun. They couldn't afford any laser beam effects so instead it just makes zappy noises. Catch Dog attempts to kill them by starting an avalanche, but they trick him and escape.

It's now that Jab, Halakron, Maida and Red Wolfe venture into a very un-post-apocalyptic forest and seek the help of the most unconvincing bunch of Indians I have ever seen. They refuse to help at first, but Halakron repeatedly calls them cowards until they acquiesce. You see, the New Order's shields provide no protection from bows and arrows because they aren't hot like bullets. Or something. Now that they have backup, it's time for the remainder of the Rangers to march on the power plant, liberating it from the evil oppressors once and for all.

There's a lot of violence in this film, and because this is a Joe D'Amato film there's also a lot of rapes. Plant workers, nuns, teenage boys... none are safe in a D'Amato film. Poor Maida gets raped twice. D'Amato leers over the action in typical fashion, in fact sometimes the heroes will pause for several minutes before acting, just so we can take in a few more acts of depravity. Most of the violence is fairly uninspired, but it keeps the film moving along at a pace that's less sluggish than your average D'Amato film.

Acting is generally pretty poor. O'Brien stars gives a truly insane performance as a pseudo-Nazi officer, including one of the most over-the-top maniacal laughs in motion picture history. Plus with all his hair shaved off he looks like Popeye. Toot, toot! Also, Sabrina Siani is totally hot in that suede mini-dress.

As far as budgets are concerned we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel, even for post-apocalyptic films. In fact, we've probably scraped right through the bottom of the barrel and are scooping out the dirt from underneath. The ridiculous "futuristic" buggy our heroes get around in makes the customised golf carts of The New Barbarians look like Hum-vees. I like the idea of combining the spaghetti Western with a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic setting, but here the two genres jostle uncomfortably next to one another. It's more like a cheap, uninspired post-apocalyptic film with a few jarringly anachronistic "Old West" touches.

2019: After the Fall of New York (1983)

Behold! The last hope for humanity (not pictured: ape-man)

Another entry in the sizable catalog of cheap 1980s post-apocalyptic action films, but this time the Italians aren't only to blame. Also the French! Sergio Martino's 2019: After the Fall of New York is a French-Italian co-production that combines the souped up muscle cars (except in the finale when they are inexplicably traded for a family station wagon) and desert locations of Mad Max with the "man on a mission" plot of Escape From New York. But did those films have George Eastman as an ape-man? No. No they didn't.

An opening narration reveals that the world has split into two factions, the Pan American Confederacy (America i.e. the good guys) and the Euracs (Asia, Europe, Africa... basically everyone else). The ensuing nuclear war has left the planet a barren wasteland and women infertile. No child has been born in fifteen years (sorry Children of Men, the Italians were there first), and the evil Euracs are combing the ruins of New York for survivors they can use in genetic experiments.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Nevada, a group of post-apocalyptic punks excitedly watch a demolition derby taking place in an abandoned quarry. The winner is a grizzled longhair in tight jeans named Parsifal (Michael Sopkiw). He claims his prize from a creepy cyborg clown: a handful of License-To-Kill tokens, each good for one free murder and all the victims possessions, and a hermaphrodite sex slave. A few miles out of town he ditches the slave and the tokens (this is how we know he is a good guy), and is soon after captured by some Pan Am Con soldiers in a hovercraft. He is taken to a cheap model of their secret headquarters in Alaska, where is he is offered a mission.

Luckily for the human race, the Pan Am Con has determined that there is one (1) fertile woman left in the world, secreted away somewhere in the ruins of New York. If he retrieves her, he will be given a seat on a spaceship that is headed to a life-sustaining planet somewhere in Alpha Centauri. He is joined by Bronx, a New York native with a robotic hook for a hand, and Ratchet, a one-eyed strongman with some sweet retractable chains with metal balls on the end. They ride their motorcycles to the shore, where a radiation-scarred man plays a mournful tune on a trumpet. He should start a band with the drummer from 1990: Bronx Warriors. "See that?" He says "They baked the big apple!" Mmm... baked apple.

After being attacked by some punks in a scrapyard and having hot oil dumped on them by hobos, they come across the Needle People, a tribe that hunt rats with metal spikes (the humans have the spikes, not the rats). In true Italian fashion, dozens of presumably real rats are impaled, squished and flagellated. Sorry little fellas. Our heroic trio are captured when they intervene to save the life of a midget.

