‘The Lord of the World does not forgive those who betray him!’
A decade after the nuclear holocaust, humanity struggles to survive in a barren wasteland. A lone warrior is captured by the forces of an evil warlord, whose slaves provide the raw material and labour for his curious experiments…
More post-apocalyptic action from Italy, courtesy of co-writer and director Tonino Ricci. Bruno Minniti stars as this month’s bargain basement ‘Mad Max’ who takes on the evil Gordon Mitchell with the help of Laura Trotter and Riccardo Pizzuti.
Clik here to view.
Ten years have passed since the bombs fell, and the Earth is an irradiated desert. Travelling through this wasteland in his motorised golf cart, mysterious stranger Minniti finds evidence of small plant growth before being brutally attacked by a man in uniform. Decapitating his unknown foe, he finds a nearby ghost town where other soldiers are rounding up the survivors living in the ruins. Minniti is captured and taken to their base, where he is interrogated by a warlord named Yor (Mitchell), who is determined to find out his identity. Minniti won’t talk, even under torture, and is eventually allowed to join the slave population.
Meanwhile, Mitchell’s pet scientist Itaki (Rate Furlan) confirms that the level of radioactive contamination in the soil has dropped to negligible levels. The plant Minniti found growing in the desert was part of a batch of seeds kept from before the holocaust, sown as an experiment on Furlan’s orders. Mitchell is desperate to keep this information under wraps, but Minniti already knows all about it and is promoting rebellion among the workers. Mitchell assigns his scheming lieutenant Lorna (Bridgit Pelz) to pump Minniti for information, but the warrior already only has eyes for fellow prisoner Carol (Trotter). By a clever ruse, Minniti manages to escape the compound and go on the run from Mitchell’s troops, but he’s determined to return and overthrow the dictator for good.
Clik here to view.
The explosion of the video home rental market in the early 1980s was a clarion call to film producers all around the world to deliver their own low-budget variations on the box office hits of the day. The post-apocalyptic action flick pioneered by George Miller with ‘Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior’ (1981) was a perfect fit. All you needed was some prop guns, half a dozen old vehicles and a few guys and gals willing to wear leather and throw themselves about a bit. And some headbands, of course. Lots of headbands. It was also likely that an old quarry and some deserted roads would be available where no one would bother you about pesky things like filming permits or health and safety regulations.
Unfortunately, invention and creativity were not essential elements in the post-apocalyptic movie formula, and both are severely lacking in this example. Writer-director Ricci has absolutely nothing new to bring to the table, and this is little more than a poor Xerox of its inspiration, and the results look like they have been through the copying machine multiple times. There’s also a deplorable lack of world-building that fails to establish some of the basic details of the story set-up. Consequently, the audience has no appreciation of what’s at stake in the events that unfold. Mitchell wants to know how Minniti has managed to come in out of the big nowhere uncontaminated, and so do we, but we never really find out. He seems to be an agent for organised settlements beyond the wasteland, suggesting that civilisation still exists somewhere, but no specific details are forthcoming. There’s also a hint that he’s following his brother, who Mitchell has previously killed, but this attempt to make things personal is never developed.
Clik here to view.
What we get instead is a pretty generic 1980s action flick where Minniti might as well be an undercover FBI man trying to bust up a drug cartel using forced labour to harvest their poppy fields in a remote location. A few of Mitchell’s men are supposed to be robots, named ‘Untouchables’ for some reason, but it’s mere window dressing to try and justify the film’s science fiction credentials. The warlord’s troops track down survivors with what looks suspiciously like a few metal detectors, and they are supposed to be armed with ‘laser guns’, but there’s far more evidence of conventional weaponry. Not that it matters, of course, as they can’t hit a barn door at ten paces and often seem so in awe of Minniti’s awesomeness they daren’t fire at him, even when he’s a clear target almost impossible to miss. It’s also amusing that Pizzuti and the slaves immediately decide that Minniti is the only one to lead them out of bondage. He’s done nothing up to that point to justify such confidence. Perhaps they’re just fed up with the managerial techniques of Mitchell’s men, which often involve cattle prods.
