Category: Post Apocalypse

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993)

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I only ask for three things in my post-apcolypse movies about cyborgs. One is that the cyborg should be almost invincible. It’s important because over the course of 90 or so minutes, our heroes must be able to constantly battle and inflict all sorts of escalating damage on the machine.

The movie isn’t exactly going to be to a post-apocalyptic orgy of exciting violence if the cyborg craps out when some guy cuts off its hand or pulls its eye out. We can’t be standing around at the repair shop while our cyborg is up on blocks getting a new transmission put in when we could be out getting harassed by cannibalistic mutants, can we? Continue reading “American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993)” →

The Final Executioner (1984)

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It’s another Italian stock footage apocalypse! Culled from the most routine of public domain clips of black and white mushroom clouds, model cities getting blown away, and most inexplicably of all, erupting volcanoes and bright red lava flows, the beginning of The Final Executioner not only marks the end of the world as we know it, but also the most professional part of the film, too!

Thank god! Just bring on the narrator for 20 seconds of exposition explaining the crazy illogical world that rose from the ashes so that we can get on with watching the stud decked out in black leather and white scarf bad assing around the wasteland just like was promised on the poster! Continue reading “The Final Executioner (1984)” →

Ravagers (1979)

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There was a moment in the last third of Ravagers where it threatened to become interesting. Richard Harris (Strike Commando 2) had survived the post-apocalyptic wasteland and made his way to a ship where there was plenty of food, electricity, and even clean clothes. Given a tour by the always welcome presence of football/film legend Woody Strode (Spartacus, The Final Executioner), Harris is let in on the dirty little secret of the boat.

Is this the fabled New Genesis that everyone is searching for? Have people finally started having children again? Or is it something darker? Maybe they’ve got a little Soylent Green situation going on. Or everything is being powered by the blood of mutants. Heck, maybe the apocalypse never even happened at all and everything been’s leading to some awesome twist ending! Except that Ernest Borgnine was second billed in the credits and we haven’t seen him yet Continue reading “Ravagers (1979)” →

Urban Warriors (1987)

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What took man centuries to build, Italian film director Giuseppe Vari takes seconds to destroy through a barrage of mushroom cloud stock footage! Even more terrifying is that Vari apparently got a buy one, get one free deal on stock footage because he follows up his mushroom clouds with shots of volcanoes erupting!

There’s no need to fret though that he’s going to use the volcanoes to do something silly like having Earth overrun by lava monsters. Vari knows that what will happen following an apocalyptic nuclear war is an immediate rise in the population of mutant biker gangs! Continue reading “Urban Warriors (1987)” →

A Man Called Rage (1984)

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It’s really like any other post-apocalypse. It begins with all manner of stock footage depicting modern life and mushroom clouds right down to the same shots of houses being blown away in an atomic blast we’ve seen since they were first shot in the 1960s by the US government.

And then it’s time for Director Tonino Ricci to bring his uniquely personal vision to the aftermath! A personal vision that looks like a Cirio H. Santiago movie (think endless shots of rock strewn desert), but without all the colorful mutants, midgets, and guys dressed up like they were into Mad Max cosplay. In short, the terrifying unimaginative (and by extension, quite budget friendly) vision we saw from Tonino the year before in his film Rush! But now we’ve upgraded our hero from a bad ass named Rush to a raging bad ass named Rage! Continue reading “A Man Called Rage (1984)” →

Rush (1983)

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This post-apocalypse is brought to you by big ass belt buckles! Foregoing the usual Italian Mad Max ripoff accoutrements such as spiked shoulder pads and metal studded codpieces, Rush takes a less ostentatious approach by having Rush’s wasteland edition leather pants sturdily secured by a belt buckle roughly the size of the bloody mutant rat Rush cringes at upon seeing.

Initially you admire this subtle approach the film takes versus more flamboyant Italian dishes such as Exterminators of the Year 3000, The New Barbarians, 2020 Texas Gladiators and 2019: After the Fall of New York. As the film progresses though, you begin to suspect that what’s happening isn’t because of a sudden attack of artistic restraint on the part of director Tonino Ricci (Raiders of the Magic Ivory, Days of Hell so much as the grim reality of financial constraint.

Continue reading “Rush (1983)” →

Z.P.G. (1972)

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The dopey 1970s science fiction premise:  overpopulation has made most of the Earth an uninhabitable pile of garbage.  People are relegated to large, smog-filled totalitarian cities where they need to wear gas masks when out in public and listen as government propaganda-spewing drones hover above them.  In an effort to combat the effects that dwindling resources are having, all the countries in the world have implemented a policy of zero population growth and forbidden anyone for having children for the next thirty years.

But big government knows the little woman at home really wants a baby of her own to play with (and let’s be honest – men just want sex and football so that aren’t too worked up by all this) so they create dolls to substitute for real kids! Just head down to the Baby Store (sorry – no infants currently in stock) and you can get a doll that will talk (like a cheap doll), suffer from minor childhood illnesses and even push a stroller a few feet! Continue reading “Z.P.G. (1972)” →