That evening, by virtue of capturing the largest number of delicious rats, one of the tribe members gets his pick of the women. Understandably he picks Giara (Valentine Monier), who boasts any number of attractive features over the other women, not the least of which being her lack of weeping pustules and full head of hair. Before things go too far, the Euracs bust in and start with the killing. Ratchet escapes, but Bronx and Parsifal are captured, as well as a handful of the Needle People.

Back at Eurac HQ, Parsifal is restrained and interrogated by sexy Eurac officer Ania. She is played by one-time Miss Italy Anna Kanakis, last seen in another post-apocalyptic film The New Barbarians. Ania tries to seduce the information out of him, he buys himself some time by falsely identifying Giara as the fertile woman. Bronx, meanwhile, is interrogated by a less sexy Eurac commander, and uses his metal claw to gouge out his eyes. As punishment he is strapped to a futuristic torture device, and Parsifal is conveniently taken there to watch the results. Parsifal manages to overpower the guards and together they rescue Giara and escape.

They are aided in their escape by the midget they helped earlier, and he takes them to the underground hideout of his midget tribe. He goes by the unoriginal name of Shorty, and just so happens to know the location of the fertile woman. He promises to take them to her in exchange for passage out of New York. He doesn't seem to show much compassion for his midget brethren, but this is soon made irrelevant when the Euracs arrive with an sonic device that kills the entire tribe. Our heroes, including Shorty, manage to avoid a grisly death by stuffing their ears with wax and absconding.

The subsequently run into a tribe of ape-men, led by Big Ape, a man in cheap Planet of the Apes makeup and dressed like a flamboyant Arabian prince. He is played by post-apocalyptic juggernaut George Eastman (The New Barbarians, 1990: Bronx Warriors) . After defeating a rape ape with a sneaky kick in the balls, Parsifal reveals their mission to Big Ape who insists on accompanying them so he can impregnate her with his simian seed.

Once they get to the secret laboratory where the fertile girl is being kept on ice, they find that the professor is dead. Luckily he left a high-tech method of transportation to help them escape the city... an early-80s station wagon! Shorty, Parsifal and Ratchet head to a junkyard to find some makeshift armour, during which Shorty sacrifices himself to help them escape. While they are away, Big Ape knocks down Giara and presumably knocks up popsicle-woman, but by the time they return Giara has recovered from her bludgeoning and doesn't seem to care.

After reinforcing their vehicle they manage to plow it through a brick wall and a series of Eurac barricades. Even a huge laser cannon is no match for the little Station wagon that could. During their escape Big Ape gets fried by a laser, but not before decapitating three Eurac soldiers with a single throw of his scimitar!

Once they escape into the safety of the desert it's revealed that Ratchet was a cyborg and planning to kill Parsifal all along. For some reason. The two of them engage in a fight that leaves Giara fatally stabbed in the gut. She mutters some gibberish about humanity being worth saving before expiring. Parsifal and the frozen girl return to Alaska and the two of them are blasted off into space. I guess that nine months later she gave birth to an ape-baby.

Oh yeah, there's a bit before this where the Eurac commander gets his eyes replaced and chastises Aria for failing to capture the heroes. She shoots him and takes over, but we never see her again after that point, so who gives a shit?

The effects are about as cheesy as you'd expect from a film like this. The equally cheesy synthesiser score is by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis (aka Oliver Onions) the duo behind the awesomely bad title song from Yor: The Hunter From the Future. There's a bit of gore, but nothing out of the ordinary, and no sex or nudity. The two leads, Michael Sopkiw and Valentine Monnier, aren't too bad, actually.

It's a good thing this film moves along at such a brisk pace. Any lull in the action might cause it to collapse under the weight of it's own stupidity. If you don't stop to question the enormous plot holes and inconsistent character motivations, you might find yourself enjoyably swept along by the action. If you only watch one post-apocalyptic film this year, watch Mad Max 2. Then Escape From New York. Then The Warriors, I guess. But if you aren't sick of the genre by the tenth or so film, then try this one.

