When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979)
and Escape from New York (1981)
hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for
“post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who
brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.
Well this movie is bad,
but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is
pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was
1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals
where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of
there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some
corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an
all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie
is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the
ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average
office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them
were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser
characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines
dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory).
He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a
gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass
which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help
that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are
just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy
clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like
this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you
wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small
skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup
who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale
faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not
to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets
wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy.
It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that
only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to
horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some
nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I
wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still
wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie
it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.
52%
As the first part seemed
to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste
time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the
original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's
still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete
extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by
killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this
time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not
exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to
take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing
down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of
the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad.
The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the
main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the
action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to
200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the
ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with
this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats
which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was
worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...
63%
This is actually the only
part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the
“apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's
an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have
much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off
these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and
done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this
one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just
futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called
Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another
civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete)
is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the
mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little
things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression
on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top
shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more
than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame
literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill
everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as
raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group
event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look
like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's
shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most
of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment
values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments
which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at
the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who
fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite
troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is
the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that
doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.
66%
Like always with
these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well,
like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and
others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all
there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.
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