Worsemovies

During the 80’s there were two sub-genres breaking out featuring a number of movies influenced by key films, “The Road Warrior” and “Conan the Barbarian”. Those movies were the main reason for invasion of low-budget rip-offs until the end of that shrill, pointless decade. If you were paying attention to our past reviews (shame on you if you weren’t) we already had done a great part of bad barbarian movies. This month we decided to check other, post-apocalyptic side (mostly because we don’t have better things to do).

Thanks God it’s over!

As it is always the case, nuclear holocaust has happened. This time it happened in 2019. Of course, no one ever bothers with explaining details such as who, what, why, where, how… So such is the case with this movie as well. Listen, important thing is that the nuclear holocaust is over and the world population has been almost completely wiped out. Good! Among the rare survivors is the group of marauders in white uniforms known as The Templars. They are driving tin cans which I guess were supposed to look like the exact replicas of buggies from “Mad Max 2”. No such luck, tho. Although, they are equipped with various devices that can stab, hack, and blast victims…. But no use. They still look like tin cans. The Templars are led by statuesque One (played by George Eastman) and lieutenant Shadow (played by Ennio Girolami). Their mission on Earth (or at least what have been left of it) is quite simple: This world is dead. So, accordingly, everybody in it must die too (except themselves, of course) so they could be the last remaining men. One is a prophet of hate whose mantra is to spread death and destruction to all he meets. Hm sounds like a reasonable man. No point in glamorizing the truth. Truth to be told, there is no point in this plot either.

How the hell the doll did survive nuclear holocaust?

Several thousand decomposing bodies away, on the other side of desert, there is a mercenary named Scorpion (played by Giancarlo Prete). Scorpion? Shadow? One? It is no coincidence… All the characters in this movie have profound-sounding name. It goes great with one-dimensional characters, after all. Scorpion and One have a pact not to attack each other. That pact breaks when the Templars start killing and pillaging innocent people around. Plus, Scorpion decides to protect traveling caravan with supplies led by Father Moses (played by Venantino Venantini), which is the main target of The Templars. Scorpion isn’t interested in supplies (which is damn obvious since he survived on his own for so long). His main interest is Alma (played by Anna Kanakis), one of the leaders of caravan. Of course, not even Scorpion would be able to match The Templars on his own. Another mercenary joins his cause; Nadir (played by Fred Williamson) who pulverizes every enemy with his trusty bow and arrows with bombs attached onto arrowheads (!?). I see that survivors didn’t lack creativity when it comes to dismembering another human being. Nor Scorpion, nor The Templars, nor Nadir have absolutely no reason for doing what they were doing. Furthermore, Fred Williamson has absolutely no fucking reason even to be in this movie!

Basically this is the entire plot. Seriously, not much of dialogue is offered here, which is good since dubbing is awful at best. Fights between mercenaries and The Templars are consisted of fighting in a mud, a lot of explosions (head-explosions, chest-explosions, ass-explosions), deadly tin cans races in “Mad Max meets Wacky Races” style, hilarious dialogue, bizarre costumes, wild haircuts, decapitated bodies and all of that followed by “pew pew” sound effects (even when extras fire contemporary assault rifles). Oh oh I almost forgot to mention the most shocking scene… Scorpion got captured by The Templars and as a punishment for his sins or as initiation ritual (can’t be sure due to dubbing which would make your ears bleed) he gets attached to some sort of bending machine and then he gets ass-fucked by The Templars!!! Only, you can’t tell for sure what is going on in that scene, because the editor starts cutting up every shot with strangely framed pointless shots while Simonetti’s wildly psychedelic sounds come on again. As for me, I ought to believe in what was suggested. As you already guessed Scorpion took a full revenge until at the end of movie, doing that in gay James Bond style by ass-fucking One’s car with his drill. Not much use of revenge for him tho. He got bamboozled and he will be remembered for that only.

Backdoor initiation

Conclusion: This is a crash-budget spaghetti-western disguised as a post-apocalyptic action film ala “Mad Max” or “Escape From New York”. Director Enzo G Castellari has done a rather remarkable job of keeping up traditional action-film pacing throughout the film, when keeping in mind non-existence of the budget. But that still wasn’t enough. The cinematographer was very persistent about utterly pointless framing. Most shots are often zoomed-in too closely on the action resulting often in the viewer feeling the urge to try and look left or right of the TV-screen to see more of the action. The vehicle’s designs are simply mind-blowing. Most of them are armed with very vicious devices, such as grenade-launchers, ultra-long drills coming out of the front-grid, car-doors that launch themselves and explode on impact, flame-throwers and a circular saw, expanding from the side of the car which decapitates innocent civilians running for their lives. And as for the music in this movie we have Claudio Simonetti’s completely warped musical score. He came up with his most spaced-out compositions (possibly while being under influence of some sort of spaghetti-LSD). Overall, this is a very fun flick which can come in handy when you want to annihilate your free time and give your brain a leave of absence with forgettable action picture.