1990: Bronx Warriors (1982)

Waxed chests and leather vests... a chilling vision of the future

Now that we've looked at The New Barbarians it's time to take a look at the other Enzo G. Castellari helmed 1982 post-apocalyptic action film starring Fred Williamson. That's not to say it's a total retread. Whereas The New Barbarians was an unashamed, bottom-of-the-barrel rip-off of Mad Max, Castellari branches out into new territory with an unashamed, bottom-of-the-barrel rip-off of Escape From New York (with some of The Warriors thrown in).

In the extremely near future (a rather pessimistic eight years after the film was made) the crime rate in the Bronx has risen to such catastrophic levels that it has been declared No Man's Land. The authorities have given up any attempt to enforce law and order, and now the streets belong to the gangs.

Fleeing to this post-apocalyptic hell-hole is Ann (Stefania Girolami). She is on the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, and on that day she stands to inherit the Presidency of the Manhattan Corporation, the world's largest arms producer. Fearing becoming a puppet of corporate villainy, she naturally decides that the Bronx would be a good place to hide. Soon after arrival, she is attacked by a lame street-hockey themed gang called the Zombies. They aren't exactly the Baseball Furies, but they can hold their own against a 17 year old girl.

Luckily she is rescued by Trash, permed, pouty-lipped pugilist and leader of the biker gang the Riders. Played by Mark Gregory, he looks like a member of the sissiest hair-metal band ever to don a pair of skin-tight jeans, and looks particularly incongruous next to his gang, most of whom were played by genuine bikers. He walks in a bizarre, feminine gait and his expression is permanently set to baby-faced bewilderment. The only way I'd buy him as leader of the gang is if he were elected as some sort of prank, like Carrie as prom queen, but he was too stupid to get the joke and the rest of the gang just ran with it.

According to the opening text, the Bronx belongs to the Riders, but it's clear that the real guys in charge are the Tigers. I mean, the Riders may have Nazi uniforms and customised hogs with glowing plastic skulls on the front, but the Tigers wear pimp suits and drive around in classic hotrods. As opposed to the hair-metal reject Trash, the Tigers are led by the self-titled King of the Bronx "The Ogre", played by Fred "The Hammer" Williamson. Whereas Trash is flanked by fat, hairy bikers, The Ogre has a whip-wielding dominatrix sidekick named Witch. I think we know who the real top dog is.

Anyway, the Tigers meet up with the Riders at a wharf to discuss a territorial dispute. Apparently the Tigers have killed one of Trash's men, who, according to the Ogre, was carrying a police tracking device called a "Gizmo". The entire scene is scored to a drum beat, banged out by dude who is sitting there out in the open with a full drum kit. He doesn't appear to have any connection to the gangs and nobody says a word about it. If you've even wondered why I sit through these cheap Italian knock-offs, it's for insane moments like these.

Thrown into the mix is Hammer, played by actual Bronx native Vic Morrow (soon before dying on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie). Hammer is a former resident of the Bronx who is hired by the Vice President of the Manhattan Corporation (played by Enzo G. Castellari himself) to rescue Ann. Hammer also sees it as a chance to take out as many scumbag gang members as possible. He's like Charles Bronson in Death Wish, only he's the bad guy. He starts by infiltrating the headquarters of the Riders (colourfully labeled by the grammatically poor graffiti: "This shit heap is Riders home"). He is disguised as a mailman, complete with a shotgun in a poster-tube, but I question the idea that the mail service is still operating in this neighbourhood. He gets discovered, but he manages to take out a couple of Trash's men before escaping.

Hammer tries to frame the Tigers for the deaths by planting some evidence. Although the Riders call for war, Trash is unconvinced, claiming that "it could be a pile of shit out of somebody's asshole." Yes Trash, that's generally where shit comes from. When Hammer's attempts to turn the gangs against each other fails, he employs a traitorous member of the Riders named Ice to turn against their leader.

Ann blames herself for the deaths of Trash's crew and tries to run away, but the idiot is immediately captured by the Zombies. Ice goes to meet the leader of the Zombies, Golan, to try and convince him to turn Ann over to Hammer. Golan is played by none other than George "The New Barbarians" Eastman. He doesn't fuck a guy in the ass this time, but he does wear a crazy shogun-inspired outfit like Sho' Nuff.

