Audience Member
Anyone that gave this movie a good review should have their head examined. Me and my buddies hated it. Downright awful.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Audience Member
In the future year 2019, the nuclear holocaust is over. What's left are bands of roaming gangs in a desert wasteland. "Warriors of the Wasteland" is one of many low-budget Italian Mad Max knockoff films and is pretty decent one from solid journeyman director in Enzo G. Castellari and the always cool Fred Williamson. The story, such as it is, involves and evil group of white robed baddies known as "The Templars" who raid peaceful wastelander villages and want to rid the earth of it's survivors, so it's up to our hero Giancarlo Prete as Scorpion and Fred Williamson as Nadir to save the world from the evil Templars. George Eastman makes a good snarling villain and there is also a nicely funky score by Claudio Simonetti of Gobin fame. It's also hard to resist the Williamson's exploding arrows, especially when he makes a head shot, or one villain's car that deploys a deadly spinning blade to decapitate his hapless victims. It's this sort of ridiculousness that I found so enjoyable and realized this film was probably one of the more direct influences on the more recent post-apocalyptic cheese fest homage that was "Turbo Kid: Chronicles of the Wasteland." Overall, "Warriors of the Wasteland" is is not a good movie by any measure in the conventional sense, but if you're a fan of these sorts of low-budget post-apocalyptic type of films, then this one is one of the better Italian entries into this disreputable subgenera.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
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Audience Member
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 [b]lasers[/b] 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, in the baddie bunch look like contestants from Sweden's entry in the EuroVision Song Contest for the mid 70's. Seriously, its a mix of an ultra religious Christian bible basher, with a Stormtrooper, with a very camp looking Swedish song and dance act. 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. Oh and he porks some young girl who's dressed in transparent plastic. You know, just to show us he's [b]all man[/b].
Everything else in this movie is exactly what you think its 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 bugger him instead. Yep, they forcibly bend him over and one of the main bad guys smashes his backdoors in. I kid ye not! So errr...hurrah for LGBT representation? Ahem!!
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 [b]even[/b] 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 Scorpions 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.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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Audience Member
The team from Bronx Warriors come together again, this time for a Road Warrior knockoff. Very cheap effort, but there are a few interesting ideas, and it's campy fun. A standout is the punishment the lead gets from the Templar gang. It's... unique. lol
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
Full Review
Audience Member
What exactly is happening? What are anyone's motivations? Does Enzo fear gay people? These are the questions as the audience we must ask.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/12/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Every time cinema has a game-changer (in this case, 'Mad Max' and the entire genre of 'post-apocalyptic dystopia movies'), it's fascinating to watch how various countries and cultures react to the instant knowledge that 'something new is out there that can bring in for us a lot of money'. For this Italian effort, which needed very little in the way of budgeting for either actors, set design or costumes, it's not bad.
Director Castellari brings to it an action-packed flow which never flags for a moment. (The 87-year-old Rome native--God bless him--is directing 'Keoma Rises' at the moment, his first film in six years, and it is slated to be released later this year.) I have previously only seen his spaghetti-western 'Keoma', which I adore. He throws in two instances of nice gratuitous sex in a heartened attempt at 'character and plot development', but I really don't have a problem with that, especially with great Italian beauties like he has at his disposal here. There's a bizarre homoerotic undertone, particularly to a scene in which Scorpion is being tortured, but it's not problematic. Fred Williamson is the only star I recognized, and he continues his credo of 'getting the girls and winning the fights', which he stands by in his movies. The electronic score is dated but not bad, though it's inferior to those of, say, either Tangerine Dream or Goblin.
All in all, it was a 91-minute span of time I don't regret in the slightest--I even watched it with a plate of spaghetti and glass of red wine at hand to further exemplify the Italian experience.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
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