Despite all these obvious shortcomings, there’s still some prime cheese for aficionados to savour. Minniti seems to have had an accident with a bucket of baby oil; his motorised golf cart makes some lovely ‘futuristic’ bleeps and squeaks, and the nature of Furlan’s experiments is never clearly explained. If they are all about growing things in the irradiated soil, that would be fine, except there’s a full-blown forest just down the road! Maybe it’s only just started to grow because of the drop in radiation, but, my god, it is sprouting like the clappers! It also provides a convenient location when the film swings firmly into ‘First Blood’ (1982) territory after Minniti escapes from Mitchell’s clutches. Yes, our hero goes full Stallone for about a quarter of an hour as he picks off the warlord’s troops with a series of tricks and traps. Well, I expect it looked good in the trailer, and it kills some run time.
Clik here to view.
In fairness, there is a good optical effect that tints the sky a rose pink in some of the long shots, and it’s surprisingly effective. Also, some of the fight choreography is decent, with Minniti showing some good moves, although he does have a tendency to pose. Sadly, some of this good work is undone by ineptly staged vehicular action, including a laughable crash between a tractor and a jeep. There’s also a climactic sequence where our muscular hero is driving around the underground caverns in a jeep, but the editing makes it look like he’s just going around in circles, which, to be fair, he probably was. Gardening with an army surplus vehicle is also not recommended by the best Horticultural societies, with a trowel being generally recommended as a wiser choice.
The film also betrays many signs of its limited resources. VoiceOver Man delivers his usual portentous opening narration about the apocalypse, when ‘huge mountains tumbled into the sea’, ‘the mighty structures raised by man collapsed into dust’ and ‘blood and fire rained on the land’ but, of course, we don’t see any of that, just underwhelming landscape shots of a quarry somewhere outside Rome. The producers couldn’t even spring for the usual scratchy mushroom cloud stock footage from a local, reasonably-priced film library, instead settling for the noise of a giant explosion on the soundtrack behind a black screen. There is a similar issue throughout the movie, where the noise of gunfire often accompanies visuals with no evidence of weapons being fired beyond people running about a bit. Other signs include Pizzuti wearing a pair of sports trainers (not very futuristic!), suggesting that perhaps the cast even had to supply their own wardrobe.
Clik here to view.
The film’s best aspect is undoubtedly the stirring score by Francesco de Masi, particularly his pounding opening theme. Unfortunately, the music wasn’t original, being repurposed from other projects, namely Lucio Fulci’s ‘The New York Ripper/Lo Squartartore de New York’ (1982) and Enzo G Castellari’s ‘Escape from the Bronx/Fuga dal Bronx/Bronx Warriors 2’ (1983). All the principal movers and shakers also hid behind pseudonyms; Ricci became Anthony Richmond, Minnitti appeared as Conrad Nichols, and Rate Furlan got a gender switch as Rita Furlan. Surprisingly, Rush and his shining biceps made a semi-return to the screen, with the director and star back in harness for ‘A Man Called Rage/Rage – Fuoco incrociato’ (1984). The film was supposed to be about a new character, but tweaking the name is the only real difference between the two, even if he is sometimes referred to in the film as Captain Strike! It was even marketed as ‘Rush 2’ in some territories (as if that was a good thing!). It is quite a bit more enjoyable than its predecessor, but that’s not strictly because it’s any better; just the opposite, in fact.
Clik here to view.
Ricci was born in Rome in 1927 and began his career in the film industry as an assistant director in 1961. An early assignment included working for the great Mario Bava on viking adventure ‘Erik The Conqueror/Gli Invasori/Fury of the Vikings’ (1961). His credits follow the familiar path of Italian filmmakers during that decade, through the early 1960s ‘Sword and Sandal’ pictures, the odd excursion into pop art kitsch such as ‘Superargo and the Faceless Giants’ (1968) to the inevitable Spaghetti Westerns. As a director, he debuted with the Second World War drama ‘War Fever/Il dito nella piaga/The Liberators’ (1969) which starred Klaus Kinski and George Hilton. His next project was the severely underwhelming Giallo ‘Cross Current/Un omicidio perfetto a termine di legge’ (1971) and the rest of the decade included a mixture of adventure films, mob movies with the occasional input of American talent such as Arthur Kennedy, Mark Damon, Treat Williams and Richard Conte. He teamed up with Minneti again for Conan knock-off ‘Thor the Conqueror/Thor il conquistatore’ (1983) and mercenaries on a mission action flick ‘I giorni dell’inferno’ (1986) and the two carried on working together until Ricci’s final project in 1998.
Although maybe not quite the worst of the ‘Mad Max’ clones of the early 1980s, it’s almost certainly the most uninspired of the lot.