Trash, meanwhile, has decided to take a few of his men and ask The Ogre for help to rescue Ann. In order to reach the Tigers' turf, however, they must make it through a gauntlet of gimmicky gangs a la The Warriors. I don't know why they had to take a shortcut through the sewers, but in doing so they were attacked by the Scavengers, a group of underground cavemen. The most hilarious gang of all is a group of tap-dancing thugs wearing bowler hats and glittery makeup, kind of like the drag version of A Clockwork Orange.

Once they arrive at the Tigers' headquarters Hammer tries to frame Trash one last time, but Trash manages to convince The Ogre of his innocence and get his assistance in rescuing Ann. On their trip back, Trash comes across his second-in-command, attacked by the Scavengers as he tried to warn him of Ice's treachery. Trash is just in time for a tearful death scene that I was convinced was going to end with a passionate kiss (maybe in the deleted scenes). Ogre, Trash and Witch rescue Ann and kick the asses of Golan and all of his roller-skating flunkies.

The Ogre takes Ann and the Riders back to his headquarters, even baking a spectacular birthday cake for Ann, but soon Hammer arrives, clad in black leather and doing some serious overacting, with a platoon of flamethrower-wielding riot cops on horseback. I wouldn't think flamethrowers and horses would be a good mix, but they do a good job of roasting the gang members. Pretty much everyone dies, including Ann, and the film ends with Trash impaling Hammer on a grappling hook and dragging his corpse through the streets of the Bronx. Long live the Riders!

Yeah, so this film is pretty dumb. I mean, why are they so intent on getting Ann back so she can run the company? I mean, this is a girl who decided that the best course of action was to run away to a crime infested slum and shack up with a bubble-headed, pretty-boy biker named Trash. We're not talking top-shelf material here. I also don't understand how Hammer's plan was supposed to work. By the end of the film he doesn't seem to care why he's there at all, and I guess it's assumed that you don't either. The film also loses points for casting Fred Williamson and naming a completely different character "Hammer". However it's never boring, with lots of good action and some nicely choreographed fights. Throw in a few surreal Italian touches and some hilariously bad "tough guy" dialogue ("You're playing with fire!" "I know, and I love it... I love it"), and you've got a recipe for good times my friend.

The New Barbarians (1982)

Dune buggies, laser guns, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and
George Eastman fucking a dude in the ass. This film has everything!

After the huge success of Mad Max, it didn't take the Italians long to realise that they could make their own post-apocalyptic epics using nothing more than some bearded Italians, a disused quarry, a few dune buggies and some leather S&M gear. Enzo G. Castellari's The New Barbarians (aka Warriors of the Wasteland) was one of them. It takes place in the year 2019, and the world is a pretty different place. For starters, people wear transparent bubbles over their boobs. After the bombs dropped, frightened and desperate survivors banded together, trying to intercept signals from civilisation as they hold off assaults from gangs of raiders.

Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete), on the other hand, is a loner who prowls the wasteland and steals to survive. He gets around in a sweet Dodge Charger, which doesn't have a scorpion airbrushed on the hood, sadly, but does have a shiny silver skull as a hood ornament, which is almost as good. It is also customised with glowing plastic bubbles, pvc tubing and other futuristic accoutrement. It isn't all cosmetic though: At the push of a button he can open the door for the lizzadies or activate the rocket launcher hidden in the trunk. Hell, his mechanic probably laughed at him when he requested a button to blast off the passenger door, but it sure came in handy when a bad guy stuck a mine to the side of his car.

You'd think all of this stuff would cost a fortune in gas or water or women or whatever has become the currency in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, but you'd be surprised how much sway you have when your mechanic is a 10 year old boy. He is played by none other than Giovanni Frezzi aka Bobby from House by the Cemetery. Luckily he's dubbed by someone else this time around, adopting a gruff Brooklyn-accented voice more befitting of a Warrior of the Wasteland. He's good with a slingshot too. I don't know what he was shooting, but the bad guys were dropping like flies in the finale.

