aka 'Warriors of the Wasteland' upon release in the US.
From the infamous cult Italian director of such classic rip-offs like '1990: The Bronx Warriors' and 'Escape from the Bronx'. Enzo G. Castellari serves up yet another hot piping dish of post-apocalyptic mayhem which quite frankly borders on copyright infringement with other obvious US movies.
The Plot: In the year 2019 (ha!!) the world has been devasted by a nuclear apocalypse. All that appears to be left of humanity are small pockets of life that eek by as best they can. Yet despite the hardship and struggle these survivors must deal with the daily savage attacks by a gang called 'The Templars'. A group of psychotic morons that want to eradicate all humans...except for themselves of course. Only one man stands in their way and can save what's left of humanity, Max...I mean Snake...errr I mean Scorpion (no not that Scorpion). A former Templar thug turned good.
OK so let's just acknowledge the blatantly obvious straight away. This is a complete and utter rip-off of the classic 1981 Australia action movie 'Mad Max 2'. No ifs, no buts, this is literally the Italian version of that movie with minor changes. Pretty much all the same questions arise when watching this movie such as, how do they keep the cars fueled? Where did they get their matching outfits from? How do they keep the outfits so clean? Why wear the same colours? How does no one run out of bullets? And why are there lasers in this world and how are they kept running??
This post-apocalyptic world is a vast endless barren desert...clearly filmed in a quarry of some kind. Pretty much all the action sequences are filmed in and around this quarry. The good guys are a colony of religious types that just wanna live in peace. As said they all dress near enough the same with the same colour schemes (brown) and they always look very clean. Their home or base looks like a crude military camp on the outside whilst quite impressive on the inside (like a classy Tardis). But they all have plenty of guns and ammo.
On the other hand the bad guys...actually they look like religious nuts too. Well what do you expect with a name like The Templars? The bad guys again all dress in matching uniforms which are all white in colour and again always spotlessly clean. They have loads of guns, lasers, and heavily modded vehicles (all of which are totally tooled up with medieval implements of death). Now the odd thing is the leaders, or main characters, on the baddie team look like contestants from Sweden's entry in the Eurovision song contest mid 70's. Some serious wig work in this.
Now the lone-wolf hero, Scorpion, is your typical Han Solo clone. He wears everything you would expect to see on this type of hero from the leather pants to the low-cut shirt to show off his chest. What's more amusing is the ass strap that goes between his legs to keep his gun holster in place. He is played by Giancarlo Prete and is the archetype of the Italian male (curly hair and Roman-looking features). On the flipside we have good old Fred Williamson who's back for Enzo playing Nadir, a kind of tough lone-wolf anti-hero who doesn't really need to be in this film. Clearly Enzo wanted his American star back. But yeah Nadir is like this Jedi master type who wears this super cheap-looking plastic armour and is super skilled with a bow and explosive arrows. He merely teaches Scorpion to be even more badass.
Everything else in this movie is exactly what you think it's gonna be without even needing to watch it. There is a somewhat badass female character who can kickass but still needs saving by Scorpion. There are of course plenty of vehicle chases and vehicle-related death sequences which are quite quite hilarious in terms of basic effects but still fun nonetheless. Every vehicle in every chase sequence is clearly cruising along very slowly (you can tell by the background and long shorts). Yet they all have really silly overpowered sound effects. All the fights are very obvious and also executed really slowly. And amusingly, all the people running from vehicles run in a straight line, like in 'Prometheus'. It never occurs to anyone to run to the left or right to evade the vehicle.
Oh and then there's that sodomy scene, yes that's right. In one quite shocking scene the bad guys have captured old Scorpion and have him strung up in their base. Now you think they're gonna torture him for info or fun, but no, they decide to sexually assault him instead. I definitely didn't see that coming.
Clearly the budget was low for this, there were limitations, but you can see everyone on Enzo's team really did put a lot of effort in and that's cool. Yes the film is a total shameless rip-off and it is essentially a bit crappy. But there is a lot of fun to be had here. The deaths are ridiculously over the top. The vehicles are even more insanely over the top. 'Mad Max' up to 11! The score sounds like something from an 80's videogame, awesome. One baddie takes drugs. The wigs are outlandish. And Scorpion's final outfit is something to behold. Like the young slutty girl, he too dons a transparent suit of body armour, complete with fake muscle structure. It's like 'Robocop' or a Marvel superhero, but their outfit on top is transparent. The craftsmanship!
Truly a movie for the 'so bad it's good' camp. If you enjoy a good cheesy sleazy sci-fi romp with oodles of knock-off ideas that look like trash warmed up, then take a seat my friend. Only Enzo's 'The Bronx Warriors' can match this.
7.5/10
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