Who are the bad guys? Well, Scorpion is being pursued by a group of white-clad raiders called the Templars, headed by the enigmatic One (George Eastman in a hilarious wig). The One has some sort of grudge against Scorpion (in addition to smouldering lust), but it isn't explained. The Templars have a philosophy that boils down to the destruction all life on Earth, which is at odds with Scorpion's desire to live. The Templars have dirt bikes and customised silver golf carts that can move at about 10 km/h, but are packed with all sorts of accessories, like flame throwers, spinning blades etc. It even has a flimsy looking fan that they use to decapitate people who are too stupid to duck.

Did I mention that the Templars are homosexuals? The leather outfits, the meticulously styled hair, the sensibly fuel-efficient cars, it all makes sense! In fact, their initiation ritual involves being sodomised by One in front of all the other Templars, something he proceeds to demonstrate on Scorpion. The synth-heavy soundtrack (by Claudio Simonetti ie Goblin) starts bleeping and blorping even more than usual, and the film cuts rapidly from Scorpion to One to the reaction shots of the henchmen. One doesn't even give him a reach-around and frankly that's just rude.

Before he is finished off, Scorpion is rescued by Nadir (The Hammer) who creepily stalks him from place to place, helping him out of jams with his explosive-tipped arrows and shiny gold codpiece. Who knows why, but when Scorpion is being dragged along behind a dune buggy, he slo-o-o-wly takes out all of the accompanying motorcyclists before turning his attention to the guy driving the buggy. Maybe he just likes watching him suffer, which explains his absence during Scorpion's unfortunate butt-rape incident.

The film builds to a climax at a survivor outpost, where the trio of warriors take out the entire Templar army. Nadir and the mechanic take on the henchman while Scorpion has a spaghetti Western showdown with One's second-in-command. Scorpion even whips off his poncho to reveal his bare torso encased in laser-proof translucent bubble-armour. Sergio Leone, you've just been served! The mechanic also whips up a four-foot drill for his car, so he can exact some penetrative vengeance on One during a climatic low-speed car chase.

As far as Mad Max rip-offs go, this one isn't too bad. Giancarlo Prete is a pretty poor Mel Gibson substitute, but the presence of The Hammer almost makes up for it. It has a lot of explosions (they are mostly the cheap-looking kind with lots of sparks and smoke) plus a few cool decapitations by exploding arrows. Most of the cars look like you could outrun them on foot, but there are lots of crashes and cars flying off ramps in slow motion. Ann Kanakis, Miss Italy 1977, appears briefly as window dressing, but she's very good at it, looking good even when the dirt on her face makes it looks like she has a five o'clock shadow. The 90 minutes or so move pretty quickly and I doubt you'll be bored, unless you hate explosions, laser-battles, James Bond style gadgets and life, in which case, the Templars are always looking for new members. Bring lube.

Escape From New York (1981)

Snake is a bad motherfucker

Escape From New York is the kind of action film they just don't make anymore. The plot is spare but tight and well told, there's long action-free stretches that build atmosphere and tension, it's got a bleak, nihilistic tone, it's got a moody synthesizer score... basically it's a John Carpenter film, and one of his better ones too.

It's the far-flung year of 1997, and the level of crime in New York City has got so bad that the government just said "Fuck it!" and built a wall around it. All hardened criminals get dumped there and left to fight it out. The idea of walling off a city and turning it into a free-range prison doesn't make a whole lot of sense (at least do it in a place no-one will miss, like Detroit) but Carpenter pulls it off. Inside it's kind of like The Warriors, with burnt out buildings and graffiti and gimmicky gangs. This nightmarish slum is presided over by the Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes) who rides around in a limo with chandeliers hanging from it and lives in the New York Public Library. I don't think he reads much, though.

This is all well and good, but unfortunately Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists and President Donald Pleasance's escape pod is jettisoned right into the heart of Manhattan. He is held hostage by the Duke, and he needs to play an audio tape at a worldwide summit in the next 24 hours or else it will trigger a World War, or something. Luckily the infamous criminal (seriously, everybody on the inside knows who he is) Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is just about to be sent into the prison after a botched robbery. He is made an offer by the chief security officer (Lee Van Cleef!), if he rescues the President within the next 24 hours, all of his charges will be dropped. Snake is distrustful, but figures he's going to prison either way, so what the hell. As an added incentive they inject him with some explosive capsules that will bust his carotid arteries wide open if he's not back in time.

He pilots a glider onto the World Trade Center and once he's inside he is helped out by former partner-in-crime Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) and Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau). Ernest Borgnine also plays a crazy cab driver and provides the few moments of levity in the film (aside from Snake's quips). Snake gets put in a deathmatch with a huge hairy wrestler dude, gets double-crossed once or twice, and it's ends with a literally explosive chase across the 69th street bridge. He even manages to deliver a final "Fuck you!" to The Man once his mission is complete. Because that's how Snake rolls, bitches.

The computery bits look dated and the models look pretty fake, but everything else looks great. It's all dark and grimy and oppressive, the whole movie takes place at night, which is weird because it's supposed to be over 24 hours (I think Snake is unconscious for a lot of that, though). It's a lot of fun seeing the landmarks like the NY Public Library turned into a gang hideout, or the Statue of Liberty turned into a guard tower. It's also eerie seeing the NYC skyline at night with no lights (made moreso by the World Trade Center still standing tall). Plus, Snake Plissken is such a fantastic character. There's obviously a lot of Clint Eastwood stoicism in there, but he doesn't seem quite as invincible, sometimes surviving by sheer luck and determination. I love the commentary tracks for Kurt Russell/John Carpenter films, because they always sound like they are best buds and had a great time making the film, and here it's obvious that Russell loved playing the character.

Snake returned in Escape from L.A., which is basically the same movie in a different location, only cheesier and more cartoony and full of bad CGI and also shitty. I don't know if this is John Carpenter's best film, but it's real good. Both this film and Mad Max would inspire dozens of copycats over next decade or so, but nothing would match them.

Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) (1981)

Post-apocalyptic fashion is fucked up. And awesome.

This film opens exactly the way it should, with Max screaming down the highway in his Interceptor, pursued by punks in a dune buggy. Not only is an awesome car chase, but there's no dialogue for first ten minutes or so, except for battle cries and screaming. Actually, I lie, it really opens with a bit of narration, explaining how the world ended up as such a dog's breakfast. Frankly I don't think this was necessary, George Miller creates such a rich and involving world, you don't really need to know why it is the way it is.

Max isn't a cop anymore, and seems pretty content to chase people down so he can steal their fuel, so he can chase people down etc. Quite a cycle of dependency he's got himself into. In one part Max is opening a can of dog food and his dog looks up hungrily, but Max gulps it down like it's a gourmet meal. People are reduced to eating dog food but they're still fighting over petrol, (they use the word "gasoline" for the American audience's sake but it's set in Australia, so fuck it, it's petrol) and it's one part of the film that really rings true to me. People's priorities really are that fucked up.

Anyway, after this confrontation he comes across this crazy gyro pilot (Bruce Spence), who leads him to a compound where they are refining petrol. He is trying to decide how to rob them when he witnesses a group of raiders attack a vehicle when it tries to cross the wasteland. They critically wound the guy and rape and murder his wife. When Max carries the dying man back to the compound he announces that he was promised some petrol as a reward. So yeah, he's not exactly heroic. Unfortunately for Max, the guy dies before he can collect so instead he is held prisoner for a while and gets caught in the middle of their battle with the raiders. It should be noted that one of the guys in the compound is played by veteran Australian character actor Syd Heylen. I like to imagine he's Cookie from A Country Practice, who managed to escape Wanden Valley before it was consumed by nuclear fire (Bob, unfortunately, didn't make it). So the leader of the raiders gives them two options: Leave the compound and everything in it and their lives will be spared, or stay and die. They decide to make a break for it with their tanker of petrol, but they want Max to drive. He doesn't want to help them, but then the raiders shoot his dog and blow up his car so he changes his mind.

So yeah, it's a simple story of redemption, but it's got such great and memorable characters it doesn't need a complex plot. You've got the gyro pilot who rears poisonous snakes and wears yellow tights. You've got Wez (Vernon Wells), the crazed punk with a male sex slave chained to his motorcycle. You've got the "Ayatollah of Rock'n'Rolla" himself, the Humungous (Kjell Nilsson), who looks like a post-apocalyptic S&M Jason Voorhees. With these films George Miller basically defined the template for post-apocalyptic fashion, outfits comprised of leather and chains and scavenged sports equipment. Don't know how they style all those mohawks though, maybe they raided a tanker full of hair gel. The cars are the kind of awesome junkpiles you can imagine nomadic scavengers putting together, full of jury rigged armour and metal spikes and stuff.

There's also the feral kid. Now, this is one of the rare instances of a kid sidekick that doesn't make my want to puke out my intestines. That's probably because he only speaks in grunts and growls and likes to dismember people with a bladed boomerang. He hangs out with Max and saves his ass during the climax, but thank Christ the kid doesn't teach him how to love or anything like that. The closest thing to an emotional connection between the two is when Max gives him a music box, and he doesn't have tears welling up in his eyes or anything, he looks like he doesn't really give a shit. He even gets the kid to crawl onto the hood of a moving truck to retrieve some shotgun shells. The hero risking a kid's life, that's not something you see in most films.

Of course it ends with one of the best car chases ever made, over fifteen minutes long. Watching a dozen crazy vehicles zipping to and fro and fearless stuntmen leaping all over the place, I realised that there's no way they'd do a scene like this anymore. It's just too complicated and dangerous. They'd ruin it by filling it full of quick cuts and shakycams and computer generated bits where you travel through the gearshift, down through the engine and out the exhaust like in The Fast and the Furious. And you can forget all the dangerous stunts, it's far easier to have actors sitting in front of a green screen and let the computer guys fill it all in with ones and zeros. Anyways, George Miller really knows how to crash some vehicles. Then they had to crap it all up with towns fueled by pig shit and Tina Turner, but whatever.

Post Apocalyptia

I was really excited about Doomdsay. Post-apocalyptic punks riding around on dune buggies? Written and directed by Neil Marshall, the director of Descent (best horror film of 2005) and Dog Soldiers (my fourth favourite werewolf film of all time)? Have they been reading my secret wish diary? Of course it got released and everybody hated it. Even though it's currently flopping in theaters worldwide, no Australian release date is forthcoming. Who knows if it will ever get released, but to prepare I watched the two films it rips off most thoroughly: Mad Max 2 and Escape From New York. They'll probably place the deficiencies of Doomsday in stark relief (and according to critics there are many), but it did remind me how great those two films are, and exactly why they were so influential.

Rats: Night of Terror (1983)

Rats! AAAAHH!!

For me, watching Bruno Mattei films is like getting really, really drunk. Sure, it's fun for while, but eventually you're curled over the porcelain throne at 3am, praying for death as you heave up stomach lining and bile for the fifth time. The next day you swear you'll never touch another Mattei film for the rest of your life. A week or so later, however, you're eyeing that copy of Rats: Night of Terror and thinking "Hey, why not? What's the worst that could happen?"

Rats: Night of Terror is a hybrid of two genres (post-apocalypse and killer animals) that were already well-worn by 1983 (mainly by the Italians), and further proof that there is not a bandwagon out there that Mattei will not jump onto. In this case he straddles two bandwagons simultaneously!

Since it's a post-apocalyptic film, the film starts with a smudgy opening crawl. It explains that the year is 225 A.B. (After the Bomb), and a bunch of survivors, sick of living underground, have taken to the surface to lead a nomadic, leather-clad existence. The leader of the pack is Kurt (Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, from Zombi 3, Zombi 4 and a slew of other Italian genre films), and with his tight leather pants, sunglasses, and natty red scarf, he looks like he'd be more at home in a Gay Pride parade than a procession of bad-ass bikers. Despite his fancy-boy appearance, he commands respect from his motley crew, and when they arrive in an abandoned city he gives them the all-clear to stop for a while.

Inside an abandoned building they discover a room stacked high with crates of food. In celebration they dump some flour on Chocolate (the token black character) and she dances around singing "I'm white!" to the delight of all present. Chocolate's comedy stylings are interrupted by Myrna's discovery of a mutilated body covered in rats. They also find a greenhouse filled with plantlife, a water purifier, and a control room containing an enormous early 80s computer with an interface that looks suspiciously like a Commodore 64. Video, so named for his video game prowess, gives the computer a "kick in the balls" and the computer spits out a bunch of random code and the phrase "Total Eliminate Group". As Kurt states "Computers and corpses are a bad mix." Damn straight!

Later Lucifer and Lilith (both wearing copious amounts of 80s eyeshadow) are banging away in a sleeping bag while everyone is trying to sleep (in the same room!) They understandably tell the couple to leave, and there is a brief moment of levity as the zipper becomes stuck (ooh, foreshadowing). They adjourn their lovemaking to a filthy alleyway, and after Lucifer goes to find a post-coital drink, a single rat chews it's way into the sleeping bag. It kills Lilith somehow, thanks to the broken zipper. Lucifer meanwhile, drunkenly drops his bottle into an open sewer, and is killed by kamikaze rats during his attempt at retrieval.

Upon discovering Lilith's body, they open the sleeping bag down to her navel, giving us another gratitious breast shot. Due to the lack of visible injury they conclude that Lucifer strangled her to death. That is, until a rat crawls out of her mouth!

Noah, meanwhile, is hanging out in the greenhouse. When rats start dropping into the water purifier, swimming around and pooping, he has a mental breakdown that must be seen to be believed. He shows up later, covered in gnawing rats, so they turn their flame thrower on him. He stumbles about in flames (with rats perched on his head) before leaping out of a window and into the street, briefly doing the worm, and then expiring. Then they blast him with a shotgun for good measure. With friends like that, who needs the rats?

Soon even escape isn't an option, the rats having chewed up their bike tires, so they set about barricading themselves in and boarding up the windows and doors. This wouldn't be a very effective measure against rats at the best of times, made worse by the fact they forget to board up a large and prominently featured window. I probably don't need to tell you what happens when Diana backs right up against the window. The weather forecast is cloudy with 100% chance of rats!

Deus, Video, Kurt and Taurus head down to the greenhouse to find some fresh water, but find it overcome with rats. Unfortunately, Taurus falls down the stairs and is showered with rodents. When they return, Duke, who has been challenging Kurt's authority at every opportunity, gets Myrna on his side and locks them out. In one of the most laughable effects in the film, an army of approaching rats is represented by a bunch of fake rats on a conveyor belt. When Chocolate finally overpowers Duke and lets them in, Kurt gives him a righteous kick in the balls.

A supremely ineffective suspense sequence follows, where they have to cross a room full of indifferent rats a-la The Birds. Afterwards they discover Taurus, standing with his back to them. As he turns around, it becomes apparent that his face has been gnawed off by rats, and he collapses, dead. Was he standing there that whole time? His torso subsequently explodes wide open, showering the survivors in rodents. I can honestly say I did not expect that to happen.

Duke, meanwhile, has taken Myrna hostage and attempts to escape in their APC, but is surprised to find it filled with rats. Ever the strategist, he tosses a grenade at his own feet in an attempt to take out the rats, blowing himself, Myrna and the APC to pieces.

Diana goes nuts from her earlier rat attack and slashes her wrists, and the four remaining survivors find a magic exposition device in the control room. A recording states that the laboratory used to be run by some group called Delta-2 and they were supposed to meet up with a bunch of underground scientists called Omega-1. Mutant rats have taken over the surface and want to kill all humans etc. The monologue itself isn't particularly interesting, but the voice gradually gets more strained and ridiculous as the recording continues.

Their only means of escape destroyed, the survivors barricade themselves in a room. Eventually the rats manage to batter down the door, killing Kurt and Deus while Chocolate and Video cower in fear. Things are looking grim, but our two remaining heroes are saved when a bunch of guys in hazmat suits arrive, spraying the rats with poison gas. The film ends with one of the silliest twist endings in cinema history.

There have been a lot of killer-rat films, and I've probably seen more than I'd care to admit, but rats have never looked less threatening than in this film. When the rats attack, some poor Italian production assistant pours a bucket of rats over the head of the victim, who screams and flails instead of taking a step to the left. In many shots the "rats" are actually spray-painted guinea pigs. Don't bother looking for the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer; rats are liberally kicked, thrown and set on fire, but at least they died for a good cause.

This is probably the most entertaining Mattei film I've seen, next to Hell of the Living Dead. It's got a cheesy synthesiser score, a grimy post-apocalyptic setting, and bikers with names like "Lucifer". If that weren't enough, there's a bit where a guy turns a flamethrower onto a bunch of rats and shouts "I'm gonna warm their whiskers!" Now that's entertainment!